by Bruce Grimes

Two pasta makers, Amelia and Zachary, loved baking rainbow bread. Their friends Fred and Hannah liked to bake too. Hannah’s favorite treat was marshmallow cinnamon rolls. 

Together, the crew baked a giant batch of bread and cinnamon rolls, plus marshmallow Peeps, marshmallow eggs and robin’s eggs candies – enough for a crowd of people.

Then Amelia and Zachary started working on their favorite recipe: rainbow bread with raisins. They used food dye to add bright rainbow colors to the dough.

They used a big bread machine to knead the dough. It took 12 hours to knead it! The machine, which they bought at a thrift store, had a timer on it that they could set and let the machine do the kneading automatically.

Meanwhile, Fred and Hannah were trying to fix two antique tractors that they found at the antiques farm outside of town. 

“Let’s fix up these tractors and then sell them at the fair,” Fred and Hannah said.
“Hey, we can sell our rainbow bread at the fair too!” Amelia and Zachary replied.
“Your bread will sell even better if you put actual rainbow in it,” Fred suggested.
“That’s a wild idea!” Zachary cried. “But how can we get some actual rainbow out of the sky?”
Fred smiled. “I can help you with that.”

Fred’s friends didn’t know he had a talent for walking on ceilings and walls, and elevator walls. They were shocked when he walked up the side of the barn at the antiques farm all the way up into the sky! 

“Hey Hannah, throw me a dumpster!” Fred called. And she did! Hannah was super-strong – that’s her special talent. Fred caught the dumpster and filled it with a big slice of the rainbow, will all its colors. 

He set it down next to Amelia and Zachary. They quickly added the fresh rainbow into the dough in the kneading machine. The dough came to life with sparkling bright colors! It brightened up the whole room, like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. 
The rainbow bread was a big hit at the fair. They sold all the loaves – plus the ingredients, and even the bread machine – at the Minnesota State Fair. They got a really big trophy for their special recipe. 

They got a Blue Ribbon too, and the Minnesota State Fair’s first-ever Rainbow Ribbon. Delicious!
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Want to make your own rainbow bread? Check out this recipe!

by Bruce Grimes

Two robots went to work at a hospital to help doctors with a heart transplant. 
Their patient was a newborn baby . . . two newborn babies, in fact. The babies were joined together at birth, and the robots helped doctors surgically separate the babies from each other. One of the robots worked to care for the first baby, and the second robot cared for the second baby.

Once the babies were separated, the doctors could tell that one of the babies had a bad heart. 

Meanwhile, their mother was doing poorly; she was on a ventilator to help her breathe. She had been in a car accident: Her car was sideswiped by a school bus as she was driving to the Weird Al concert in California. An ambulance brought her from the site of the car accident to the hospital. The doctors in the Emergency Room said, “We need to deliver this baby.” They rushed into the operating room and performed a c-section. The doctors were surprised to discover that it was twins! They were even more surprised when they realized the babies were joined together.
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“We need more hands in the surgery,” they said. “Let’s call around the city and see if we can get robot help.” It took two hours for the robots to arrive. The doctors had to program the robots to help with surgery. The surgery was big! It took 12 hours. The babies’ father was watching on-camera the whole time. He was nervous! 

Once this surgery was complete, the doctors began a heart transplant for the baby with a bad heart. The robots were good at doing heart transplants because they had done that surgery before. In the past, their patients were adults. This was a new experience for the robots, to perform a heart transplant on a brand new baby.

Their mother was showing some improvement, and fortunately she recovered completely from the accident. But she had to stay in the hospital for 12 months. 

The babies were transferred to Children’s Hospital. They stayed in ICU there for four months before they went home with their dad.  

The robots received gold medals for their heroic work. 

Both babies both grew up to be very strong people. One became a football player! The other became a doctor, and now he takes care of babies when they’re born. Sometimes, with robots.