Sam had the ceremony that promoted him from a Wolf to a Bear. He has now earned his Wolf badges and will be a Bear next year. The ceremony was fun. Each older set of boys helped the next younger set change their scarf and hat to be ready for the start of next year.
The Tour of California came through here. I saw it again at the top of the most important climb of the day. The top 3 people came over the top all together. I also went to see the start. The start was interesting. It was good to see the riders while they were stopped instead of while they were racing.
We finally had the party we decided to have when Elizabeth was originally diagnosed with a brain tumor. Luckily, we were able to have the “Pokie’s Not Dead Party” instead of the other one. We had about 200 people over to the house. They made T-shirts that Elizabeth designed, bounced in the bouncy house, drank Karl’s now infamous 1-2-3 margarita’s, and all in all had a good time. We had good friends come and stay with us and help with the party for the weekend.
There are also a few pictures other people took here.
Elizabeth took Margaret to the eye doctor about a week ago. We found out that she has a pretty sever astigmatism. She needed glasses. Today we picked up her glasses. She is very excited about them. I think they make her look like she belongs in a lab with a bunch of beakers around. Check out the pretty flowers on the side view.
Katy has completed her first season of diving for her high school team. It was interesting to say the least. Katy was on the JV team. She was the only freshman on the team. She was put on this the JV team before the coach saw any of them dive.
It seemed as though every meet that Katy was in, the weather was as bad as possible. In her first meet, it was rainy and cold. We all waited around for a very long time waiting until things finally started. The other team ended up not showing up. They still had to dive, but they won that part of the meet by default. This was somewhat typical for the season. There were a few very good divers at a few of the schools, but all in all, it seems that diving is a very small part of the swimming program in local area high schools.
The funniest thing about the divers, is none of the high school pools have a hot tub for the divers between dives. They all tend to have rubbermaid cattle watering troughs for the divers to sit in while they wait. Even Santa Clara that is supposed to be a world class site has these. (Stanford has a real hot tub).
The diving programs were very unorganized at Los Gatos High. We found out that we should assume diving is the day before the swim meet that we got lots of mail about. We also figured out that if we went to the other high school’s website, we could generally find out more information about what was actually going to happen.
Katy seemed to have a good time with her first foray into competition. By the end of the season, she was one of the better divers on the team. She was the best coach for the team as well. Her Stanford coach has told her that if she keeps diving there, by the end of next season, she will make CCS.
I didn’t get a lot of pictures from the meets because of the bad weather and other factors. Here are a few pictures from her first meet. The next set of pictures are from Palo Alto High as well as an invitational all girls meet with Presentation and Mitty. I was very proud of her at the Presentation meet. On her 3rd (I think) dive, she came out too early and hit the board with her foot. It made a huge bruise that hurt her to dive for a while. During the meet, she just kept going like nothing happend.
She also competed in a US Diving competition where she did both 1-meter and 3-meter at Santa Clara.
This year for her birthday Katy decided that she wanted to take her friends roller skating. Everyone tried it (except for me) with varying success. It was a bit dark, so the pictures are what they are.
The last weekend for us for skiing in 2010. The kids have gotten a lot better this year. A couple of pictures here.
Sam participated in Choir for a Cure (or something like that). Margaret’s 4th grade teacher spends her time and has the kids do a choir performance and all the money she makes goes to some cancer charity.
Sam’s cub scout troop (along with lots and lots of other cub scouts) spent the night on the USS Hornet. It is parked as a museum at the old Alameda Naval Base. After the museum closed, all the cub scouts filed onto the ship and were assigned bunks for the night. We had a couple of meals on the ship as well as being able to wonder around the ship and talk to the docents. Sam said it was one of the funnest things he did with cub scouts this year.
Sam had his birthday party on his actual birthday this year. He had a bunch of friends go play laser tag. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.