The Photos

Practicing her moves and giving one of the moms some pointers.

Coach Becca

Recieving her award--only photo I got! :(

Coaches Dezi and Tracy

Nice!

Group shot

Award-alicious!

A little over a week ago the princess had her volleyball awards. There was a rousing parents vs. girls match (parents won 5-1, but then there were a lot of dads there having many inches on their daughters), followed by awards and treats. It was a lot of fun, and the princess received an award for always being able to get the job done on the court. We're very proud and looking forward to her tryouts for the high school team next fall.

The prince had his cheer awards last night. We had dinner catered from Olive Garden (there was money left in the budget after the basketball teams didn't make it to state), followed by awards. It was a nice evening and good to see many of the cheerleaders who only cheered the fall season back in the fold. The prince lettered again so now has a gold stripe to pin on that Letterman's jacket. Tryouts for next year's cheer team are coming up in a couple of weeks, and both kids are going to try out! We will keep you posted.

Sadly, Blogger doesn't want to upload my photos right now, so I will publish this and post photos later. :)

That's funny!

Man, I'm doing some serious posting today! (Trouble focusing at work. I might have AOADD--Adult Onset Attention Deficit Disorder--yeah, I made that up.)

The firemen were here today. Besides being smokin' HOT to look at, I heard this:

6th grader: Is it fun when you get to ride hanging off the side of the truck?

Hot Fireman: We don't get to hang off the side. We have to wear a seat belt just like everyone else.

6th grader: Ah, that sucks.

This reminds me of the princess...

That's some difficult reading!

Yesterday the 8th graders were given 5 novels to choose from for a novel study. Many of them chose "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain because it was something they were familiar with. Their teacher warned them that it's a rather difficult read. One of the assignments while reading is to come up with 10 words from the book that you don't know the meaning of. As one of my students was reading the book today she easily had her 10 words within the first 2 pages of the book. With sentences like this, is it any wonder:

"Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning."

Beer Man

The king is in Phoenix at Spring Training baseball. (Yes, "real" baseball started this week, but a few teams are in training through the end of the week. They like to go the last week for better odds of hot weather.) Anyway, last year both Chuck and Tracy--his traveling companions--had their photo taken with "Beer Man". This year the king has had his turn, and he couldn't be happier about it! Silly boys. By the way, while last year he sent me several photos every day, this year I've only received 3. Huh? Must be having too much fun.

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

I am giving "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins 3 stars though I sort of want to give it 4 stars. This is the first book in a young adult series, and you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about it. The movie opened this past weekend and had the 3rd highest box office opening of all time. The princess saw it this weekend. She loved the series, but her review of the movie was, "It's not as good as the book." My response, "They never are."

This is a futuristic story of a country that was once the USA and is now broken into 12 districts. Every year each district must send 1 boy and 1 girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to compete in the Hunger Games. It's a fight to the death with only one winner and is broadcast to the country in an effort to keep the citizens in line. Given that description, I would have NEVER read this book, because I don't like to read books that brutalize children. It bothers me.

However, with all the hoopla surrounding this book and working in a middle school where probably 1/2 the population has read the series, I decided to give in and suck it up. I thought the book was well written. It was a fast read. I was totally drawn in and found it easy to relate to the characters. And I couldn't put it down. It was a great story, and I will definitely read the next one in the series.

Having said all of that, you might wonder why it didn't get 4 stars. The truth is I just couldn't do it. In the end it's still a story about children being forced to kill each other (I don't like "Lord of the Rings" either), and I HATE that! So though it's an excellent book that kept my pages turning, it's only getting 3 stars because of all the carnage.

Happy Birthday, Jajuan!

Happy Birthday, Jajuan!

Have a wonderful day full of only the best things!

We love you bunches!

(And hey, what 8th grader doesn't love

being told he's loved "bunches"??)

The Adventure Begins

Tomorrow our good friend, Jeanette, sets off on a year of travel. She'll travel the globe from top to bottom (I'm not even kidding) and many points in between. She'll start out heading north though, traveling the East coast. Occasionally she'll need a "base camp", and we are excited that she's chosen our house for those times. Let the fun begin.

By the way, if you'd like to follow her, check out her blog: Girl Must Travel listed on my blog roll!

Safe travels my friend. See you in May!

For Jeanette

Just sayin'...

Fun da-middles

These are "Fun da-middles" and they are very Fun! The princess made them for us, and yes, they do taste sort of like a Twinkie. Plus, they are easier than they might appear to make. Mix batter, put 1/2 in 12 cupcake cups, poor in cream (I think it's really marshmallow Fluff), top each cup with remaining batter. Bake. Yum! You should try them.

