Kids in a pile, and a summer hiatus

Nick and Anna got the idea the other day to pile up all of the blankets and pillows in the house... guess who was at the bottom of that pile:



That's right, Maria! The missing kid from all our photos. Maybe that's where she was the whole time....

Gentle readers, I want to let you know that I'm going to be taking a break from blogging for the month of August. There are two reasons. One, we're going to take some vacation during the month, so my posting would be sporadic under the best of circumstances. Two, and even more important, I need to build up my backlog of photos!

Being a little bit "behind" in the photostream gives me a lot more flexibility with each daily post - longer vs. shorter, for instance, which is influenced by the rest of my schedule for the day. We anticipate making a lot of memories during the last whole month of summer, and that will generate a ton of new photos.

So this is not a permanent goodbye, merely a "see you again soon", and I expect to be back in the swing of posting in the first week of September.

Have a great summer!

B Champs revisited

I was able to grab some more photos from Chelsea's camera, so I have a fresh round of pictures from the kids' B Champs swim meet that took place last week:











We are bursting at the seams with pride for our kids, none of whom have really been natural swimmers at the start. They are working with grit and determination to figure it all out, and I love them for it.

Lazy days, few and far between

In case you hadn't noticed, we keep a busy schedule during the summertime. Even so, we occasionally get the opportunity to hang out at the pool and do some swimming:





The weather in Philadelphia finally turned hot and sticky - not what we wanted, necessarily, but certainly what we expect for July. Truth be told, it's just more fun to go to the pool when it's hot outside! And in the same vein, we're looking forward to some time at the beach in a few weeks, hoping we get another good year of warm, sunny days and just-right water conditions.

Jonas Brothers concert!

Who are the Jonas Brothers?

That was the question on our minds Friday afternoon when my dad called. He had some tickets available to a Jonas Brothers concert that evening. Would we like to go? Pretty much all we knew was that the Jonas Brothers are a product of the Disney empire and are very, very popular with pre-teen girls. Our pre-teen girl and her older brother were each already committed to other plans for the evening, and we had been casting about for something to do with Anna. A concert? Why not?

We decided to take one of Anna's friends with us, a dear little boy we know from our swim club. His mom dropped him off to us and we were soon on our way:



Traffic was heavy in town - there was a Phillies game starting at the same time. By the time we made it to our seats, one of the opening acts was already on stage:



The show was sold out, so the arena was packed to the gills, and it was LOUD:



The music itself actually wasn't too loud - I've been to concerts at the Wachovia Center before which were absolutely painful. No, the loudness was supplied by the crowd. In between acts, there was a feature where you could send a text message to be displayed on the big screens over the stage. Pretty much all of the messages looked like this:



Every time a new message came up, there was a new round of screaming. And by the time we got to the main event, the excitement in the crowd had gone far beyond a fever pitch. Here's a brief video clip to give you a sense... make sure your speakers are not turned up too loudly before you play this:



My hearing was completely shot when we got out of there.

Jordin Sparks, formerly of American Idol, was one of the opening acts, and she put on a very energetic set:



As for the main event, well, they were pretty lively too:







Anna and her friend had a fabulous time, despite the fact that they didn't know any of the songs... indeed, we were probably the four most clueless and unaware people in the whole place that night. We do know that there are three Jonas Brothers, they are all fairly musical guys, and they've put out two platinum-selling albums of up-tempo pop/rock songs. We also know that next time they come to town, we're bringing earplugs.



A footnote: When we had gone into the concert, there were two dads who were tailgating in the parking lot. Presumably their wives and daughters were inside at the show. When we left, they were still out there, tossing a football back and forth in the blissfully quiet parking lot. An idea to remember for future teenybopper events....

"He became a swimmer this year"

The kids had their end-of-year swim team party earlier this week, and we'd received some advance warning that Nick might be getting an award. (The warning went like this: "Make sure Nick is there, and you should bring a camera.") Sure enough, the coaches presented Nick with the Most Improved Swimmer award, which has been presented annually for many years at our swim club, and is named for a young man who gave all his heart to the team before his untimely passing.

Our young man was beaming all night:



It was such a joy to see him win! For one thing, he couldn't stop smiling. He posed proudly for a lot of pictures with the other award winners, and at home in his room right now he has a little shrine he's created with his award, some ribbons he won at events this season, and some team memorabilia. Nick is competitive, and when he finally started tasting success this year, he got hooked.

I asked him the other night if he planned to swim again next year, and without hesitation he said, "Yes."

