Tulip Fest 2011

Last Friday, the boys were out of school for conferences and miracle of miracles, the sun was shining and it was even a little bit warm outside...where better to spend our beautiful free day than at the Tulip Festival at the Wooden Shoe Farm in Woodburn, OR?!?

I've been coming here every year since Christopher was a baby...poor George has yet to make it down there with us...maybe next year.

There are tractors:

Big old traction engines....

Everyone must take a turn wearing the big wooden shoes:

And thousands and thousands of beautiful tulips!

Attempt #1 with an uncooperative Benno

And attempt #2 with a gremlin-faced Benno

There are friends in the fields...

And baby boys too:

Love it, love it, LOVE IT!

Oh no! Aaron! ; )

We had a whole bunch of friends with us...and luckily for all of us, it had been a rather dry week so the fields weren't really muddy (unlike last year) but our little friend managed to get stuck in one of the few puddles & needed mom to get her unstuck, ha!

Anthony is growing up much too fast...he's looking more pre-teen-ish.

And our favorite slide and the ducky races too:

How we LOVE beautiful Oregon!!!

The grand finale of gymnastics for 2011!

A little over a week ago, both boys competed at the Mens Regionals Championship meet in Tacoma, WA. Our region includes the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington & Oregon.

Aaron gave it a good shot and finished 51st out of 65 boys competing in the 7-9 year old level 5 session. He had some incredibly tough competition in that session--the boy who finished 1st all around had a combined score of over 93! That's insane! (There are 6 events, and a score of 15 (without adding in bonuses) is considered a perfect score...so you need all 6 as 15s to get 90 points...so that kid was earning an average of 15.5 on all 6 events! Obviously, he had some bonuses in there.) None of our 7-9 year old level 5s ended up placing in the all around and only one got 10th (on rings, I think). So yeah, it was TOUGH!

Here is Aaron on Rings--this was his best score of the day with a 14.5:

Then came Anthony in the 10-11 year old level 5 session... 

(And sorry to those of you who saw all this on Facebook already...nothing new.)

Anthony did AWESOMELY! 

We are so proud of this boy!!!

He finished 1st place on Pommel Horse:

And he finished 1st on Parallel Bars:

He tied for 2nd place with his teammate Jacob on Rings. And he placed 5th on High Bar.

Vault has never been a good event for him (and as the coach reminded him yesterday--"What are you going to do when vault gets hard?? You should be nailing these easy routines!") but the part that cost him a spot in the top 3, if not 1st place all around, was floor. He earned 14.2, a good 8/10s below his score of 15 at State. So he's been kicking himself a bit for that...but he did finish 4th all around with a final score of 89.55, which was just .1 behind the 3rd place finisher!

We are SO proud of Anthony! What an achievement!

We are so proud of both boys. And can I just say for a moment how incredibly hard it is to have 2 boys competing in the same sport on the same level??? How my heart aches for Aaron--how hard it is for him to be in Anthony's shadow. Any of you out there have any experience with kids in the same kind of boat even if a different sport? How do you handle that? I'm hoping for Aaron's sake that they don't move him up to the next level next year when Anthony does go up. I want him to have his own time to shine apart from Anthony. I've told him over and over that he is every bit a champion in my eyes as Anthony is. Just qualifying and competing at Regionals is a big deal!

Love these boys so much. 

And it's nice now that meet season is officially behind us...at least until next year.

Lucky the Leprechaun

Look who showed up on St Patrick's Day at our house!

Aaron came up with this all on his own...we got a good laugh out of it!

Nike Play

On the rare nice day, when we have time to spare after swim lessons, we will pay a visit to the tiny playground at Nike.

Besides swings...there are these spinning things. And another contraption the boys love but I didn't photograph it. Tiny playground, but it's a treat to stop & play anyway.

Swim lessons

As if we weren't busy enough already, we threw swimming lessons in there too. Actually, it's been so long since we last had lessons that I realized Christopher & Benno both really don't know how...so we got them in for the winter session at Nike. I love the Nike pool facility...really nice!

Christopher felt funny about being in the level 1 class with Benno but it was perfect for him--he had lessons a few years ago but he was so little... They are in that first class there on the right. Usually there was one other little boy in there with them...and a girl too but she screamed so much her mother kept her out most of the time. So nice to have a small class!

Benno's such a ham...he makes me laugh with that grin.

Their favorite part is the end when they're allowed to play in the toddler pool, which is warm!

This video is not exciting...they just jump in the pool...I'm so happy to see the progress that I enjoy it.

This was from the last day of that swim session.