"Explosive Eighteen" by Janet Evanovich

I gave "Explosive Eighteen" 3 stars. This the the 18th in the Stephanie Plum series. Stephanie is a bounty hunter, torn between 2 men, and surrounded by a great cast of characters. Grandma is my favorite. I was disappointed that she wasn't featured a little more in this book. I also thought the plot was a little disjointed this time. Still, if you're into this series then you'll like this one.

School Funny

Today I was playing a song for my 8th graders--Kelly Clarkson's "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stonger."

The first line of the song is: You know the bed feels warmer, sleeping here alone.

8th grade girl: How can the bed be warmer if you sleep along?

Me: She means that the relationship grew cold so him being gone is better.

8th grade boy: Or she means she turned on the electric blanket.

I am STILL laughing about that as I type this! Good times with the 8th graders.

(Gotta love an early out day--short periods, more relaxed, grades are in so no stress about missing assignments! )

Basketball Update

Sad news for those of you waiting for photos of the prince in his first coaching gig. The tournament was cancelled. Not enough participants. :( He's pretty bummed.

That's Frightening!

Last night the king and I were awakened at about midnight by the sound of sirens in our neighborhood. The king checked it out, and they were coming down our street. They went 4 houses past us. Our neighbor's shed (it's really more of a 2nd garage) appeared to be on fire. Several response teams came quickly and the fire was put out quickly. I was kind of wondering what the big deal was until I did the math. The shed is just a few feet from the 100+acres of pasture land that surround 2 sides of our sub-division. I now know why we got that snow on Monday! I'm grateful our neighbors are safe; I'm grateful for the quick response of the fire department; I'm grateful for the wet, sloppy, spring, snow storm.

Dinner is Served?

The other night the prince was hungry. I suggested he have some of the left-over pepper steak his father had made a few days earlier. He was game until he dumped the contents onto his plate before heating. It looked like this:

The king assured him that once he stirred it and heated it up, the gelatinous, corn-starchy lump would taste fine. Here's the finished product, and it did taste fine. The prince ate it all.

But not before he dropped my cell phone in the finished product taking these photos! Yuck! At least my phone still works!

Coaching?

Prince: Guess what I'm doing Saturday?
Me: What?
Prince: I'm coaching at a basketball tournament.
Me: But...you don't play basketball, or really know anything about basketball.
Prince: I know; that's why I'm the "motivational" coach. Steph (a friend who plays on the varsity girls' team) will be the technical coach.
Me: Um...cool! Is this a tournament for little kids? (Because that would almost make sense.)
Prince: Nope. It's a tournament for the freshman girls.
Me: Oh my. So where is this tournament? I'm going to need to come take photos!

Later he says to me: Steph wants to know if my mom is really going to come take photos.
Me: DUH!

By the way, Steph says she'll probably only call a couple of plays. The prince says to her, "Can I name them?"

Maybe I should talk to Steph before Saturday!

Spring Concert

The prince had his spring concert last night. (Yes, we had to leave volleyball early to get up to the high school. Thanks to Grandma for getting the princess to/from dance!) There are soooooo many kids in the music program at our school. You've gotta love that. The choir director announced that they sent 10 kids to the all-northwest music festival last week. It's unheard of for one school to send that many kids! It's a great program. The very last song featured all 5 choirs. The kids circled the auditorium so we got to listen to the song in surround-sound! It was really amazing! Now we can't wait for the Pops concert in May!

By the way, the prince is fully aware of his extreme need of a haircut. That's happening after track practice today! Best of all he says he's going SHORT!!!

Final Volleyball Game

The princess had her final volleyball game last night. It's been volleyball-o-rama for several weeks now with games 4 times a week. I sort of glad to put this sport to rest. The problem with 4 games a week is that you never get a practice to work on trouble areas. But that's the way of middle school volleyball. She had a good season and even enjoyed herself sometimes. :) She thinks she might try out for the highschool team. I think she should!

These are not my photos but stolen from the internet by someone with a better camera than I have. And I think she would like you to know that they ended the season on a high note, winning some games last night. Best of all she had 9 unanswered points again last night, as well as a set of 7 unanswered and 4 unanswered! Woot!!

I'm not even kidding!

Although it's too dark to take a photo, there is snow on the ground outside. It was really nice again yesterday and was raining when I went to bed!

"The Wrong Mother" by Sophie Hannah

Finally! A 4 star book! "The Wrong Mother" by Sophie Hannah was a great read, especially the last 100 pages. I stayed up way too late last night because I just had to finish it! It's about a woman who meets a man. A year later, she sees a photo of the man on tv, but although the name is right and details about the man's life are right, the face is wrong. His wife and daughter are dead, and this sets a chain of events in motion to figure out "who done it". My favorite kind of book! As a side line there is much talk about what it means to be the perfect mother. Hannah is a British author, and this book is set outside of London with a lot of British references and language that was sometimes confusing, but it's worth those confusing moments. I strongly recommend this book.

