Signs of Spring by Abby - 2nd Day of March

One of the class assignments for 4th grade was to walk around the neighborhood and find a few signs of Spring. Here's Abby's report. 

These look like Silver Bells!!! 

Michle , Jackie ,and Snowflake eating grass.
[chickens]

Disorderly Chicken named Hog 

Jackie and Stripe looking for food

Camillias are bright pink and blooming

Don't these look like tulips?!

So do these!!!

Abby's Snow Globe Story

Martin Luther King Jr Week Homework Assignments

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday and his I had a Dream speech, Amelia's Teacher asked her to list dream for her family - I was hoping for something brilliant and of course, she wants dragons to come alive! For the world, she dreams for "No polluting on Earth". She had a nice picture of herself. 

Amelia is doing well in school and in violin. She's doing the advanced words for the spelling tests and last week got individual and species correct. This week, the challenge word is probably measurement and healthy. 

Abby had to tell a story about a dream that she had for making the world a better place.

I'm telling you about my dream for the world. I would like to have stricter laws about hunting endangered species. I think this because in a million years we might be the only animal on the planet. I also think that trophy hunting should be illegal. Those are some of the ideas I had for making the world a better place!

in talking to her more about the topic (sometimes that's the easiest way to get anything out of her), she mentioned that the hunting she was thinking about was for the Chinese Tiger, especially. Going online to Wikipedia we found information about the South China Tiger which is dubbed Critically endangered. She says she  learned about the tigers in the Zoobooks magazine. She says that they are targeted because they are huge, elegant, beautiful creatures. The tigers are also just decimated by the lack of room, they have been impacted by losing habitat. She mentioned Quetzals as another animal that she was thinking about when she wrote her story as well. 

Okay, off to math, we're learning fractions and how to give an amount of cat food based on the weight of a cat. Fun Stuff!

HAPPY Chinese New Year - Year of the golden dragon

Abby wanted to know why people worship (or celebrate) dragons, so today we went to the Chinese Garden in downtown Portland. It is the year of the Golden Dragon which means that there is prosperity for everyone in the new year.
We are going to talk with our friend Ann Xu tomorrow to learn more about this and beforehand we decided to brainstorm some questions. Here are the questions she came up with.
How many chinese dragons are there?
Why are dragons important to people.
What do Chinese dragons eat?
What is your favorite color chinese DRAGON?

After getting back home from the Garden today, I asked her what she saw. The list includes:

a fantastic chinese dragon

people with fuzzy pants ( performers ) 

Groups of fish

lanterns of all sorts

The Chinese have a lot of great traditions and one of them was hanging riddles from the ceiling to exercise your mind.
Abby impressed us with her ability to decipher a few of them including: What building has the most stories? AND What has four legs, but never moves? Answers at the bottom.

 We ate puffy rice bars, sugar mango and the traditional Moon cakes. The flavors the kids tried were the mung beans and red beans variety and they were both very sweet! The kids also had tea; Abby had the Orange Cranberry, which was very good and Amelia had peppermint.

Halloween 2011

Could the kids be any different? Abby was a Dark Scare, a creature she made up that
was probably inspired by "Toothless" in the movie "How to Train a Dragon" and Amelia
was less original as a Ghost.

Abby's Second Grade Report Card

Okay, this is old, but I just found this and thought it would be worth saving in some way.

Here were a few excerpts from the comments on Abby's 2nd Grade Report Card from Missy Duncan.
I've enjoyed having Abby in my class this year. Abby is always willing to help out in the classroom when I need something. Although she would rather read books all day, she is starting to add more detail to her daily writing and stories. I've also noticed that Abby is paying more attention in Math. She's picked up on number strings, carrying and borrowing quite quickly.

Abby bikes and Amelia Rides Through the Streets of Delft

A bike box in Delft prioritizes bikes over right turning traffic.
In the Netherlands, right turn on red isn't allowed.

Abby and Amelia joined us on the third day of the class, which would end up 36 miles later going from Delft to the North Sea and back. It was all day trip with stops at a greenhouse control system company, a greenhouse, a central market along the way, and the beach. Leaving TU Delft (the University), we wound our way through the streets of Delft which are chaotic at times and really fascinating when you're able to wander through them. When you are on your bike, the facilities seem like a joy and you want to bring them back to the U.S. When you are on your bike beside your 8 year old, they seem too narrow, with scooters zipping by and cars that are still too close for comfort.

