Listen my children...

Listen my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in '75;

Hardly a man is now alive 

Who remembers that famous day and year.

Where is David when I need him? Still have it completely memorized, David? 

It's April 18th...a great day in American history...and I'm craving a good meal at the Wayside Inn.

And now I must return to my vacation preparations...  : )

And he's off!!!

So a week before Easter, we had some really gorgeous weather. We'd gone for a family bike ride and Christopher was pedaling along so well on his bike that we thought we should just take his training wheels off and see what happened.

This photo was taken the moment he first mounted the bike after removing the training wheels and George is preparing to run alongside him...

And that was the extent of George's help--Christopher just took right off as if he's just always ridden without the training wheels...really, it was pretty crazy to watch!

Christopher LOVES riding his bike and begs to ride it rain or shine. (And he's exactly 4-1/2, if you were curious.) Way to go, Christopher!

Changes

Ok, I've made some changes (beyond the obvious background change) which I'm going to try doing for a little while rather than go completely private. I'm still considering the privacy thing though so please still send me your email address if you'd like to be included when I finally do make it completely private.

Pinewood Derby

Grrr, I hate falling behind because it's so impossible to catch up! Doesn't make for a very lively blog either...sorry.

Anyway...so right after we came home from Spring Break, we had to hurry and finish up the cars so they'd be ready for the weigh-in and then for the big Derby on Tuesday.

Here Christopher's car gets some rather chic striping:

Here is my--er, um, I mean Benno's--masterpiece: "This Little Piggy" otherwise known as the piggy car.

Benno was so in love with his piggy car that when we went for the weigh-in, the cars are supposed to be confiscated so that the cars can't be altered...but Benno wasn't going to let go of that car for anything so Bro. Davis was nice enough to waive the rule for him. : )

And at last it was Tuesday...let the Derby fun begin!

And here you see the piggy in lane 2, with Christopher's "USA Car" beside it in lane 3: (Piggy won!)

Here Anthony's yellow car comes screaming down the track (though not fast enough to catch the car passing under the finish line in the photo):

Then Aaron & Christopher were racing against each other here--both watching with eager anticipation for the Scout Master to release them down the track.

Anthony earned himself a 3rd place trophy in the Cubs division...way to go, Anthony!

Benno was especially pleased with the piggy's performance.

He loves that car. Too much.

Christopher had a great time!

Aaron had fun but he's already got plans in the works for next year's car...

Fun night for all...well, all except George. He said it was the most stressful night of his life--he was in charge of the race/lane assignments as well as recording the scoring...with over 40 cars racing you can imagine the headache that was!

Spring Break '09

So I'm finally getting around to posting about our fabulous Spring Break vacation in AZ! It's a 2 day drive down and then back again, so with 9 days of vacation time, only 5 of those were actually in AZ and we packed as much fun into those 5 days as we could!

The itinerary was as follows:

Sat...on the road: OR to UT (12 hours), spent night with G's family 

Sun...on the road: UT to AZ (11 hours)

Mon...Pump-it-Up & Chick-Fil-A, swimming, Peter Piper Pizza (think Chuck E. Cheese) 

Tues...worked on Pinewood Derby cars & swam, Olive Garden

Wed...Spring Training game between Padres & Indians, swimming, and Girls' Night Out

Thurs...Grandma's house in Scottsdale, Railroad Park, swimming, made dinner w/ Katie & G

Fri...G & boys went hiking while I packed, swimming, saw Maury's new pretty house & dinner out with a lot of the family

Sat...on the road: AZ to UT (record 9-1/2 hours!) Fun night w/ G's family!

Sun...on the road: UT to OR (12-1/2 hours, not bad considering all the snow we hit!)

Here are a handful of photos. A full album of photos will be available on my other site soon (not quite yet.)

Pondering Privacy...

I am seriously considering making my blog private. Not that anything weird has happened to me personally (aside from some anonymous comments on occasion when I was sure I turned off the anonymous commentary thing) but I'm hearing stories that bother me and I have too much personal info out here to feel comfortable about it...

I know how terribly inconvenient it is to everyone, especially the Reader subscribers, but that also makes it inconvenient to the creeps out there, so what can you do?

Please send me your email address if you'd like me to include you: carolsx@gmail.com

Stay tuned...

I have so much to add to the blog but life is keeping me a tad busy at the moment...I will get to it all soon enough.

Just to whet your appetite though, upcoming features include (but are not limited to):

• Our fabulous Spring Break in AZ (with stops in UT)
• Pinewood Derby debut--our family alone contributed 5 cars to the big event!
• The 5th of 6 Art Lit projects this year...this one is based on Matisse!

And a little funny episode that happened today:

After Christopher's gymnastics class this morning, we went down into the lobby where they have a small snack stand. While Christopher & Benno were deliberating over which snack they wanted, a boy about Christopher's size walked over and demanded, "Hey, what's YOUR name?" And Christopher confidently replied, "I'm Christopher." The boy replied, "Well, my name is Jack McDaniel!" He promptly turned and ran to his mom about 10 feet away and shouted, "Mom, guess what!?!? I have a NEW friend and his name is Christopher!!!" His mom said, "That's nice, dear." And Jack enthusiastically proclaimed to everyone in the lobby, "I love new friends!"

Pretty cute. 

And Christopher stood there a second and said, "Hey, remember when I went to my new friend's house?" I answered, "Um, no...you just met him, silly."