Spring Skiing Is The BEST

Let's GO!

Waiting for the chair lift.

Time to refuel.

You can spot the girls by Christian's pink helmet.

What a GREAT day to ski with friends. The weather was great. The snow was only slightly sticky. The girls even stayed out longer than the boys, which has NEVER happened before. Granted, they did come in for a couple of extra snack break, but I think everyone had a GREAT time.

Wrestling!

This post is a little late, but a couple of weeks ago, the boys had a wrestling tournament. They both had to lose weight to compete (I hate that about wrestling), and after a week of eggs and rice cakes, they both made weight. To celebrate, their mom took them to Red Robin. They managed to down their dinners, but let's put it this way: dinner didn't stay with them very long.

They both wrestled hard! Great job guys!

Isaiah wrestling.

In the back are his coach and his big brother, Tyson, coaching him.
Jajuan is in blue...that's not natural!
Look at his arm, under the kid in red.

Jajuan took 8th over all. WAHOO!

As you can see, Sparky didn't fare as well.

It's tough learning to lose when you're used to winning.

After the meet the boys were exhausted.

They didn't even make it to their beds.

Silly boys.

But I love how they are snuggled up next to each other

still with their wrestling pants on.

A post for Mary Beth

Yesterday was Pi day. March 14. Pi is the math symbol that equals 3.14 (though it goes on forever). In case you forgot--not MB but the rest of you--you use Pi to find the area of a circle...among other things. So the 6th grade math teacher decided that her afternoon classes (after testing) would do some Pi celebrating. She wore silly Pi signs on her shirt all day, they read a story about Pi, they sang a Pi song, they colored a Pi picture and they got to eat pizza Pi with the Pi symbol made from pepperoni! At 1:59 the principal announced "Happy Pi Day" because the next numbers in Pi are 3.14159... The kids had a great time!

But here's the best part for MB. When she called Dominoes to order the pizzas none of the employees knew what the Pi symbol looked like. She talked a Dominoes person into giving her his cell phone number so she could send him a picture of the Pi symbol. :) And we had a few jokes about maybe part of the reason they work the noon shift at Dominoes being related to their lack of math skills! Maybe!

I'm glad I have math geek friends.

Some Funnies

Just a few funnies to improve your day. Mine will be a long one so I needed this to help me along the way. I think my favorite is the last one! :) Happy Wednesday!

Dance Competition #1

Yesterday we got the first dance competition of the year out of the way. Phew! And boy was it a long day. But there were some trophies so it was okay! Our girls danced their hearts out. The princess danced her solo and 3 group numbers. One group number was a typical jazz piece. One was a musical theater number in a combined group with additional dancers to "America" from West Side Story, and one was a contemporary piece with no music but set to the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. We were unsure what the judges would think of it, and I really thought it would blow them away, but in the end it only scored about as well as the other group numbers she was in. Still it was amazing to me, and brought tears to my eyes. The next competition isn't until late April for her, and we might have company for that one, so we are excited!!

Val fixing her hair for her solo.

We love Val. She is so talented!

Below: that's a lot of hairspray!

Below that one: with Val before Pearl Harbor

"America"

She HATES her purple tutu, but she's the "good" girl in the dance!
Waiting nervously for her catagory to be announced.

"High Gold"

Check out Val's excitement for her below her!

She took 9th over-all in her catagory with lots of stiff competition.

We are very proud of her!

Pearl Harbor took 1st place in it's catagory.

Their other group dance took 3rd.

It was a good day!

Awesome shot!

Never again will I get a shot like this (you'll have to trust that it's the princess). She's on my side of net but facing me, hitting the ball backward over the net, and I even have the ball in the photo. I wish it were a little less blurry, but I'm really not complaining! One in a million for me!!

They didn't win any games tonight though I do think some of the games were closer than the score indicated. Good job ladies!

Tomorrow...we dance! Woot, woot!

Final (I Think) Cruise Post

This might be the last cruise post for awhile...maybe forever. It seems like I've now posted every photo we took. These are just a few of my favorites that didn't make it into a previous post.

The "Set Sail" party.

The king is already in full-cruise mode.

Okay, this is NOT what it looks like. I think the conversation went, "Please throw these away." Not, "Please pose with this alcohol you didn't really drink."

That's better...nothing but Coke in those glasses.

How sour is a Toxic Waste candy?

I don't know, but I'll try one too.

Don't want to miss a drop.

Also known as "Boys make me laugh."

Oh how I love to travel with these chuckleheads!