'08 Swim & Dive Team

Last night was the end of season banquet for Ryker's high school swim team. It was casual, and held in the "commons" area of the school. A pot luck pasta feed, similar to the pasta feeds put on for the team the night before big meets. Keeps it simple!

We are so fortunate that one of the parents has amazing camera equipment and takes lots of photos at every meet! It's so hard to get good shots in the indoor pool facilities with the typical cameras most of us have. There was a slide show with photos of each team member, as well as group shots, etc., played on a big screen during the event last night. The 3 team captains presented recognition awards to each team mate, plus at the end they announced the 3 new captians for next year, as I believe it's always seniors and thus they are all graduating. We're proud of Ryker for earning a varsity letter in his freshman year!

New Pergola!!

2 years ago, we considered adding a new room to the back of our house, off the kitchen where the sliding doors are. Well, that never happened even though we got architectural drawings and everything!

We decided this winter to enhance our yard a bit, and modify the hard scape design. No, a pool is just way too expensive, and some of the landscape designers' plans were also way too expensive with elaborate stone patios, built-in custom fire pits, etc., etc..

We decided to baby-step it and just add onto the concrete of the "small" patio off the kitchen, tying it into the curvy design of the "large" patio over in the better part of the yard, and to add some structure off the kitchen part of the house.

We are excited about the bench swing our contractor hand built. It's amazing! We designed the right side of the pergola to extend an additional 6' so it could accomodate the swing. When sitting in the swing, you get the best perspective of the rest of our yard, as your back is to the small end of the yard. There is really neat lighting built into the beams at the top, and at night there is a soft glow out there.

Now, there is a new concrete pad around the corner, so the BBQ is out of the way, and that side yard (where the dogs do their business) is much more tidy!

Still in "progress" on the repair of the hardwood floors in the kitchen. The damage came at the start of the pergola/concrete project when one of the workers pulled the hose bib off the side of the house and the pipes in the pantry wall broke, flooding the kitchen and sadly ruining some large sections of the kitchen floor. Hopefully by early April that will all be fixed and behind us.

Far too long!

Time to update!

1st week of trying to sell this furniture was a BUST! Actually had someone attempt to scam me with the "cashier's check" fraud trick! Okay, re-posted it today, dropped the price and hope to sell.This is my "Miska" style painting. I took a class from the artist known as "Miska" (http://www.miska.com/) with a group of girlfriends. We each either copied one of her paintings exactly, or modified one of them (which is what I did) and 5 sessions later, this is what I have. One final touch still to go (outlining the circle/dots on the cheeks) but otherwise, it's time to varnish and frame! I am actually planning to hang this up in our house. I know it's a bit "modern/abstract" for some people's taste, but I had a blast painting it, and it represents my 3 kids, so it's special to me.

This is a piece I did for my mixed media class - it's an acrylic sheet, all done with acrylic paints. It's sheer, if you hold it up to a window it's sort of like stained glass. If you can't tell, it's abstract trees.
Marina is right of center - this is 7 of the 8 girls on her Jazz team this year. (Bailey is backstage somewhere?) They are all 13-14. The routine is to the Depeche Mode song: "Personal Jesus". Those of you who will be able to come to their recitals either 3/22 or 5/31 will likely enjoy it a lot!

David had to drive up to Vancouver BC this evening, he has a board meeting in the a.m. and we hope he'll get back late tomorrow pm, or during the day on Tuesday. Because he just doesn't know yet, we celebrated Jzo's 12th b-day today. He got a very cool miniDV camcorder, and has already starting practicing his videographer techniques.

Ryker bought himself the newly released (midnight as the calendar turned 3/9) Nintendo Wii, SuperSmash Bros "BRAWL" game. So, since dinner, he has been playing that like a mad man, his cell phone keeps beeping with calls from all his buddies who also got it, and they are all playing it. I put a 9:30 cut-off time out there, think of me in 20 minutes, as it won't be pretty getting all 3 kids to wind down for school tomorrow!

New Art Lessons

I'm still teaching classes at Museo Art. I teach 2 days a week this semester, and have 2 classes each of those days. All my students are adults. I'm having a great time!

This is a new lesson for today's "Drawing Foundations" class - it's a graphite (pencil) drawing of a grape. The lesson is on creating smooth surfaces, shading and shadows.

This is a lesson for my "Mixed Media" class. It's a pen & ink drawing we started last week, and then we will mix in water soluable colored pencils and a bit of water at the end to turn the color to a 'painted' effect.

This is a watercolor painting lesson we did in my "Painting" class. I don't love it, but it was a good lesson, and the students enjoyed it, getting fairly decent results.

Now in the painting class, we have just started a cafe/street scene which we are doing on canvas board, beginning with watercolor (as seen here) and we will add acrylic paints as we develop the detail and add texture, interest and focal points. We're having fun with this one!

"All for Believing"

I think the name of the song the Lyrical team is dancing to is "All for Believing"... I can't remember.. by the end of the season, the title and the songs will be engraved into our brains! The Lyrical team's ivory costumes weren't sparkly enough apparently - so the choreographer had each of us moms hand glue swarosky crystals (green) to the costume before the 1st competition. That took a couple hours!
This week, we get the lovely task of adding on another batch of crystals in a new color called "jonquil". I got selected to design the sample so the other 6 moms can see the newly added patterns. (yippee!) I've laid these out, but haven't glued any on yet.. that will be my project of the week. We have 10 days till the next competition.

Prodigy 2008

Bailey & Marina

We were testing make-up designs for the "Personal Jesus" Jazz routine that their team is doing this season. The version on Marina's left side won out. I hope to post a photo after the next competition of the whole 'look' - it's quite dramatic!

This is the "Hip Hop" team
This is the "Lyrical" team.
These are the backsides of some of the Jazz team dancers as they ran off to perform at the last competition. I think that is Marina's face peaking above the blond girl in the front-right. This routine is to a mix of bands doing the "Personal Jesus" song that Depeche Mode made famous during the '80's. It's a crowd favorite!

The girls are very excited their routine got selected to perform at the "Pulse" convention next month in Sacramento, CA. Their's is the only routine from our studio that will perform!

Speedy Good Times

This weekend (4 days) we had Grandpa Dick (David's dad) and cousin Michael (David's sister's son) fly up to visit us. Michael is 19 1/2 and lives in CA. Grandpa is just a tiny bit older than that (so he says) and he & his wife Miriam live in Las Vegas.

Here are a few photos from activities we did this weekend.

There was a LOT of video game playing! Wii & xBox galore!

Friday after school we went to Ryker's high school swim meet. (Marina, Michael, David & Gpa Dick)

Friday night Marina went out with good friends to her first real rock concert at a club in downtown Seattle. She got to see "The Bravery", and got home really late, but with a cool new t-shirt... this photo was taken before she left. She made sure she got lots of quality time with Grandpa, AND kept her social calendar active!

Sat. a.m. we went to Jordan's basketball game.

Sunday, we went to the "K1 Speed" indoor raceway. The 6 of them all raced, 16 laps around the wild track. David was thrilled to come in 1st with the fastest individual lap time. He will razz his nephew about losing by .02 seconds for the rest of their lives, I'm sure!