Baseball!

WOW, what a week

The week started off bad with Caitlynn getting over the nasty stomach virus that blew through our house. Wednesday her class presented the Fairy Tale Garden. The kids learned about fairy tales and each wrote one of their own. I helped Ms. Skinner to make their stories into books, thank goodness there's only 18 kids in the class. Then Wednesday the class put on a few plays for the parents which were all parodies of classic fairy tales like Rafunzel. They were absolutely hysterical! The whole classroom was decorated with leaves, vines and garden lights and there was tons of food all with cute fairytale names like 3 pigs in a blanket and tooth fairy pudding.

Thursday was Dave and Elijah putting the finishing touches on his Lightning McQueen car for the Cub Scout pinewood derby Friday night. They did a really great job on the car. Friday was the races and it was insane. Picture about 50 boys 1st-4th grade in one room excited about racing their cars, talk about LOUD! Elijah was so happy, each car raced 4 times, his came in 1st twice, 2nd one and 3rd once, never last place. Go Elijah and Dad!

Saturday Caitlynn had a baseball game followed by a Birthday to attend. The whole team showed up at the Agat field ready to play, the kids were warming up, parent volunteers were ready to help out, everything was under control until we realized that there was no team showing up to play us. The game was supposed to start at 11am, at 11:10 the baseball commissioner shows up and tells us the game has been changed to Merizo field at the south end of the island, nothing like trying to coral the kids back into the car so we could haul tail to get there as fast a possible. I felt bad for the other team that had to wait on us to get there that whole time, it wasn't their fault. Unfortunately the communication has been terrible this baseball season, fields and times change every week and no one find out til the last minute. Since we started the game late and were farther away we got to Sabrina's birthday party much late than expected, but the kids still enjoyed it. We left the house at 10am that morning and didn't get home til just after 5pm. Needless to say I was NOT in the mood to cook dinner, we let Elijah pick where we'd go to dinner and he chose Pizza Hut, nice and close and casual.

Yesterday was another insane day. We lest the house for church at 8:30 am, everything was great at church, nothing out of the ordinary. Then we had to meet Sabrina's mom to drop off Caitlynn because they invited her to go to Tarza with them. After that we were off to Hannah & Elijah's game. We found out Saturday night that it had been changes to the Yona field, fantastic that's not far from church at all, plenty of time to get changed, grab a bite to eat and head over right? Well it would've been if I hadn't forgotten their cleats! So we had to rush home, grad the cleats, something to eat and rush back up to the field. The game started at 1pm and we literally were pulling into the parking lot at 12:59, nothing like last minute. Even better almost no one showed up for the game if Hannah & Elijah hadn't made it we would've had to forfeit because there weren't enough players. They played really well, Hannah was on 3rd and Elijah at short stop. He had about 50% of the balls get hit to him, so he didn't have time to get bored. When we got home I started a layout and threw together a homemade chicken noodle soup while we waited for Caitlynn to get home.

The layout I was working on was for the Scrap Street Stars contest at www.scrapstreet.com, my alltime favorite message board, I think it's the only one I've ever been a member of for almost 2 years. The challenge was to scrap you IT. Can you guess what my IT was? What totally consumes my life these days? Did you say Baseball? How did you guess? It's done and posted on the site, I'll upload it here when I get a chance along with the photos from the last week.

Here's to a much calmer week this week, I can dream right?

Hannah's a busy bee

I have been such a bad blogger, between baseball and all the other activities we've had going on, I just haven't had time.

