Paper Airplane Flying Contest

What do you do in the evenings when it's getting dark at 4:30PM and you don't want to just turn on the TV or the Wii? You have a paper airplane flying contest. It was Drew/Mom versus Sam/Dad. The Drew and Mom team was called the "Lightning Bolts" and Sam and my team was called the "Gold Stars." Here are a photos of Sam with our plane (the second one shows our main rival in the background).




Here is a picture of the Lightning Bolt's plane, although I couldn't get a great shot of it because Drew claimed it was "top secret."



The contest had five rounds. Each person had to stand behind a line and throw their plane as far as possible. The plane that flew the farthest was the winner of that round. The "throwers" for each round alternated between kids and parents.

I won't brag about who won other than to say that it was a decisive victory. I'll let the score sheet speak for itself:

Drew's Journal #2

11/2/09
1:30 p.m.
Drew

"My dog Zeke"

I have a dog named Zeke. Zeke is a friendly, loving and comfortable dog. When he is outside and is energized up, he runs around the yard at a very high speed. He is funny to watch and play with. He is an alaskan malamute. Zeke is strong to pull sleds and to go into dog races. I know he is in the wolf family. He is black, white, and a little bit of gray. Zeke is a dog of prey. When I went fishing once I pulled in my claim and he bit it. He has killed chickens, birds and that's all.

Zeke likes to sleep anywhere in the house. He mostly likes to hop on the couch during the night. Sometimes he will just crash in his bed. He is sad when I leave for school. Zeke is lazy sometimes. Some people think he is scary. He is very, very happy when he meets somebody new. He is scared of only a few things. The vacum cleaner and the lawn mower. He thinks the vacum cleaner is a loud monster invading his sleep. He isn't afraid of the the lawn mower unless it is 3 feet away. Zeke is brave. He is bad because he breaks boards and he ever broke a hinge about 10 feet high! Zeke loves to run, swim, and sleep. I think everybody would want to have a dog like this. He also likes to explore. We have a big backyard. A lot of squirls are around. At about nine each night Zeke goes outside to start barking and howling at an animal on the other side of the fence. Zeke was born in Bend, Oregon. We got him at the age of 6 months. He was scared at first. On the ride home he hid his head.

Drew's Journal #1

Drew has been writing a journal as part of a school assignment. My understanding is that the teacher will give the students a topic or question and they have to write a paragraph or two on this topic. I'm going to try to post a few of Drew's entries, exactly as they appear on the lined paper that he writes them on.

"Why Kids Should attend"
Drew Wilson
11/2/09
9:15 a.m.

I think kids should attend school from ages 5 to 15. The reason is because if kids didn't attend they would be smart and couldn't get into a job. If I hadn't attend school and wanted to get a banking job, I wouldn't know how to add numbers. Reading is fun and I wouldn't be able to if I hadn't gone to school I wouldn't have met any friends. Men wouldn't be able to learn how to handle guns in the pioneer times. Girls wouldn't be able to learn how to prepare food. There are many reasons why people like kids, adults, toddlers should attend school.

Our daughter is artistic

Sam definitely got what very few artistic genes are spread between Missi and I. That girl absolutely loves art. Lately it seems like she has been coloring for several hours per day! I come home from work and am greeted by several pictures of hearts, butterflies, and our family. I'll have to try to take some pictures of some of this great artwork and post it here. Tonight I told the kids that I wanted to make something out of popsicle sticks. Drew - acting like the "too-cool" nine-year-old that he is - told me that he didn't want to do it. But Sam was really excited. She ended up making a star and then painting it. The center section ended up being a square of types and so she called it her "picture frame." How cool is that?

Here is a picture of Sam sitting up at the counter and painting her star (what you can't see is that she was also wearing her "footy" pajamas while doing this).

Halloween at our house

Here are a few pictures from Halloween weekend at our house. It was a lot of fun!


This is our attempt at an original,timely, and creative couples costume - we're the swine flu! I'm the "swine" (dressed as a pig) and Missi is the "flu" (sort of a play on the words flu/flew with fairy wings). It took a bit of explaining to people to let them know what we were but it went over pretty well.


Here are Drew and Sam in their costumes - Indiana Jones and the Cowgirl Princess


One thing this picture doesn't show you is the whip that Indiana Jones is carrying in his satchel!



Hey Dawg fans, check out this sign: "Will trade UW degree for beer. It has to get me something right?"


The Burger King, Peewee Herman, and Pancho Villa (also known as Andy, Rob, and Matt)



Indiana Jones and the Cowgirl Princess. I love Drew's expression in this one.


Here is Drew and his good buddy Jakob out trick or treating. Jakob dressed up as a knight and made this entire costume by hand!

Of course, Halloween night was made even better by the Ducks HUGE win over the USC Trojans. We're now in solid command of first place in the Pac-10, but we have several tough games to go.

Recap of a great weekend

This past weekend actually started on Thursday night, when our friends Ryan and Susan came into town and stayed with us for the night. They had come to Seattle to see the Ducks play the Huskies on Saturday and to see several friends, including our family. Ryan and Susan are some of the great friends we made while living down in Eugene for three years and we are thankful that our friendship has endured since moving to Seattle. They have two great kids - Cade and Avin - who Drew and Sam loved playing with.



