Brandon’s first foray into baseball had its ups and downs. The first week of camp, he thought it was really fun. This week, they had different coaches… much more intense coaches. For the most part, camp has been really fun and not at all the serious baseball Christian just finished with the Padres.
Here are the boys ready for their first day of camp for the summer:
And is this ready position?
How about this?
One more pic of the baseball boys:
Look out for a flurry of posts to follow… we’ve had a busy summer already!
The kids started off the summer with a week of baseball camp. Thankfully, Brandon really enjoyed that first week of camp. Brandon’s not nearly as thrilled with baseball this week, but he’ll live.
The following week, the only camp available was a basketball camp for kids ages 7+. Brandon got to go to work with Bill every day for a week! Christian loved basketball, and when Bill went to watch he described Christian as the next Gary Payton.
That week was incredibly hectic as we tried to wrap things up for our Hawaii trip. We fit in a few fireworks on the 3rd, packed, and at the last minute realized we didn’t have Alyson’s birth certificate. Thankfully no one asked us for one, but we’ll be ordering multiple copies shortly.
Lots of Hawaii posts to follow, as well as pictures from camps!
I don’t know where the last nine years went. I can’t believe Christian is nine already. He’s a wonderful, generous boy who is great at making friends. He loves paper airplanes, reading comic-type books, and vegging in front of the TV.
A quick recap of the past year:
And the year to come:
We’re so proud of the loving, smart, engaging boy you are, Christian. We love you!
So I didn’t post about week 3 of soccer. There’s a reason for that. Alyson went for pictures and presumably did well there, although there were only 4 kids from her team in the team picture. Then she went to her game. Except it was 80 degrees at 10 in the morning and she was not a happy little girl. She was hot, she was whiny, she really wanted to play on the playground, and she absolutely positively did not want to play soccer. She screamed for 40 minutes. Needless to say, I have no pictures to share with you.Brandon had another great game, but I wasn’t there. I was at home with grumpy child.
Saturday evening we had a blast at the Mariners vs Padres game at Safeco Field. Most of Christian’s team and their families went, so we had a great big section in the nose-bleed seats (should’ve trained for weeks for all of the stairs to climb – especially up and down and up and down with Alyson to go potty). It was a Little League day, so the boys wore their uniforms and got to parade around the field before the game. It was a really hot evening (and expensive – one kid gets ice cream and suddenly they ALL want some $5 ice cream), but it was great fun. The boys were all riled up and really enjoyed the game. At the end, they were all standing together, waving their shirts in the air, cheering for the Mariners. What fun!
Sunday, Brandon wasn’t feeling great, and said he had a headache. In hindsight, he had a fever, but with the warm weather I didn’t realize it. At church, we ended the Sunday School year, and Christian was presented with a new bible (a third grade tradition). Christian had a baseball game in the afternoon, which Bill blogged. Monday, Brandon was quite obviously not well, with a fever of 102.5. He slept most of the day. Tuesday, he wasn’t any better, and I got hit with a chest cold. Wednesday, when he still wasn’t better, Bill got him to the doctor to find out he has strep throat. Poor kid… if he’d ever mentioned his throat hurt, we would have had him in sooner! We’ve both taken it easy the rest of this week.Today, Bill and the boys took the van in to have the tires replaced. We even had a rebate for the tires. Turns out we won’t need it. The van was all ready to go, tires replaced, when they managed to break our van. At first they said it was the brake line. Fluid was leaking all over. The manager got Bill and the poor starving boys hooked up with a rental car. Turns out, it’s not the brake line, it’s a line for the rear heating system, and they don’t have the parts for it. So we’re without our van for potentially a WEEK! What are we driving instead? A pretty 2008 silver Toyota Highlander.
Our four new tires? Free.
Our van to be fixed as good as new? Free.
Shiny new Highlander to drive for a week? Free.
And an extremely apologetic manager AND corporate staff to go with all of that free stuff.I think Discount Tire would like to keep our business. I’ll try to get some pics up later. Let’s hope for a quieter week next week!
Christian qualified for the state chess tournament a few months ago and the day has arrived!
Yesterday, we left right after school and arrived at Overlake Christian Church around 3:30. Wow, I had no idea just how big this place was, and there aren’t any words I can find to convey the sheer size of the building. It looks big but not formidable from the outside, but once inside you find it takes a long time to walk all of the big open hallways and check out all of the rooms. Their small chapel is bigger than our church’s sanctuary.
Christian and his friend Nik competed in a Bughouse tournament last night, which ran from 5 until 7:30 or so. The boys had fun but got creamed in 7 of 8 games. Bughouse is a fun chess-variation where you play with a partner and when you take a piece from your opponent, you hand it to your partner who can then use the piece in their game. On the bright side, the boys challenged us parents to a game or three and creamed us every time.
Christian also played me a variation of chess called Monster Chess… where I was white and played normally, he was black and had only his king and four pawns… the catch is, he gets two moves to every one of mine. Try wrapping your head around that 🙂
We enjoyed our hotel room. We were pleasantly surprised to have a room with a balcony. Our hotel was the Marriott at Redmond Towne Center, which was great. We walked across the street to Cold Stone Creamery and enjoyed our waffle bowls of ice cream on our balcony. I’m so grateful the weather finally felt like spring enough to enjoy being outside.
I didn’t sleep much, but Christian seems to have slept ok. At 1:20 am he managed to roll over and push a button on the alarm clock and the radio was blaring. I finally got the sound turned off, and Christian has no recollection of this at all. We were awakened by a little bit of sunlight streaming in the room this morning, around 6, well ahead of the 6:45 wakeup call we had scheduled.
