Sweet Sixteen, again!

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!  Can you tell I love my birthday?!?!? Well, I do. Always have, and always will.

Not just any birthday too...it happens to be my SECOND SWEET SIXTEEN!

And it's the 23rd anniversary of my 9th birthday. (I promised my dad that I would stay 9 years old.) Life is good...what's not to celebrate??? (Don't answer that...I don't want to spoil my wonderful day.)

3rd Grade Program

Yesterday was the 3rd Grade Program at the school. The little guys & I went to watch the afternoon performance while George went to the evening one (where he had a much better view than I did, as demonstrated by his superior photos (the first 3).)

It took me forever to finally spot Anthony among the sea of little faces obscured by giant Uncle Sam hats & handkerchiefs all wearing white shirts & blue jeans. I laughed when I finally was able to discern Anthony by his muscle-y chest. Here he is on the front row in the white hat standing right next to the blue Oregon state flag:

Could he be any less enthusiastic??? Here he sits (right in front towards the middle of the photo, seated) waiting with his mallets to play the xylophone.
And then he performed a dance here--look for the muscle-y chest & you'll see him, ha--I thought it was funny too that he was paired with a super tall boy (boys danced together & girls danced together)...just made him look that much more puny.
I was so happy that Benno fell asleep during the show...makes everything that much easier!

Here's a snippet from that dance. Anthony's got a red hat in this one (the earlier performance I went to). The whole dance was over 3-1/2 min long, repeating pretty much everything you see here so this is long enough to give you an idea. He jumps rope--the 2nd from the right. Otherwise it's pretty hard to pick him out.

Just stuff

This is what greeted me in my yard this morning!

At the same time, check out what we woke up to just yesterday--a wintry wonderland!

And then, just because it makes me laugh...Benno and his Piggy. He is the only one of my boys who really LOVES little stuffed animals, and this piggy is one of his favorites. He carries them around with him constantly, snuggly cuddled in the elbow of one arm. His other favorites include a monkey and several little puppies.

I Spy a Book Club

I hosted Book Club this month--the book was "The Spy Wore Red" by Aline, Countess of Romanones, an American spy during WWII in Madrid, Spain...

Fun night with friends & yummy food!

Blue & Gold Banquet

Man oh man, what a busy week...time to catch up:

George & Anthony were supposed to make a cake (without my help) for the Blue & Gold Banquet Tuesday evening...  So this is what their cake looked like Monday night:

I couldn't have them take the cake looking like that, so I cleaned up the blue stuff and supplied Anthony with some additional frosting with quick instructions on how to do an eagle's head. Oh well, they tried. They can only do better next year, ha!

And just because Benno is such a cute little goofball:

Arctic Rush Meet

Tired of gymnastics meets yet? Sorry...we're in the midst of meet season so that's life now.

We drove 2 hours to Eugene, OR, for this one on Saturday, and Anthony had his best meet yet...his all-around score was 88.1, quite a bit better than last week's 85.3. And the biggest factor in that was his awesome pommel horse routine.

See a few of our favorite shots (George takes the credit for these!)

Each meet handles the awards a little differently. In this one, they awarded the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd places for each individual event, and then the top 10 All-Around, and then the team awards. Anthony placed 3rd on the rings & pommel horse. (And I really thought he should've had it for p-bars too as his score was equal to the boy who did win third, but maybe I missed something?)

And then Anthony was 4th in the All-Around, and his team took 1st place! Yay, OGA!

(PS...George is right, I need to fix his haircut...he's got the Dumb & Dumber cut, ick!)

Some short videos...my seat was not the best but you can still see the action! (I like the end of the Rings one too where a level 10 gymnast flips his way through the shot.)

Happy birthday, all of you!

Seems like half my relatives have a birthday today...  Some are here, some are not but I still think of them all today--my stepmom Barbara, & her mom Grandmom Quinn, my Grampy Mike Gaughan, cousin Scott, another cousin Patrick (and a handful of friends!)...I don't always say Happy Birthday on this day each year because, sad to say, I'm so self-absorbed in the fact that my birthday also happens this week that I forget to send the appropriate birthday greetings, but I always do remember on the day of. So here's to you all.

Um, Happy Birthday George.

Ok, I am embarrassed about my blunder, and how come nobody pointed out to me at the time that I was an entire month off on my birthday greetings to George Washington?

I knew he was born in February...all the greatest people were born in February, after all (George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gaughan...ME). How horrifyingly embarrassing.

Doughnuts.

Christopher told me after his gymnastics class yesterday, "I need a treat 'cause I did such a good job in dhym-nassics (gymnastics)."

At the end of his class he got to jump around on this thing with all the girls (he was the only boy today, poor guy!) Check out the girl in black on the right, ha! (Our gym is in the middle of some renovation.)

Anyway, back to Christopher and his treat...I agreed that he'd done a good job so we headed off to Krispy Kreme for a doughnutty treat.

I pulled out the camera and enjoyed watching the boys enjoy their doughnuts. My favorite is Benno's pursed lip pic.

And a photo illustration of a sneaky older brother, helping himself to his brother's doughnut crumbs...until Benno notices,

He quickly shoves the crumb in his mouth...

And holds the remaining doughnut safely out of reach...

And flashes his big cheesy grin for the camera!

And a bit about Benno...I love this stage when they're learning to talk--I wanted to capture a little bit of his speech now before it vanishes into big kid speak. So many parts of this little video make me laugh...from "Eeeeze!" with the cheesy grin to "Is Uhnny!" (funny) to looking for Dada out the window...  I hate hearing myself on videos though, so ignore that part of it, ok?