So that session with Christopher & Benno ended and then George signed up all 4 big boys for lessons since Anthony & Aaron could use the refresher too. They love it...so here we go for another however many weeks until it's over. 

We'll be all ready for summer by the time it's over so hopefully the weather will decide to be summer too. I have my doubts at this point though...it's still pretty wintry out there!

A quick visit

We were honored with a quick visit from my Uncle Serge & cousin Peter who live in Kansas but were visiting various colleges in the Northwest. They took time out from their busy schedule to stop by & see us after church one Sunday afternoon. Pretty crazy--Peter was a toddler when I was graduating high school!

Thanks Serge & Peter!

Art Fair

Our Stake held a little Art Fair last month so I went and set up a little table of my stuff.

As you can see, the crowds were out of control:

Seriously now, this is about as busy as it got. 

I thought the posters advertising the event were pretty cool in and of themselves--almost a little too cool as they were a bit intimidating (that background is handpainted on canvas)!

I met this girl who was set up behind me--I love her fun artwork. She's a neighbor of a good friend of mine who tells me this artist's house is decorated in much the same fun quirky way. Her name is Victory so that alone tells you she's got to be pretty cool!

My lovely talented friend Kendra designs jewelry and had this table set up beside mine (or I should say I set up beside her...she was there first.) She & her husband made those awesome jewelry trees too! I want one of those!

Also from my ward is the amazingly talented cake-decorating Tracy, whose work has been featured in a bridal magazine:

I neglected to get a photo of my good friend Megan's awesome artwork display whom I pestered into coming to bring her stuff too--but she conveniently has a website of her artwork so I'm going to share this instead:

We had a good number of talented people from our ward display stuff--we were getting comments like "Oh, another Bethany Ward-er!" to which I say, "Everything's better in Bethany." Ha!

Anyway...judging from the raging crowds there, looks like we need to up the ante a bit for next year and get more of you out there...especially if you're another Bethany Ward-er, ha!

Seattle Flashback

Mentioning our OMSI pass reminded me...I never posted our little Seattle trip way back in January.

On another one of those random days off from school, George took the day off from work and we did a day trip up to Seattle and back. We went specifically to see the Harry Potter Exhibit that was there at the time. And that was fantastic. Unfortunately NO photography of any kind was allowed within the exhibit, so I've got nothing to show. 

I'll tell you it was spectacularly awesome...I loved seeing all the detail that went into everything (the exhibit was all props/costumes/etc from the movies)--I loved each individual wand in the way they reflected the personality of the owner...the clothing...the graphic design within all the magazines, flyers, posters, etc for Quidditch matches & the Quiddler & textbooks, etc, etc, etc. If the exhibit comes anywhere near you (and I mean near as in within a 6 hour drive of you) then you MUST go see it, assuming you are a Harry Potter fan as we are. It's so worth it.

Our OMSI pass got us into the Pacific Science Center free but the Harry Potter Exhibition was extra.

This is part of the museum...I think this photo is kinda funny.

This photo I love mostly due to Zac's shoes. I love those little shoes.

There was a great little playspace inside for the little guys.

And here are my little psycho glowing-eye aliens.

After the Science Center, we went up the Space Needle--it was a bit of a yucky day, which worked to our advantage since there was almost nobody else there.

Before we went up, they made us stand in front of a green screen for a photo op. I was cautiously smiling because in my head I was thinking "Are they going to make us pay for this?" But the digital copy, which you see here, was absolutely free. ; )

That was a fun family day.

AC Gilbert Museum

A month ago we had a day off school--one of those lovely random days that noone else has off so you can visit a museum and have the place to yourself--and a bunch of friends got together to head down to Salem to visit the AC Gilbert Toy Museum.

We visited here just once before--and we would definitely go more often if it were just a teensy bit closer (about an hour's drive away)--it's WAY fun and the best part is that our OMSI membership gets us in free there! I love my OMSI membership...gets us in free at awesome museums all over the country!

Luckily the weather cooperated with us & we played outside on the huge playground for a long time:

We went inside & played in the bubble room for a good long while too:

We went upstairs in that building (there are several of old houses converted into a museum) and spent another LONG while playing in the Toy Inventor's Workshop--that's exactly the kind of place I thought of as heaven when I was a kid! So fun to see my own boys delve in and love it too:

There were SO many kids between all of us there that day...here are the boys. I didn't get a pic of the girls until they were starting to get down off the giant chair but there were just as many girls there as boys that day:

 There was this awesome bridge near the museum that we passed on our way in--all of my boys screamed, "Can we please, pLeAsE, PLEASE go on that bridge?!?!?" So of course we did. And on such a lovely day it was a pure treat too:

 Fun, fun day!