A wonderful breakfast buffet was included in our stay. Christian had rice krispies, a cinnamon roll, yogurt, french toast, an orange juice and a hot chocolate.
The tournament has been fun. There are 12 kids from Seaview here, and our team has a great sunny corner to hang out. So far Christian has had 2 losses, and they’re running behind schedule. Three more rounds to go. I’m going to see if I can get more pictures 🙂
UPDATE: Round three, Christian had a loss. Then he convinced me he needed coffee. Round four, he had a draw, which was great. Round five he came back saying he won. Then he fessed up that his opponent didn’t show up, so it counted as a win 🙂
Next year state is in Spokane. I hope gas prices come down in the next year!
We’re finally back to an allowance system, and with that the kids have a little money to donate to a charity. I ran across this cause yesterday and all three kids have agreed that this is what the first $10 will be going to:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci3nK0R0rk0]
Christian and Brandon attended the Spring Fling chess tournament on Saturday and had a great day. Brandon finally got to compete in a Kindergarten division. In a tournament of 400 kids, 50 were Kindergarteners. I didn’t get any good pictures of Christian at the tournament, but here is Brandon in Round 2, deep in thought…
And with his participant trophy (all Kindergarteners get trophies at tournaments):
Brandon finally got his first tournament win, along with 2 draws! Not enough to qualify for state, but a fantastic improvement. Christian ended the day with two wins and a draw. We’re looking forward to one more tournament before state.
On a side note, Christian’s baseball schedule has been posted, and Bill will keep baseball updates on his blog.
Christmas was a wonderful, lengthy event for us again this year. It started with our church’s Christmas program. Christian had an important split-role this year. He was one of the cousins as well as one of the shepherds. He had a lot more lines and movement to memorize this year, and he did great! Brandon did great as a shepherd this year as well. He’s the BEST at speaking loudly into the microphone. Alyson chose not to say any lines this year (neither did her buddy Madeline), but she was a beautiful angel.
Next we had Christmas dinner (a few days early) with Bill’s side of the family. The kids’ gifts from Grandma were the biggest hits. The boys each got a Rip-Stick (this is a crazy skateboard-like contraption that only has two wheels and probably says Age 10 and Up on the box, definitely requiring pads and helmets). I like this picture because this is the only way I’d ever be able to balance on the thing 🙂 Christian’s starting to get the hang of his now.
Grandma found Alyson this fantastic Dora jacket – she LOVES it.
Next in our Christmas tradition was Bake Day. We always enjoy the opportunity to spend more time with our Arlington family, and it’s a great warm-up to Christmas Eve. Alyson was a great sprinkler this year. She jumped up, ran over, and sprinkled cookies with great enthusiasm every time a pan was ready to sprinkle. The boys helped make peanut-butter balls (and by the end, Alyson had them making squares and pyramids instead of the boring balls). Here are the silly kids taking a break from all of the cookie-making.
Christmas Eve was next, where the kids were surprised with a fooz ball, pool, air hockey, table tennis, etc etc etc table that they have been playing nearly nonstop since we got it home! Alyson also got a really cute white soft fuzzy bear that lights up. It’s been a great nightlight for her. We made it to the 11pm candlelight service at church, and all three kids managed to stay awake. This is the first year Brandon was awake to hold a candle, and I think he enjoyed it.
Bill and I were up L-A-T-E getting the last Christmas morning surprises ready to go. We now have a band in our house! Here is the drummer:
And the guitarist and vocalist:
And here is the tired princess after a busy few days of Christmas.
We really enjoyed having Mom join us for Christmas this year. I think my favorite gift was my most surprising. Brandon chose to buy me the Mac game Lego Star Wars 🙂 I’m sure I missed some important highlights – feel free to comment on anything I missed. It was such a nice Christmas. I’m actually sad it’s over, but I’m very busy getting ready for another tax season.
Happy New Year to all!
Brandon had his first chess tournament today, at Terrace Park K-8 school. Unfortunately, there were only 3 Kindergarteners registered, so they had to play up in the 1-3 (U800) division. That was tough, and Brandon did his best. He came away with 4 losses and a bye (which gave him 1 point for the day). He seemed to have a great time, and now he really wants to win some games and qualify for state. I think he’s getting addicted. He got a trophy for attending, as did the other 2 Kindergarteners.
Speaking of chess-addicts, our big-kid Christian got his wish and qualified for state today (3 wins in one tournament qualifies you for the state tournament in April). He lost to two tough opponents (rated 796 and 599), but he won over three opponents that were new to tournaments. He was SO excited. His friend Jordan qualified today too, and several other Seaview kids have already qualified, so they’ll have a good-sized team. Christian received a medal for earning 3 points today.
Speaking of teams, the Seaview grades 1-3 team won 1st place today, too, so they have another nice big trophy to display in the library.
It was a great competition, and I’m very proud of both of the boys. I’ll put up a picture or two if I can get them off of my phone.
Saturday, we participated in the Seattle Kids’ Marathon. This was a really great event. The kids were challenged to walk/run 25 miles, read 13 books, and do 13 do-rights (good deeds), in the weeks prior to the final marathon.
Saturday, we reported to Memorial Stadium beneath the Space Needle, got our numbers, ran around a little, and settled in to watch entertainment by Radio Disney until it was time for the walk to start.
Christian was really excited to be doing another walk.
Brandon was not so excited.
We finished the last 1.2 miles in about 20 minutes. The longest part of the morning was standing in line forever to get the kids’ shirts and goody-bags. They thought it was fun to go around to the vendor booths and get milk, yogurt, bananas, and other food. They were even happier when I promised a trip to the top of the space needle. I hadn’t been up in YEARS.
We had lunch at the observation deck, but none of my pictures picked up the view of Seattle. 🙁
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