Playin'

We're enjoying some beautiful sunny dry days again and the other night the boys were out playin' (and I was photographin')...  Here are just a handful of the fun shots of these silly boys. Aaron was inside, otherwise he'd have been photo'd too.

You may notice Benno is still in his PJs under his jacket & shoes...he was battling a fever all day and was ready for some deliciously fresh air!

President's Day

You didn't really think I could let President's Day pass by without mentioning it, did you? : ) (I do realize I missed both Lincoln's & Reagan's birthdays in the midst of recent happenings...)

I love this book. And no better day to mention it than today. My favorite presidential episode in here is the story of Pres. Woodruff's vision in the St George Temple of the Founding Fathers asking that their Temple Ordinances be done...only makes my admiration of those men that much more intense. And of course my admiration extends to Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, & Reagan too...

So hope it was a "Happy President's Day" wherever you are...

Aaron's First Violin Recital!

Last weekend (during Anthony's meet) Aaron had a violin recital! (And had the meet not conflicted with it, Anthony would've been there too.)

It was Aaron's very first recital and he did great!

Here he plays "Oh Come Little Children":

And this is "May Song" with George accompanying:

Great job Aaron! I'm so sad I couldn't be there to see in person.

MAC Meet Movies

Here are the little videos of the Floor & Rings routines from Anthony's meet yesterday.

Before you watch the Floor, let me share my adventure...in the beginning you hear me tell Christopher to watch Anthony (after Christopher'd been pestering me over and over to wave at him across the gym)...Anthony begins his routine (and you see him stop and shoot a quick glance at his coach when he realizes he missed a step) and things move along until about halfway through, when Benno, who'd been sitting down at my feet next to my bag, helped himself into my bag and pulled out a sandwich bag full of goldfish and ripped a hole into it, sending goldfish crackers flying in all directions, including DOWN BELOW into the COMPETITIVE AREA below where I was standing!!!  AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!  (It's really hard to hear with all the noise in there but if you listen closely, you can hear the goldfish scatter right before I say "Benno!!! NOOO!") I was so mad & embarrassed, but I was determined to keep filming Anthony so aside from a brief jerk away I kept at it...  You can be sure that as soon as he finished, I was strangling--um, I mean reprimanding Benno and cleaning up the goldfish mess all around me, and watching with helpless embarrassment as the other team's coach picked up the goldfish that fell below onto the Vault runway.

I am happy to report that no such adventure took place while filming Anthony on Rings. He did pretty well and got deductions mostly for his landing.

MAC Open Meet

Warning, this post contains a bazillion photos...  I brought better equipment today (ie: telephoto lens) and this gym had better viewing ability. 

So come with me now and you'll experience Anthony's meet today in photos. I do have a couple videos too but Blogger is not cooperating and this post is long enough as it is...I'll try again tomorrow.

After a brief team warm-up, each team marched in for the grand opening of the meet. Here come our OGA boys:

Thankfully, this was a "Capital Cup" warm-up method rather than the traditional which was used at the last meet. (That means they warmed-up on each event before competing and then rotating to the next...as opposed to warming up on all 6 and then competing on all 6.)

Here the boys are all warmed-up on the parallel bars and waiting for their turn to compete.

Here is my method for keeping the little guys occupied while I watched the meet. ; ) Thank you Kung Fu Panda and portable DVD player.

Anthony just chalked his hands and waits patiently for his turn on the P-Bars.

And there he goes. You should click on this photo and check it out larger--look at his face and the determination!

Ok, now this one I must insist that you click on to view larger--you have to see the muscles in his shoulders/back/arms. Incredible. He's 8. Yes, 8.

And the dismount. He did get deducted for those legs--supposed to be together.

And now he competes on High Bar. Click on this one and check out his face. Ha! Those pull-overs are so incredibly hard, I don't blame him for that face one bit!

And he flies through the air with the greatest of ease...

Done with High Bar, the team marches on toward the Floor.

Warming up on Floor. I include this one because of the woman standing at the back there in the dark blue blazer--that is the judge I helped at the last meet. She is fabulous...I was happy to see her judging here today (again on Rings. She likes to get up & move around during the warm-ups.)

And he cart-wheels...

And I forget what this one is called...look at those muscles in his legs. Crazy. Now I don't have pics of him actually competing on floor because I filmed it and will post that video later.

The coach pow-wows with the boys... I love this coach. He's so great with the boys.

Now time for Pommel Horse. This is a tough apparatus. Now in these next few photos, I want you to get a look at the judge (the man on the right).

Judge hasn't moved a muscle...

Well, certainly no one can accuse this judge of not paying attention. If you ask me, he pays attention a little TOO closely...he was brutal.

At this level, the boys do both the horse and the dome for their Pommel routines, so here is Anthony for the 2nd part on the dome:

Another pow-wow with the coach.

Again, I am missing any photos from Rings because I filmed that one as well...so that's coming.

Last event for the boys was Vault. Here Anthony waits (smiling) to run down the track and pounce off the Vault. (I was standing directly above, so the angles on my photos are a bit odd.)

And he sticks his finish!!! Awesome job, Anthony!

Tallied up all the points and his all-around score was 85.3 (his last meet A-A score was 84.0!) Anthony finished with a gold medal! (They give gold medals to all the boys who finish above a certain score--I don't know what that is). He was so happy!

And his team came in 2nd again. The 1st place teams from both this and the last meet are from Washington, so you could say OGA was the best Oregon team! : )