Students In Review

On June 21 & 22, Mikayla and Alexia were showing off their gymnastics skills at the annual SVDG Students In Review show.

Here are a few pictures and a video of (well, most of) their routines.
Alexia waiting to begin her floor routine:


Alexia taking a bow:


Mikayla in mid-flip with Alexia in the background:


Mikayla:


The video:


Enough of Gymnastics? Well, here is what is on the horizon:

Friday morning the girls are in a horse show at Lang's Pony Farm to show off their hard work from horse camp this week.

Friday afternoon the kids head to the 4H K9 Camp Out for an adventure filled night and a Saturday of more dog stuff. Hopefully they'll have all the fun but none of the Dog Caper drama that we experienced a couple months ago that involved a visit to the ER.

With all that going on, you can imagine they'll be dog tired by the end of the day Saturday. hahahha.

~E

Summer Kickoff 2010

You'll be pleased to know that the girls are all now well into their summer vacation!

Around here, Summer Fever usually starts right about the time Spring Break is over, but it really hits home over Memorial Day weekend... especially when the pool decides to make its annual appearance.



Although the weather in early June was less than favorable, the sun did manage to make a solid appearance just in time for my first 5K run in, oh, about 28 years or more. This run was the Tesoro March Point run, with proceeds benefiting our local United Way chapter. The Start/Finish locations are pictured below, with beautiful blue sky and Mt. Baker making a timely appearance.


I didn't have many groupies show up for this race... Mikayla was at a gymnastics practice & performing in a local ballet performance of Peter Pan while Alexia and Tanya were at Girl Scout Camp.

Just after school ended for the summer, we went out to Bayview State Park where Mikayla connected with Jessica to hang out for the afternoon (and even to hike about 7 miles!). Alexia, Makenna and I visited the Bayview interpretive center and then spent an hour goofing around on the beach at low tide.




Here is a crab & snail sand drawing Alexia made:


This last weekend I finally was able to make some decent progress on the promised and much awaited Mother's Day Picket Fence. This part is almost done... just needs a little more paint and another picket to cover the gaps on the side and then it's on to the south side of the house to finish the final section.


Alexia & Katrina rode in the Kids-n-K-9's float with her Dog 4H club at the Berry Dairy Days parade in Burlington on Saturday. T was scrapbooking and Mikayla was at gymnastics.


Sunday was Father's Day so we enjoyed some more quality family time at home and around town... and even found some time to paint the remaining pickets and posts so they look nice as soon as they are assembled and installed.


This week the kids are attending Horse Camp in the morning and then focusing on gymnastics in the afternoon. This weekend is the Great Dog Camp Out at the local fairgrounds, hosted by M&A's 4H club. Pictures of that will probably show up here in about a week.

Thanks for catching up with us... surely more summer tales will be coming to the blog in the near future.

~E

Seattle Science Center Grade 3 Field Trip

The other week I took the day off of work to help chaperon Alexia's 3rd grade class to the Seattle Science Center for their field trip.



Here is the group that Venus & I were in charge of. They were a great group who had a good time.

The itinerary was jam packed with scheduled events so we didn't have a lot of time to roam the numerous exhibits.

We started off in the Insect World and Butterfly house.


One of the kids in our group was deathly scared of butterflies. Well, she wasn't scared of them... she just wanted to make sure none of them landed on her.

After that we had to rush off to a laser show.

Personally, I was excited about the laser show. It's been MANY years (too many to publicly record in this family blog) but the thought of a laser show always brings fond memories of good times with good friends... circa mid-1980's.

Remember back in the mid 1980's? Yes, phones were attached to the wall and your phone in the kitchen probably had a 25 foot spiral cord on it so you could drag the receiver into the bathroom to talk without a grown up listening in so easily. So much has changed since then... so many technological improvements have been made... a laser show in 2010 would certainly be the bees knees above and beyond what was possible in 1985.

You would think.

Well... to my dismay, it was virtually the same show now as it was back then.

It was still cool... but I had expected something bigger and better, but that's just me.

The kids loved it (never mind that some of these kids have never before seen an escalator, much less a real laser)!

From there we were invited to eat our brown bag lunches outside on some covered picnic tables. We decided to eat quickly since the wind was blowing the rain horizontally right under the covered area.

After a little more browsing we enjoyed a 3D IMAX movie about the Hubble Telescope. It was a little more impressive than the laser show... at least the IMAX show has made technological advances since 1985.

Finally, a few group photos before making the return trip to the school.





See that boy in the middle of this picture? He sat next to me on the bus ride down to Seattle. For the sake of anonymity, let's call him "Jim".

The bus ride was making me sleepy, but "Jim" kept me awake the whole way by either drawing cartoons in his notebook (based on my suggestions that he kept asking for), telling me jokes or sharing his interesting life story with me. Admittedly, he was really entertaining and made me laugh on a number of occasions during the bus ride.

Some time later that evening, Alexia told Tanya that we should adopt "Jim".
"Why?" asked Tanya.
"Because Dad likes him a lot. "Jim" kept talking to Dad, waking him up on the bus and Dad kept talking back to him. I think he likes him a lot."

It was a funny observation from Alexia that I wasn't even aware she was paying attention to. She made us laugh.

~E

Angels Among Us

On May 27th we enjoyed an evening concert at Mikayla's school.

They sang "Angels Among Us".

The choir director ended up standing directly between my seat and Mikayla so Tanya was a little off guard when I handed her the camera as they began to sing and informed her that she was suddenly auditioning for a videographer job.

With that said, just ignore the unusual action scenes at the 1:40 and 2:55 portions of the video.

I promise that we did not experience an earthquake during this concert.



Thanks for singing Mikayla... we're all proud of you!

~E