Cheating

I just posted our Christmas card for December 2013. Yeah, it’s a little late…

I put it under Dec 2013 so it looks like I was on time!

Hip Hop Jack

Here a few videos of Jack’s Hip Hop recital this weekend. Jack was nervous and excited about it all week. He is a funny boy who loves to be the center of attention as long as it is not official. Then he is a little intimidated…

The quality of the videos is terrible with the lighting, but it’s what I have.

Jack is front and center when the dance starts.

He moves to the middle back for a while, but hard to see.

At about 1:00 he comes back to the front (just to the right of audience guy’s head.)

The “dad’s dance” was a surprise for Jack from Eric (though sadly, Jack only gets to see it via video since he was backstage.) He was thrilled anyway.

Eric walks on from the right at :45. You can see him much better at 1:15 (second from the right) for about 15 seconds. He skips (yes, I said skips) back on at 2:04 in the purple mask.

Christmas Card 2013

(to the tune of "We Three Kings")

We three sing of twenty-thirteen

telling you how our year has been

swimmin', loungin',

Whistler mountain

that was our summer scene

 

Oh, move to Bellevue, house just right

French school days and "U-dub" nights

life indeed's quick-

ly proceeding

proven by the boys' great heights!

 

Owen's king of clever disguise

football, soccer, Lego surprise

third grade member

jacket? Never!

hoodies are all he likes...

 

"O" likes to wonder, likes to write

loves for things to be "just right"

list composing,

fact disclosing,

off the ramp, his bike takes flight!

 

Jack is working hard in first grade

cursive script and poems are his faves

math equation,

art invasion!

loving the friends he's made

oh, missing 4 teeth; hard to bite

skateboard fun and turtle fight!

great joke timing,

clever rhyming

cooking up our meal tonight.

 

We've worked hard on our Christmas rhyme

to bring some joy to your Christmas time

We hope you've liked

how we've described

a little bit of our lives!

*****

Merry Christmas

All our love!

Julie, Owen, and Jack

Whistler

trapeze

Canoeing and watching the sea planes.

Owen on the sea-saw.

luge

favorite park

crazy trampolines

Math Monkeys

Last night the boys wanted graham crackers.  There was one and a half left in the package.

Mama: Owen, if you can tell me how much of one and a half graham crackers you each get, then you can share them.

Jack (who finds great thrill in beating Owen to the punch-line of a math problem): One-half and one-fourth!

Owen: I was going to say that!

Mama: Owen, do you know how to say that in fourths?

Owen(who finds great thrill in knowing concepts that are over Jack’s head): I do, but I want to say that we get 75% of one cracker.

New Hair

I have flat-ironed my hair nearly every day for I don’t know how many years…  and before that I dried it to make it go straight.

I recently got my hair cut and my hair dresser suggested sometimes wearing my hair wavy – since it is naturally that way and I was worrying about the damage that might be caused by the flat iron.

I have tried this wavy thing one or two times, and was going this route this morning but got distracted with lunch preparation, shoe locations, and other exciting morning routines.  By the time I remembered my hair, it had moved from wavy to frizzy…

I fixed it the best I could, but it was iffy.  Still, I didn’t have time to dry and flat-iron it – I had to get the boys to school and then was out all day.

Of course, it is the day that you think your hair looks bad that you run into all kinds of people that you don’t normally see… at least 7 different people that I haven’t seen in weeks, in my case.  Oh boy.

I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t that bad.  But then Owen dropped the bomb.  I was discussing my hair with Nana and Dock at dinner (you know, to let them know that I knew that it looked bad so they didn’t go around thinking that I thought it looked good, and then they would have the dilemma of wondering if they should tell me it wasn’t a good look, or think I have terrible taste in hair…)  ANYWAY…Owen mentioned that his classmates had seen my hair and asked him about it.  (what are 7-year-old boys discussing my hair for?!?)   Owen shrugged his shoulders: “I just said, ‘I don’t know, I guess she forgot to brush it.’”

nice

a few photos

Sunday’s Game – Owen was at a birthday party, but Jack and the team won!   (Jack’s in the middle – getting ready to hike the ball.)

Cousins at “Owen’s Beach” at Point Defiance

Serious tree-climbing

and relaxing…

Oh my, can you guess who this is in the middle?

None other than the (not so) baby Grady!

Flag Football

I know nothing about football.  I have never really been concerned about this before, but today I felt a little worried.  The meet and greet for the boys’ team was today.  And I found that I had a lot to learn.  First, they have a racket going on with their photos.  Write your credit card on the line…

Second, I had no idea how a mouth-guard goes in.  “Does this go on the top or bottom teeth?”  I asked.  A kid pulled his hearing aid off his ear, and said, “Like this.”  Then he put his hearing aid in his mouth.  Only it wasn’t a hearing aid; it was his mouth-guard.  Um, is that where you are supposed to store it when it isn’t in your mouth?  It does seem better than on the ground where Jack kept his.  Yummy.

Third, some people take sports (for 6 and 7 year olds) really really seriously… Eric nudged me, “They are talking about adding practice days, you should be involved.  That’s all you.”   I furrowed my brows.  Weren’t practices and games on Sundays? 