Sam catching some air catching a football as she jumps into the pillows

Drew snags the football.


Cade doing his best Superman impression! Check out that air!


Sam and Avin "working" on their laptop.


Check out that smile on Avin's face - love that!


On Saturday we went to the Ducks football game against the Huskies. If you didn't already know, this is a HUGE rivalry game, despite the fact that Oregon has won the last six games between the two teams. The Husky fans who we tailgated with were remarkably welcoming and only gave us a bit of a hard time. We were fortunate enough to get great tickets from Jay Jones, and it was a blast to be able to watch the game with two VERY knowledgable Duck fans (Jay and Ryan Welch). And if you haven't heard - the Ducks rolled in a 43-19 victory.








Following the game we were at our friends Andy and Shannon's house for some Rock Band and pizza (sorry, no pictures).

Today was a really great family day. We finally got around to carving pumpkins with the kids. The two pumpkins we ended up with were (1) a queen with a tiara, and (2) a crazed/angry looking jack-o-lantern. Can you guess which one was Drew and which was Sam's?

My daughter is creative

I'm sure we've all read those blog posts by certain parents bragging on and on about how their kids are so awesome and so great, blah, blah, blah...Because I'm not a huge fan of those types of posts, I try to just keep it "to the facts" with my kids, i.e., I just post photos or very generic descriptions rather than raving on about how my kid will probably win the Nobel Prize someday. But tonight I was genuinely impressed so I thought I'd share. Sam got an arts and crafts kit awhile back. She got it out tonight while Drew and I were playing the Wii and when I turned around she had created this little spider, which she appropriately named "Charlotte." It was made from a little puff ball, some pipe cleaners, and a few little eyes. She even used some of the letter stickers in the kit to add her name to the bottom of the spider. How good is that?

Nice face decoration Sam

Operation Backyard Chickens

We are very close to embarking on the adventure of owning our own backyard chickens. I've spent portions of the past few weekends converting Zeke's doghouse (which he never used) into a coop and fencing off a portion of my yard into a chicken run. By this time next week we'll be the proud owners of four Rhode Island Reds. Why are we doing this you ask?

- We already spend nearly $4 on a dozen free-range, organic eggs each time we grocery shop. Why not just produce the eggs ourselves in an environment where we know that the chickens are being fed and raised naturally?
- It will be a good experience for the kids to help raise the chickens
- I've always wanted to give it a try

Now, all that being said, there is a chance that our dog will use his Houdini-like abilities to break into the Fort Knox-like structure I've created and help himself to our flock. Our dog is about the gentlest thing ever, but he is by nature a hunter, and he has killed mice and birds before. If that happens and he manages to serve himself up a chicken dinner, I'll just chalk this up to a fairly expensive and time consuming failed experiment. Certainly wouldn't be the first time it happened (and definitely wouldn't be the last!).

Here are a few pictures of the coop and run.

Our little kicker

This is Sam's first year of organized sports (not counting the ballet class she took last fall) and she is just absolutely adorable out there on the field. Her team is the Thunder Tigers and they play little 3-on-3 games. I love this first photo because you can really tell that Sam did her own hair before the game and she managed to get about three little ponytails sprouting out of her head. It was too cute.

Check out this typo!

My love/fascination for public typos has been well documented on this forum (see here and here and here). But this one may take the cake. By way of background...the people up here in Seattle are all atwitter over the fact that the Washington Huskies have a decent football team for the first time in about the last decade or so. And as a result of a close loss to LSU and a HUGE win over USC this past Saturday, the Dawgs have found themselves actually ranked among the top 25 football teams in the country. But because it is such a rarity for the Huskies to actually be ranked, check out what one online sports site did (please click to enlarge!):




Special thanks to the Shonk for tipping me off to this!

Blogging from a new computer

I think I blogged awhile back about how our 4Runner was broken into. Well, as a result, I am now blogging on a new MacBook Pro computer. I haven't fully explored all of the features of this awesome computer but it was definitely love at first...sight/touch/feel. This is a great computer.

Goodbye old friend

Well, he/she/it is finally gone. After being an integral part of our family since 2001, our old Volkswagen Jetta has finally flown the coop. Thanks to the amazing Craigslist, I was able to find someone who would take the Jetta off our hands for a little more than $1000. At the end of its time with me, the Jetta had over 195,000 miles and had lots of weird little quirks: the sunroof wouldn't enter, the fuse for the wiper blades would frequently blow, there was a huge hole in the dash as a result of a break-in, and the front passenger seat slid back and forth all the time. But nonetheless, the Jetta was a great car for and and very reliable to the end. We put a lot of miles on that car; while I'm not exactly sorry to see it go, we definitely have a lot of memories that we experienced with that car.

Tigard High Class of 1999 Reunion

I had a really great time at my 10 year high school reunion. It was tons of fun to reconnect with friends that I hadn't seen for a decade (just saying that makes me feel old)! It was interesting to hear where life has taken everyone and remember the fun times that we had back at good 'ol THS.

Family Pictures - August 2009

We were fortunate enough to have some family photos taken by the very talented Marcy Dorschel. Take a look!