Bainbridge Island Roller Hockey League Division 1 Champions!!

Saturday was the final game of the roller hockey season. Micah's team - the Stars - played in the championship game against the Lightening. It was a tough game, ending in a 4-4 tie and going into Sudden Death overtime. First team to score won. Micah set up the shot for his teammate and they won! Very exciting.



Here's Micah at the Awards Ceremony with his coaches. The two "kid" coaches (in the suits - they are funny guys) are Division 3 players. Micah can't wait for the day that he can coach like them. He'll be an awesome coach!

This is a short video of the game. Micah is #24 (red & blue jersey). He steals the ball, maneuvers it past a bunch of defenders, then makes a great pass to a team mate by the goal. I love watching him play!

Pioneer Day, a.k.a. Dorado Day

Our ward holds a huge Pioneer Day celebration every year at a great local farm. They have beautiful shady lawns for picnicking, pastures for gunny sack races and sunflower seed spittin' and a nice cool pond for coolin' off (if you don't mind a few leaches, which, apparently, most of the kids don't).

But despite all the fun & festivities that this day held, there was only ONE thing that Adana cared about:

Her beloved Dorado lives here. And, Oh Joyous Happiness - she actually got to ride him!

We waited in line for over an hour for a chance to ride Dorado. She could have ridden another horse much sooner, but she would only ride "her horse."

Emma rode a pretty little white horse. She really did have fun (I think), although it can be tough to tell with Emma sometimes.

Relay For Life

The past couple years, our family has participated in our local Relay For Life, the primary fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. This year, Jared decided that he wanted to organize his own team. It was a lot of work - meetings, scheduling, fundraising . . . But he (and his dad) worked really hard at it and last weekend our Team Islandental had a great time participating in event. Here are a few highlights:

Here's Jared in his Team Captain t-shirt. He was by far the youngest team captain at the event. Each team set up a booth around the high school track. This served the dual purpose of providing shade for team members when they weren't walking the track, and providing a place for further fundraising. We had 3 raffles going - dinner for 2 to a fancy local restaurant, a Sonicare toothbrush, and 2 tickets to see Wicked in Seattle. They were all big hits and we raised a lot of money this way.

The rest of the team wore these great t-shirts, as modeled by Adana. She wouldn't wear it until I convinced her that it was actually a dress. She's in that annoying phase where she will only wear dresses. Ugh. How did I get daughters like this!?

This was such a family-friendly event! The walk took place from 4pm on Saturday until 10am on Sunday. That's a long time to be hanging out on a hot high school track, especially for kids. But fortunately, there were a lot of fun things to do. They had a Kids' Area, run by Bank of America volunteers, that had fun activities every hour from 4-9pm on Saturday. This was the water fight.

And, since the track circled the new football field (complete with soccer goals under the goal posts), my boys were kept entertained when it wasn't their turn to be walking the track.

By Saturday night, though, we were all feeling pretty wiped out. Adana decided to snuggle up in her Baba's anti-gravity chair for a while and play with her glow stick. I finally took her, Emma & Micah home around 11pm. Nathan & Jared stayed to make sure we always had someone on the track throughout the night. We had some great friends who volunteered to walk in the middle of the night.

This is what I found when I came back to relieve Nathan at 5am. Jared's friend, Kylie, offered to stay through the night and help with the walking, in case some of our team members failed to show up for their shifts. They both fell asleep around 3am - Kylie on the chair and Jared on the track. Apparently the deal was that they would trade off every hour in the chair, but they both fell asleep so Jared ended up on the ground all night. As well he should. I would have whacked him if he'd taken the chair and made a girl sleep on the ground.

The Relay ended at 10am on Sunday morning with the drawing of all the raffles. We won two of them! Micah had entered to win a Movie Package - a box full of candy and treats, with 4 movie tickets and some video rental passes. Jared & I were crossing our fingers to win the Sports Package, and we did!! It included a great sports seat, water bottle, golf balls & golf gift certificate, two Mariners tickets and . . . THREE TICKETS TO A SOUNDERS GAME!!! We are so excited!

All in all, it was a great experience. Jared gained a lot of service hours and we enjoyed serving this way as a family and with our friends. We will definitely participate in the Relay in the years to come, but I don't know how soon we'll head up a team again. It's pretty tiring! We all took looooong naps on Sunday afternoon.

Frankie

Jared has been at Boy Scout Camp all week. We have really missed him. In fact, Micah missed him so much that he created a substitute brother.

I'm not kidding. Meet Frankie.

To make the situation weirder, Micah convinced Adana that this big red water balloon is her new brother. She was missing her abi (big brother) A LOT, so she quickly transferred her affection to the balloon. (Dang, I'm going to go broke paying for the therapy for these kids some day.)

They even had Frankie sleep in Jared's bed (until I realized that Frankie seems to have a bed-wetting problem).

We can't wait for Jared to come home tomorrow!

Camping at Scenic Beach

The kids & I just got back from spending a couple days camping at a great local state park. Scenic Beach is a beautiful, forested, clean campground on Hood Canal. Since it was mid-week (when most dads are working - Thanks Dads!), we did a moms/kids camping trip. We had 7 moms camping overnight, and 3 more came to spend the day with us on Wednesday.

A lotta moms = a WHOLE LOTTA kids. (These are just a few that I caught playing a game of Kick the Can and I forced them to pose for a picture. We had at least twice this many.) Fortunately, the campground was virtually empty, so I don't think our boisterous group disturbed many people.