Since Abby is an accomplished rider, all in all they are pretty good facilities.  
On this trip to the beach we added a stowaway in the form of Amelia. Where is she in this picture you ask?
She's on a tag along rack, riding on a pillow. We saw the Dutch do this on so many occassions, we thought we would try it. It turned out it worked with some modifications. Later, we took Susan's backpack off which gave her a little more room to look around. It was also clear that we needed to slide up on the seat of the bike to make sure she wasn't leaning back, but that wasn't so difficult.

All in all, a good day and a nice way to get from the beach and back. 

National Museum by Guest Blogger Abby Koonce

First, we went to the museum. The museum had a alot of nice exhibits. We went to one separate Children's Museum within the National Museum.
At the National Museum we saw a lot of old fashioned things. When we went in the exhibit on Danish history, we saw a sailboat that was really detailed.
Then, we went into a room that was full of doll houses. The doll houses were old fashioned and very big. The pictures show the outside of the house and the inside. You had to go around the back and there was a window on the other side that let you see the inside. (The doll houses are historically significant because they were first made for the elite and royalty and over time become commonplace. They gave girls a chance to learn about their place in the home - direct translation - yikes!)

Finally, in the Children's Museum there was a big horse that you could sit on and pretend to ride.
My favorite part of the Children's Museum was the Viking ship. I got to dress up as a girl Viking and so did Amelia. There was a plastic fish tied to a piece of wood, so you could fish while on the boat. (When we got there I told the girls to go and pillage, but I think that was lost on them).

Being in the ship made me feel like a viking.


Then, we went to the midieval area and tried on some chain mail armor. The helmet was HEAVY!
(and now for a leading question:)

This was one of my favorite parts of the trip, because it gave me a chance to explore, pretend, and touch.

Gingerbread House 2010

A good start to the winter break for the girls as we wrapped up a trip to Peacock Lane, a visit to Aunt Katie's house, and a sleepover with the Farleys! In order to make sure the kids got to bed on time we tried to wear them out by taking ours to the park (the Farleys went rock climbing) and we settled for Gingerbread House decorating in the evening with the hope that all of the girls will sack out come 9 PM. The beverage on the table is Susan's really.


The girls made quick work of the gingerbread house and some of the candy even made it on as decorations.The Christmas music was playing and the kids debated their favorite song. The consensus was Jingle Bells and we were treated to a rousing rendition when they could remember the words. The four of them did a good job of putting it all together and it was fun for us to take a listen. Maybe some caroling later in the week is in order.
The girls really took pride in the decoration of the 2010 edition, but perhaps it was just the sugar rush that was helping with the smiles on their faces. Abby's favorite part of decorating was "eating the icing" Katie liked the candy best and Lucy liked the roof. Amelia enjoyed the extra halloween candy that we broke out to supplement the provided provisions. There was Dots and Smarties that were from October but does sugar really ever go bad? Lucy really got into the action and it was fun to capture them all into such a project. I don't think it took them more than 15 minutes.

Grace's Birthday and Cyclocross Nationals 2010 in Bend

We went to Bend for Grace's Birthday and it was the same weekend as the Cyclocross Nationals.
It was a wet weekend in Bend (pretty rare) and windy which made for tough conditions for the cyclists and good conditions to watch the race. A lot of mud puddles and slippery conditions.
We had a great time checking out the activity at the race grounds near the Old Mill. Abby was dressed warmly and was very curious about the bikes and the competition having been in the Kiddy Cross a few months earlier. She also had a good time running around the various sand mounds that the City uses for keeping the streets passable during the winter months. Amelia had a good time at the start until she did a face plant into a puddle and got muddy.
We got to the start of the race and managed to catch a huge pile up. Yes, those are bike tires in the air. Someone in the front of the pack took a spill and it caused chaos throughout the pack. The rider with the wheels in the air, tried to pick up some ground by sending his bike aerial and getting past some of the competition instead of having the problem of the bike getting caught up.
The conditions were very difficult and there was some pretty significant ponding that resulted in changes to the course throughout the week. I had a hard time believing that there puddles would be a good line, but many of the racers seemed to embrace it to avoid getting tangled up in the fencing, which we saw later in the action. It was a bit daunting to consider the course as we saw it, but I think it would be fun to try next year at the start of the season.

Muddy Buddy - McIver Park

Abby emerges victorious from the mud pit. Her approach to walking through as opposed to crawling through left her slightly less muddy at the finish line. She still had her share of rocks in her shoes and was looking pretty cold at the finish line. Nothing a little sports drink and a cold shower couldn't fix.