The children at our school had the most awesome experience a few weeks back. Petey and Corey from the Missoula Children came to our school for a week. Every class pre-k through 8th grade had a theater workshop, anything from drama to theater makeup. But the biggest part of their visit was the play they would put on with 60 of our students. Monday afternoon right after school anyone who was interested gathered in the cafeteria for auditions. I know what you're thinking, auditions, scary right? Wrong! Not these auditions. All the children lined up around the cafeteria in height order, then they all went around and said their name and age. After that they went around and said it again, but in an excited voice, and this went on and on. Throughout the process they were moving the kids into different order based on what they saw. Then they sat down all the K-2nd graders, while the older kids continued their auditions. By this point it was pretty clear which kids were going to get the parts, because they were being asked to do additional things. Once they were done with the big kids they came back to the little ones. Their audition was even more of a game, when she said 1 they would throw their hands in the air and say tada. 2 was something like jump, 3 spin around, 4 blow kisses, 5 bow etc. Lucky for Hannah & Elijah, this was very similar to a drill they did in soccer this past season so they were very good at it. When that was done Petey and Corey went around and got the names and numbers of all the children that they chose for parts, the whole process took almost 2 hours. Hannah was among the lucky and got the part of a bee, the only part the K-2nd graders could get. Sadly for Caitlynn and Elijah they were not chosen, it didn't bother Elijah in the least bit, I was actually surprised that he tried out at all. Caitlynn on the other hand was heart broken, she had her heart set on being in the play and had a good cry when she wasn't picked. But she got over it quickly, since she's in 2 other plays in her class, another one in her gifted class and 1 the whole 3rd grade is putting on.

After a short break, the children with the main roles started rehearsal for another 2 hours. Lucky for Hannah being a bee only required two afternoons of rehearsal so she could come home. It had been a long emotional couple of hours and we all needed a bit of down time.

The most amazing part of all this is that in 20 hours of rehearsal time, the 60 kids that were chosen to participate, learned their lines, songs and moves; and were ready to perform it for all of us. That Friday evening and Saturday afternoon we were treated to an amazing performance of Rumpelstiltskin

Joy

I did it!

I finally took some photos in manual mode on my camera, I'm so proud of myself! After what seemed like forever, two weeks, the book I ordered Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson arrived this week and I haven't been able to put it down! I still need a ton of work of course, but to be able to make my own settings and have the picture not turnout black was a total improvement for me. Thursday I went to Plaza de Espana and played around a bit. Here's a couple of photos I took, keep in mind I wasn't too worried about composure, just exposure.

Photos from photography Thursday

Unfortunately when I went out a few weeks ago my mirror and sensor were dirty, so most of my shots were hopeless. In the water shot it actually made a pretty cool smudgy background, not that I'd reccommend getting your sensor dirty on purpose! The sky in the flag shot is awful, but I like the effect the sun had on the flag.

Brand New Life

here's the calendar page I made with my bird photo.

photography thursday

So I went out last thursday and planned to take pictures of Caitlynn as catcher during her baseball practice. Instead she told me about the bird nest she'd found the day before during Hannah & Elijah's practice. Of course the momma bird was not happy having me around so I got a few shots as quickly as I could and left them alone.

That's it!

I've said for quite a while now that I want to go to photography school and be a professional photographer. Going to school right now is out of the question for two reasons, there's no school here on Guam and with Dave going to school and working to be a diving instructor there just isn't time right now. But, that doesn't mean I can't get a few books and really start practicing in the mean time. There are hundreds of photo opportunities here just waiting for me, so I'm going to take them. I plan to spend one morning a week just on photography. Wish me luck!

No water?

We were supposed to have no water this weekend, and it's now Sunday and we haven't lost it. Definitely no complaints here, I'm just very surprised. Whether or not we lost our water depended if everyone followed the conservation standards set or not. I've seen them be totally ignored in the past, so I expected to lose water by yesterday afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised to wake up and find we still had water this morning. Even if we lose it now it won't last long.

On meeting Akela

Sorry about cutting off the last line of journaling, I was so excited about the scanner working on the first try I didn't even notice. These colors are definitely not the norm for me, but they're the Tiger Cub colors, and it helps that they go together so well. Elijah worked really hard learning the Cub Scout Promise and other things to earn this patch, we're soooo proud of him!

Tiger Cub Hike

This is the first of many layouts I'll be doing about our hike at Ratidian on January 20th.

I really liked this KI memories paper, and we never really have a fall here, so I thought it would work for our hike in the woods. The layout isn't really all crooked like it looks, but my scanner has been tempermental and I finally got it to work after fighting with it for 2 days, I wasn't going to chance trying to get another scan.

learning to skate

I'm not happy with this one at all. I didn't want it to look like all the other skating ones I've been doing so I decided to try using 2 4x6s instead, but it's just blah to me. No focal point, blah blah. What's the saying, if it aint broke don't fix it? I should've stuck with the one large one small photo.