This is why I love my job! Supervising kids playing on a playground (or at the beach) is what I do best. :-) (Right Jessica!?)

But don't start thinking that I don't WORK at my job. I'm on the job 24-7, making sure my kids don't fall out of trees,

or drown in the ocean,

or get hypothermia,

or fall off cliffs.

And I've got to make sure they are standing IN FRONT of their friends before they throw rocks in the water.

I've also got to be adept at bandaging owies and giving lots of hugs & kisses.

Not to mention the stress of keeping kids out of the campfire, trying to get them to eat something healthy and monitoring how many marshmallows they eat so we don't have to deal with tummy aches all night. (Check out Adana. She was wiped out after a long day. The lights are on, but nobody's home.)

And at the end of the day, I have to gently get 4 dirty, sleeping kids tucked into their sleeping bags

so that the moms can enjoy a few minutes of peace (and the left-over s'mores) around the campfire. (Check out that awesome s'more! The secret: Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies. Oh yeah! Those looked sooooo yummy. Sometimes it is almost criminal that I don't eat sugar anymore.)

Then, when we get home, I've got to clean out the car, wash all the laundry, scrub down the kids,

while they crash on the couch.

I LOVE my job! And I can't wait for our next camping trip!

July tomatoes

I won't be making home-grown salsa anytime soon, but the garden is coming along nicely. This is my first harvest of the season (well, not counting the 4 or 5 green tomatoes that Adana "harvested" for me a few weeks ago. Grrr . . .)

Off to Scout Camp

Here's Jared - 5:00a.m. - heading off to his first year at Boy Scout Camp.

He's so excited. And I'm excited for him. I know he'll have a blast.

But we sure do miss him already. Micah misses his best friend (seriously, he just doesn't know what to do with himself when Jared's not around.) And Adana is really missing her Abi.

5 more sleeps until he's home. In the meantime, I'm going to re-read this hilarious blog post by DeNae. She always manages to nail things perfectly.

Oh Say, Can You See . . .

There is nothing better than a small-town 4th of July.

Micah, Emma & Adana - walking up to the parade.


Watching the parade - white picket fence in the background - you can't get much more American than this! :-)

Micah skated with the Bainbridge Island Roller Hockey League. They looked HOT - and I'm not just talking about how bad they were sweating. These kids are awesome skaters!

You know you're watching a Bainbridge Island parade when these are the goodies that are thrown out to the crowd. I'm not sure what the plant starts are, but Adana made us hurry home to plant them with her marigolds. And a garlic bulb? Just what every kid wants! We also got reusable grocery totes, bottles of sun screen, and bars of soap. And, of course, about 10 pounds of candy.

While we were walking downtown, this group was in front of us. Adana pulled my head down to hers and whispered in my ear, "They're blubs!" That's her word for anyone who bugs her. I don't know why she was bugged, but I thought it was hilarious.

Micah really got in the spirit of the day. He used washable marker. He then proceeded to get in a major water gun fight with some of the cute girls in our neighborhood, so his flag was soon dripping down his face.

This picture is lousy, but it was the only one I was able to get before my battery died. The kids in our neighborhood do a parade every 4th of July. It's another great tradition that makes us love living here. (That's Micah leading the pack on his roller blades.)

After the neighborhood parade, we went over to a friend's house for a BBQ. I don't even like to think about how much soda my kids drank. Bleck. But I love this shot of Adana and her best little friend, Timmy.

The dads. Don't be fooled. These 3 may look benign, but they are trouble makers! And you should've seen them JUMP when a couple bottle rockets went bizerk and started flying around underneath their chairs later in the evening. :-)

There was a firework free-for-all in the cul-de-sac that evening. It was horrible. I hate unsupervised, uncontrolled fireworks. I think I developed an ulcer trying to keep Adana from getting blown up.

If I had may way, the only fireworks allowed would be smoke bombs, snakes, and sparklers. And maybe a couple of those parachute blasters for a bit of excitement.

Of course, even a sparkler can be dangerous when Adana gets ahold of it, as my friend Gayle discovered. She was so sweet to just sit on the curb all evening and light sparklers - one after the other - for Adana, to keep her out of the way of the bigger stuff.

We ended the day by walking down to Eagle Harbor to watch the HUGE fireworks display over the water. I didn't get any pictures of that, but here is a cute one of 3 of my sun-kissed, sweaty, tired kids as they waited for the show to begin.

I hope you all had a wonderful, safe Independence Day. And I hope you had the chance to stop and think about how very fortunate we are to live in this great nation. God bless America!

Fay Bainbridge

You might as well get used to these beach posts, 'cuz we plan on spending a heckuva lotta time at the beach this summer.

Today, Nathan actually got to go with us. It was great to just hang out at the beach as a family. I love that the kids are each other's best friends and play so well together.

This rare shot actually contains ALL 4 KIDS. Of course, I couldn't get all 4 kids looking up. Or smiling. Or even facing the same direction.

My Mount Rainier Warriors. Can you see the mountain (faintly) in the background? A boy's childhood can't get much better than this.

Here's proof that, yes, Nathan does get to hang out with us occassionally. Beach days are good for hard-working dads too.

My mighty warrior girl. She can do anything her big brothers can do.

I just love this shot. It shows what I'm talking about when I say THIS is the way kids should spend their summers. No TV, no video games . . . just stick them on a beach and let them go.