Hellllooooo Toast!

School starts:

Mali plays defense on the girls JV soccer team. They won 2-0 and 7-2 their first two games, and there's some kind of jamboree this weekend.
Mali's courses:
- French
- Literature & Composition
- History
LUNCH - Andrew and Kyle have the same time.
- PE - Coach Terry is her teacher!
- Algebra

Andrew says "Senior IB = Junior IB on crack."
Last night's 5k did not go so well. He ran into a garbage can, a tree, and a Jesuit runner. Saturday is the Trask Mountain Assault - a fun (?) 3 mile race on steep slopes and across rivers.

Track season starts!

Andrew PR'ed in his first 400m of the year! Time of 53.93s! This with tendinitis (Achilles) that's keeping him from fully practicing.

Mali's Birthday! 14 orbits!

I took Mali, Andrew, and Mali's friend Tesia to Tom's Pancake House for a birthday breakfast. Then took Mali and Tesia to their first soccer game of the Spring Season, where they won 4-0! Woohoo!
I gave Mali a Flip Video camera, and I think she liked it. She started using it right away. As she set it up, she said, "What's the date?: Then laughed "oh yeah, my birthday." We all cracked up.
Andrew immediately posted it on Facebook.

Sports Update

Andrew is no longer undefeated in the 100yd Backstroke! He came in third to a swimmer from Beaverton, and Southridge's freshman prodigy decided to do backstroke too. Still, Andrew was only 0.7 off his P.R., and he had been sick - as all of us had been after Christmas.
Mali has her first Futsal game today with her soccer team. Futsal is an indoor version of soccer played on hardwood floors with a smaller, hard ball that doesn't bounce much.

Christmas

Andrew and Mali took the train to Tacoma from Portland and I scooped them up for a night at Grandma and Grandpa's. The morning of Christmas Eve I handed out some presents:
They asked for new Vans (shoes), which they got. Also included:
Magnetic Bucky Balls (and a little magnetic dude - not shown)


and new gloves, fingered AND fingerless.

PR Excitement

Andrew set a personal record in the 5k at the Southridge vs. Jesuit XC meet last night: 17:55.50, for 16th place against the obsessively good Jesuit team. It was the 5th best time for Southridge. I did not attend, as I am wrestling my new jobs in Redmond to the ground.

Saturday I retrieved the last of my stuff from the house in Beaverton. Mali studiously ignored me, while Andrew watched me like a hawk to ensure I did not leave with anything not on the official list. He is very protective of his mother, and I can appreciate that.

He is very funny. Once I walked up next to him and stood very close, hovering.
He just looked up and said, "You're in my bubble."
I love my boy.

International Baccalaureate (IB)

Andrew has started his IB program at Southridge. I found this link to explain it:
Wikipedia - International Baccalaureate Diploma Program

Andrew runs fast!

Southridge vs Beaverton XC meet:
Andrew runs 5000m in 18:08, for 10th place overall!

Weekend Sports Update

I did not see any sports this weekend, but the internet tells me:

Andrew had TWO XC meets:
Friday's Bill Chapman Invitational he ran a respectable 18:34.
Saturday's Track Mt. Assault did not go so well, but I don't know what happened yet.

I did notice Felipe is back! He ran with Andrew on the Beaverton Track Club for awhile.

Mali's team lost Sunday 1-0 in the first game for their new coach. They have two games next weekend.

Mali wins!

That's the swim meet news through the grapevine. I don't know what events or anything else - hopefully more news will be reaching me soon.

I am stuck at work. I even had to cancel my golf game with my dad and brothers tomorrow. Wednesday I go work in Portland for a couple of days.

Swim Meet

Mali had a great swim meet! She won her freestyle - or at least her heat - and won the backstroke easily. Her freestyle relay won easily too.
Andrew stayed home sick - he has a sore throat again.

Grandpa Turns 70!

Huge birthday bash for the old man - Over fifty people at the house - and still there was food leftover! LOTS of family and old friends there to help him celebrate. The brothers played a lot of lawn darts. Andrew won money, mostly at the Hillbilly (Ladder) Golf game. Denny's lawn-dart injury from the night/early-morning before (punctured foot, swollen), and David's still swollen finger (bicycle vs parked car) gave them excuses, but they narrowly avoided losing big to John and I in the lawn-dart game.

I took some photos of the grandkid group with my iPhone, but nothing worth sharing here. I'm hoping someone with a more substantial camera got a better shot, but it appears the distracted nature of the subjects is the issue. Below is a photo of Mali destroying the piñata fish on her first swing.

