March Maddness

This month has flown by! We are getting ready to move overseas and every bit of our time is filled. Here's a few highlights!

My sweet little boy turned nine. He wanted a homemade homemade lemon cake. He enjoyed blowing out the candles and the miniature windmills with his paper party favor.


This is the man who has accomplished so much. His school is complete and we are off to bigger and better things. This night we wore our Chinese outfits to a John Tesh concert.


My boy scout without his uniform for the beginning of the Pinewood derby.


The little boys made this car and named it "Pixie dust".


Midnight lighting is what Logan named his car. He didn't win the derby but all my boys were such good sports we went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Everybody wins!

The Tech Museum

The BODY WORLDS exhibitions at The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA are first-of-their-kind exhibitions through which visitors learn about anatomy, physiology, and health by viewing real human bodies, using an extraordinary process called Plastination a groundbreaking method for specimen preservation invented by Dr. von Hagens in 1977. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of these amazing exhibits. If your interested in what we viewed, go to
http://www.bodyworlds.com.

This Gallery highlighted basic principles of fundamental science and the building blocks for technology. Each exhibit was video guided and many of them were hands on.

Entering the tech portion of the museum.

This was so cool. It is a virtual arm wrestling machine. You were able to link with people around the museum and arm wrestle other individuals. A seventh grade teacher beat one of his students. Prior to arm wrestling the student said "I'll be easy on you old man." After the teacher won he said "Who's the old man now!"
Oh, and yes Hailey beat the boy (age 13) she arm wrestled:)

It appears this may be a tight squeeze.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

There were twenty pre-school children smiling and hopping their way to the aquarium. They talked non-stop of all the animals they hoped to see.

We had a wonderful docent who helped explain life underwater and motivated the children to find things in the water tanks.

We saw Cuttlefish cuddling?

The Moray eel was smiling at the camera too.

Evan at the big tank with hundreds of underwater creatures.

Evan at the 40-foot-long touch pool, that kids can see and touch the many plants and animals that live in the kelp forest habitat, including sea stars, abalones, sea urchins, kelp crabs and more.

We went to the penguin feeding and learned how aquarists feed and care for the blackfooted penguin colony and the challenges these animals face in today's world. Also, we saw a baby penguin a few weeks old on the web cam.

Ahoy matey! Avast, on them there rocks

A terrible picture but the facinating Murre's (a bird) flight is strong and direct. They use their wings to 'swim' underwater. They are accomplished divers, reaching depths of up to 150 m and diving for up to four minutes at a time

And who would come to Monterey and miss the otters? We learned sea otters have sharp teeth for grabbing and flat teeth for chewing, they use their front paws to groom
themselves and to feel around for food, and they have “pockets” under their armpits
to store food or a favorite tool!

Basketball Season

2011 Basketball team - The Heat 7-9 year olds

Logan (#4) taking a shot

That's not a YMCA dance, it's Logan running to catch the ball.

My proud son! He was nicknamed "The Rebounder" this season.

Twain Harte Chalet

We rented a cute cabin just a few miles away from Dodge Ridge. It snowed so much, the power to several towns went out for three days. Of course, it included most of the time we were there. Thank goodness for gas stoves and wood burning fire places. We felt like we were camping. We boiled water to filled up tubs to wash dishes and bathe dirty bodies. We baked pie in the stove and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire. We kept a pot of warm wassail on the stove after our snowy adventures to keep warm. Stories were told and books were read by lantern light late in the evenings.

Dodge Ridge Resort

What an amazing weekend! It happened to drop 77 inches of snow in 72 hours during our time at Dodge Ridge. There was alot of fresh powder and the slopes were calling our names. The three little boys spent the day in ski school, since it was their first time skiing. Matt, the girls and I took our turns viewing the scenery - wither it be from the chair lifts or face planted in the snow.

Sledding the Sierra Nevada's

Spending the weekend in the Sierra Nevada mountains with the family had many lasting memories. A sledding hill was close to the cabin. Matt was the architecture and used the kids as guinea pigs. They made the sledding run and would add walls, move curves and add a ramp for the kids to fly in the air - sometimes crashing in the snow. A few snowballs were thrown...by the parents:)