Susan and I entering the mud pit. Part of the haze was from the heat exchange between the people that had just come off the course and the serious cold they were getting into as a part of the mud pit. It was quite a shock putting your first hand down in the water. You can see Susan with an open mouth in that picture.... yeah, that's not really a good idea when your partner is splashing mud next to you!

We both sort of slowed down through the pit to appreciate the experience. I think also they stopped your time prior to entry into the pit based on a beep that we heard when you're jumping through the path into the mud pit area.

It's important to take a moment to celebrate the mud, so we did and showed the kids it wasn't so bad.
All of our cajoling didn't persuade Amelia. She chose not to do the Mini Muddy Buddy with her sister. That was okay with us since we would have had to get back into it following freezing cold visit to the "shower" area. And by shower area I mean twenty hoses connected to one spigot at two separate locations. They actually ran out of water (from the truck) and had a delay of 15 minutes until the next one showed up. Lucky for us we were just going back to Susan's parents' house.

Another after shot from the mud pit. They gave you sport drinks as you emerged which resulted in some more mud ingestion.

All said, we were 11th in our age group out of 45 co-ed teams, so we felt like we didn't fair too poorly until we learned that we were 104th overall. I am not sure how many teams that was. It took us 50:29 to complete the course, the winning team which included an Ironman Triathaloner was 40:25. Guess we need to work on that running training!

Tour de France, Delft Sunset, World Cup... is this in the Top 10 days of all time?

 
On the ride back to the hotel (from Rotterdam) after the prologue, we had a nice ride back with the sunset greeting us as we entered the city. It was a lovely end to a great day. Finished off by watching the World Cup and seeing a great goal by David Villa of Spain to advance. This day might have cracked the top 10 days of all time, which got me thinking. So you have to have the wedding day, the birth of your kids, graduation from college (especially for Dad), probably an OSU Civil War victory in there (when we beat Joey Harrington at home), visit to South Africa has to be in there, and then there's this (what a great day). It would have been better with the kids and more friends & family to enjoy it with, no doubt.

LGRAB Summer Games, Part II: Learning Experiences

There's this great contest on a blog that I have read (after reading Portlandize.com) and so I am blogging about a blog. What's this world coming to?

Anyhow, here are the tasks for this session:

June 7-June 27: Learning Experiences
Perform a maintenance task — big or small!
Decorate your bike
Read a book about cycling
Carry a load on your bike — groceries, etc.
Test ride a different type of bike than you normally ride

This was an easy one for me. I switched pedals onto the new bike and took pedals off Susan's since she had the fall in February and didn't want to be clipped in all the time.

We decorated our bikes for the Grand Floral Parade. My bike and the kids'. I am reading the Time Crunched Cyclist by Chris Carmichael, but I haven't gotten through half of it, so I am not sure that's fair to list that one. Then finally, we competed in the Fiets of Parenthood at Clevercyclces on Saturday and carried a mock load on the bike. We took 2nd place in the fiets event and even got captured on flickr.

Since we own nearly every bike known to mankind, I had better not test ride another bike. I will leave that to Susan, who wants a new bike!

Grand Floral Parade

This Saturday, we rode in the parade with the Mayor's contingent of biking staff. The announcers didn't really call us staff probably because that might sound like we were "on the job" as opposed to just there having a good time. We rolled in and the first float we came across was this one from the Vancouver/Washougal folks and their princesses. It was pretty neat and the girls really liked it. There were lady bugs on it and that definitely caught her eye. We arrived with enough time to get sunscreen on and decorate our bikes with red ribbon and flowers provided by the organizers. The girls got a kick out of the flowers on their bikes, although Abby didn't like the rose that attached to her helmet (it was poky).
Susan is noticeably absent in the pictures because she was at the beach with Sheila enjoying some time away. The 4 mile ride was pretty slow going with lots of stops for the trains and the performances of the various bands that were in front of us. All in all a good experience, one I hadn't done for almost 20 years.

The Alaska Airlines / Horizon Air float was pretty neat, it had the Made in Oregon, White Stag sign as well as the Portland sign that signifies the Theater on Broadway.

Martin Luther King Jr. Final Resting Place

As a part of our visit to Atlanta, we got a chance to go see Dr. King's final resting place. The area is designated as a national park and the tribute to his life is nice. I thought there would be a little more to the facilities then what we saw, although we didn't have as much time as we would have liked to really take in the area. I am glad the kids got exposure to the area he grew up and the lessons of yesterday's society.