“All of the other teams have met 4 or 5 times already!  We need a mid-week practice!” one of the parents insisted.

Why did this sound so much like, “Mom, all the other kids are doing it!”?  But, apparently we are now practicing on Tuesday afternoons too.  There goes my one free day…

Fourth, I don’t actually know any of the rules so that I can practice at home.

Owen and Jack LOVED the short practice and scrimmage that they had today.  I guess the team even won their practice game.  They had tons of smiles, and were really involved and chattered all the way home.  When we got home they ran outside to practice right away. 

Jack had been worried because he had been transferred from his age team to Owen’s because there weren’t enough kids for the younger league.  But Jack seemed to keep up just fine, and the coach couldn’t tell which boys was older…

Jack – Number 19

Owen – Number 12 (in the middle of the photo)

Jack’s Camping List

S’mores, tent, food, hotdogs, ketchup, mustard, root beer, buns, eggs and bacon.

Owen’s New Moves

I figured there would be a lot of playing at gymnastics today since the state meet was last weekend, but Owen was as determined as ever.  The door to the gym was still locked, and Owen told his coach he wanted to do a flip (he called it the proper name…)

Owen landed his flips on the double-mini today for the first time.  His smile was so so big.

He also got closer to the moves for his backflip.  Here is one with help from his coach. (Don’t mind me helping Jack spell in the background.)

T&T 3rd Meet and the State Competition

At his third meet, Owen beat his own score again in double-mini. 

It cracks me up when Owen salutes the judges because he looks like he’s in the ranks of the Hitler youth…

Waiting to be signaled by the judges to begin.

Waiting for the awards…

Owen got a special “judges’ award” that he was very proud of. 

_______

The state final was this weekend.  It was a bigger competition and Owen was waiting around at least two hours before it was his turn.  Owen seemed a little off the whole time.  Still, he improved his score on double-mini once again, which was great.

My camera wasn’t working during his trampoline, so I didn’t get any photos.  He must have touched outside the lines or something during the event because his score was only about half of his other scores at other meets.  Still, he was happy to have participated and is proud of where he is. 

Trampoline and Tumbling Competitions

Owen was markedly nervous during his first meet in January, but it seemed to help with his focus.  To me, his trampoline routine was one of his best.  He got first place in both of his events.

 

These are his coaches. 

When Owen first saw his uniform, he asked his coach, “You know I’m not a girl, right?”

The routines are fixed, and all participants must do the prescribed routine.

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March Meet - Owen was much less nervous at his second competition.  He got a 2nd and 3rd place medal, though his individual scores went up in each event.  That was hard for him to understand, but he liked that he had medals of each color…

Easter Camping

With the promise of a sunny weekend, I decided that a camping trip would be fun.  Bobby had planted the idea of it, and since the boys had no school on Friday because of conferences, we could go in the early afternoon.  

We planned to camp at Deception Pass like we did in October, but the people at the gate laughed when I asked if there was as spot – totally booked up!

Luckily there were a few spots further south at Fort Ebey, which ended up to be a beautiful place!

It was foggy when I took pictures, but when the fog cleared, you could see all of the islands and the sound.

We saw a river otter, a snake, all kinds of birds and creepy-crawlies, and this little guy who found peanut butter so irresistible, that when I tried to scare him from the table, he just took the knife with him…

On Saturday we found a sunny quiet spot.  We used my handy emergency blanket as a picnic blanket – perfect!  I read for hours and the boys played in the woods finding new creatures and an abandoned camp chair which Owen lovingly cleaned off and cherished like a bird with a broken wing. 

Later, Uncle Bobby let Owen and Jack each help with the fire.  Their excitement over using matches is unparalleled with any boyhood adventure thus far.  Each used up an entire box of matches after the fire was already going strong.  Owen also used the axe and declared himself “much stronger than you, Mama!”

Jack was on a reading and math frenzy.  He stopped to read every sign and when one sign read “Campsites 33-50” he read “33-60” and laughed saying that his “brain made him say 60 because 3 and 3 is 6.”  I love that he plays with numbers like Owen does.  Afterwards he wanted me to quiz him on numbers.  I did for awhile and was impressed when he figured that we will have walked 8 miles at the end of the day since we walked  to the beach and back twice and it was two miles each way.  When I told him that the walk was actually a mile and a quarter, he was quiet for a bit, and then said, “Oh, then we walked five miles.”

By the end of three days, we were all filthy and happy and full of hot chocolate, hot-dogs and sunshine.  Owen took home his newfound chair and lots of dirt in his toes (which he insisted be included in my blog along with a photo – sorry)

Jack brought home his new Easter ball, about 87 splinters in his hands from falling directly on a dried-up dead “pricker” bush, a tick, and a spider in his bag. I would have preferred he stuck with the ball, but what’s a mom to do? 

(If you must know, she slowly removes splinters with magnifying glasses and pins and Power Ranger videos for a distraction – over a three day period; uses tweezers on the tick and obsesses about Lyme disease for several days; and removes all of the clothing from the bag with the vacuum one at at time terrified that the spider will suddenly attack – um, yes it was alive and a darned fast runner, and is now no longer with us.)

Soccer Boys