Rollerskate Diva

I'm noticing that I'm using less and less "stuff" on my layouts. Not sure why, just another phase I'm in I guess. I really thought with these bold papers it didn't need anything else.

By the Lanterns Glow

Sk8r Boy

It's fun to stay at the YMCA

I don't know what I thought of the YMCA's but this one here in Hong Kong is awesome. I'm sure they're not all this nice, but this one rocks! Are the rooms as nice as some of the more expensive places we could've stayed? No, but for the price it's much more than I expected. We have a view of Victoria Harbor, pool, two restaurants, a small shop and we're only 2 blocks from the Star Ferry. I would definitely recommend it to anyone traveling to Hong Kong.

Wow is all I can say about the shopping here! Every brand name you've ever heard of and thousands more can be found. Last evening we went to Harbor City and it was gigantic. It covered a few city blocks with over 700 stores. Of course the kids favorite store was Toys R Us, and they were spoiled with toys to bring back to the room to play with. Dave bought a gorgeous purple Chinese style jacket, I can't wait to get home and take photos of him in it.

Yesterday afternoon we walked through the antiques district where there were hardly any tourists. It was really nice to get out of the touristy district and see authentic Hong Kong, to see where the residents shop and how they live. While there I bought some tea (can't wait to share it with you Kerrie!) and Dave bought me a tea set like they use here., complete with slop bowl. We also found a beautiful mini screen with hand embroidered flowers and mini vases with scenes painted on them. I have o idea where these are going to go in the house, but I see hanging shelves in Dave's future.

Another great find was new glasses for Hannah & Elijah. We decided to go into the optical shop on a whim, just to see how long it would take them to get glasses for the twins. We ordered them yesterday and they'll be done this afternoon, and they cost less than $150 a pair. In Guam we pay at least $200 a pair and have to wait 6-8 weeks for the lenses to arrive on island. Plus they're getting better lenses this time, they're getting the light plastic ones that are scratch resistant, this is great because right now Elijah's lenses are about as thick as coke bottles and they're so heavy that no matter how we adjust his glasses they constantly slide down his face.

Well, looks like everyone's just about dressed and ready to start the day. Time for a good breakfast so we have energy to do some more shopping today. Today is electronics shopping, I'm looking for a pink ipod and a remote for my camera.

WOW Disney Rocks!!!!!!!!

Ok, we're a part of the Disney Vacation Club, which is basically a timeshare. We pay a certain amount every month and receive points to use for nights at disney hotels. It's always been cool, member receive discounts at parks stateside and on admission. Well here at Disney Hong Kong they took it to a whole new level! When we went to check in the woman at the front desk told us that she thought our reservation included our tickets. It was 1am when we got here, 3am Guam time, so we were a bit out of it, told her we didn't think so and she said she'd check into it. Come to findout yesterday Disney Vacation Club gave us 2 days of free tickets when we used our points to reserve a room. How cool is that? On top of that people staying at the Disney hotels here get a free days ticket for everyone that they buy, so for 4 days at the parks we only had to buy one day's tickets. And the tickets for the park here are much cheaper than stateside. We paid $1200 HK for the 5 of us which is about $150 , w usually pay at least that a day for 1 adult ticket. Off to breakfast and another day at the park!

Outside time today

We finally got a chance to replace Elijah's broken skateboard so I took the kids out for their first time with the skates and skateboard. When we got through all the tears of not being professionals right away they had fun. We made it down the path from our house to Kerrie's and back, and that was about all they could handle. Poor Hannah is going to have a bruised up tush because she kept falling on it. Caitlynn tended to fall more on her hands then anywhere else. Elijah didn't fall but once and even if he did I don't think he'd feel it, between the knee pads, elbow pads and wrist guards he was pretty well covered.

Not sure what we'll do with the rest of out Saturday, maybe lunch and a movie and just a lazy day, who knows.

All or nothing

I went from not scrapping at all for months to completing 3 projects in 2 days. This one's by no means a masterpiece, but I love the paper salon paper and think I'll be doing more brown/green combos.