Mary brought the piñata, along with other activities for the kids. Mali spent most of the party carrying Cooper around. He was a maniac at the party, but it could have been lack of sleep and/or sugar intake contributing to that. Dalton and Conner spent most of their time playing with the new lawn beanbag game. Rylin was grumpy, but I finally got her to acknowledge my existence by allowing her to chase me around the yard.

Andrew gets a 5!

Andrew gets a 5 on his AP US history test - the highest grade possible! Any grade 3 or higher qualifies the class to count for college credit.

Andrew called and paid $8 to get the results early. Folks not as excited about the test results have another month or so before the news is mailed out.

Gogo's: Fail. Star Trek: Fail. Transformers 2: Fail.

An evening of disappointment!
Andrew and I headed out to Andrew's favorite restaurant: Gogo's Mongolian Grill, only to discover it is now: Gogo's Hamburgers and Salads.
It took as a minute of acute disorientation before we sorted it out.
- First - the giant fiberglass cow in front of the preparation bar.
- Second - the empty preparation bar, except for stacks of tomatoes and onions. The bar held no noodles, no broccoli, no sprouts, no chopped peppers; onions; pineapple, no steak; chicken; prawns; tofu; sausage, and no create-your-own-sauce.
- Third - No large, circular Mongolian grill.
The Mongolian grill-master was there, he's always there, but he was missing his grill sword, and standing behind an order screen. As I looked at him in confusion, he asked, "What can I get for you?"
I managed to stammer out "Mongolian grill?"
He pointed to the new menu board behind him. "No more Mongolian grill. Hamburgers now."

I let the folks behind us go ahead while I pondered this news. I looked at Andrew, who was wanting someone to punish for this travesty. He said, "I'm not eating here!" And so we left, driving back the other direction to go to our second-favorite spot, the Thai restaurant on Scholl's Ferry, where the waitress already knew our order of chicken salad rolls and fried chicken won-tons.

Then, I renewed my hatred of distribution monopolies. The new Star Trek movie is still only in Regal theaters, and they conspired to have no showtimes between 8:00 and 9:40. This killed my plan to take Andrew and Matias to see it. Instead we went to see Transformers II. This was not a fair trade, as there was at least an extra hour of nothing but CGI robots loudly fighting each other. As is usually the case, the first movie far outshines the sequel.
However, because that was the first day Transformers II was in theaters, the next showing was sold-out. We bought tickets for the following one, and walked to the mall and got ice-cream at Cold-Stone.

Father's Day Weekend

The weekend was full of soccer and ballet. Mali had three soccer games and her big ballet performance. Andrew and I had a very nice Father's Day breakfast at Tom's Pancake house.
Here's some photos from the ballet. More on Flickr, especially another great Mali header.

Kids!

I have the kids!

Paint Explosion

Grandpa Del successfully unclogs the paint sprayer!

Murray Hill Cafe

After a crazy day - a meeting with Zvi, a loooonnnnnng meeting with the lawyers, and then a late doctor's appointment where the doctor forgot about me and snuck out the back door with no one noticing,
I picked up Mali at home and Andrew at Tiana's and we headed down to the Murray Hill Cafe for dinner. On the way, we stopped at the Murray Hill substation to see what we could of Sunday's explosion that knocked out power for three hours. There was nothing to see but a bright shiny new transformer where the old one used to be.

Dinner was fine - though Andrew's lasagna had carrots in it, which just seems crazy to me. Mali ate half of her gnocci with chicken, and I had no trouble finishing off my ravioli and Andrew's leftover sauce (I left the carrots also.)
I dropped Andrew off at a friend's house on the other side of Weir, and then Mali took me on a tour of the new neighborhood, showing me where some of her friends lived.

Andrew's birthday

Andrew appeared to like his second birthday present from me: The Game of Real Life. He opened it in the car on the way to breakfast at Tom's Pancake House. I watched him very much enjoy his happy birthday song phone call from his grandparents while also enjoying his chocolate-chip pancakes.

We picked up the other Andrew on our way home and I dropped them at the house.
Later: Andrew was surprised with a party at Kyle's house Saturday night. I think his birthday was a great success.

Happy Birthday, Andrew!!!!!

I'm taking Andrew out for breakfast this morning - Tom's Pancake House, where I will drink lots of coffee and eat cinamon roll French toast. Woohoo!