One more thing - the swim season here is pretty short, and from the first meet to the last is only about 5-6 weeks' time. Nick took about seven seconds off his freestyle time during that stretch, and he took about six seconds off his breaststroke time. He's going to be absolutely dangerous in the water when he starts to grow some more.

Many thanks to Kate for (unwittingly) providing today's picture; I have been trying to catch up with Chelsea all week for a picture exchange, and it never happened, so I, um, borrowed this picture from Kate's Facebook album. Thanks and sorry, sis.

End of the swim season

This week the kids are wrapping up their swim team season, which is a sure sign that we're on the home stretch of our summer. The final meet for my kids is B Champs, an all-day affair at one of the swim clubs in our league. Here's another look at Anna in the water for her first-ever swim meet, last week:



We have some great photos of the swim team award ceremony the other night, and I need to grab those from Chelsea's computer. Soon, gentle readers, soon....

Birthday at the racetrack

On Saturday we had a family outing to Philadelphia Park Racetrack, a horse track about 20-30 minutes from our house. My dad used to go with his friends when he was a young buck, and to honor him on his birthday we had his party out there.

Philadelphia Park has a picnic grove for families, and it's a great deal - free admission, covered tables and pavilions, and a nearby pavilion for wagering. They even have a nice playground for kids:





We brought hoagies (sandwiches), cake, snacks, and drinks for everyone. The weather turned out to be just perfect, and we had a great time all around.

Here we are by the finish line - this is me, my dad, his dad, and my kids:



I took an opportunity to snap a picture with my godparents... not sure where betting on horses fits in with my spiritual development:



Gramps wants to go out to the track again later this season... I think we'll have plenty of takers on a repeat.

How does our garden grow? Very nicely

With all of the rain we've had this season, it turned out to be a very good year to start a new garden. In recent weeks we've enjoyed an abundance of leafy salad, and we've started to get some tomatoes, too:



We've accidentally picked a couple of our carrots, thinking they were weeds in the garden, and those are coming along nicely. We're hoping for some peppers and some herbs from our herb garden, too.

Anna Week: The big swim

The biggest moment of Anna Week, even bigger than the first tooth, came on Monday, when she swam in her first-ever swim meet. Not only did she swim in a meet for the first time, she also swam the length of the pool without stopping or touching the wall for the first time. It was a crowning achievement after her first summer on the swim team.









She repeated her performance at our last regular-season meet just last night, making this a fitting moment to wrap up Anna Week. I'll have to see if we can gin up enough pictures of the other two characters to stage a Nick or Maria Week.

Anna Week: Out at the park (again!)

Anna and I had occasion to visit another local playground the other night, while big brother Nick had soccer practice. I used to visit this park when I was just a pup, so it was fun to see how it has changed over the years. Anna and I climbed everything there was to climb. Here she is during a break in the action:



I think I've mentioned recently that the weather here has been just spectacular of late. This was another routine July evening for us - sunny, beautiful puffy clouds overhead, low humidity, gentle breeze. We turned on the air conditioning today because it got warmer and humid with a front passing through, and it was the first time in three weeks that we'd run the A/C. Lovely.

Vegetables: Community college funding

I haven't served up a plate of virtual vegetables in a while, but this article from Slate caught my eye. It discusses a news item that I completely missed last week - a speech by President Obama in which he announced $12 billion in new funding for community colleges across the US.

Read the whole article here. This excerpt captures an important point that I gained from my experience teaching at our local community college a few years ago:

"Another reason to spend on community colleges: They're agile. If the university system is an ocean liner, community colleges are the speedboats of higher education. If they get more money and use it wisely, the thinking goes, they can produce results in a matter of years. After all, they're designed to respond to the needs of the local community. For example, LaGuardia Community College recently introduced a program to train designers in New York City. When the fishing industry started struggling in Massachusetts, Cape Cod Community College turned its focus to nursing and other health-care-related jobs. When Connecticut introduced its first casino, one nearby community college started training croupiers. For an administration looking for shovel-ready projects, community colleges can provide a lot of shovels."

Anna Week: Weekend fun

We spent Saturday afternoon attending a barbecue hosted by some friends from the kids' school. Since it was right in our neighborhood, we walked over there, and since we had to walk past our playground on the way home, it was only natural that we would stop by.

At the barbecue, Anna was blowing bubbles while the older kids had a watermelon seed spitting contest:





At the playground, Anna likes to ride the bouncing frog:



Notice me getting some bunny ears in this photo:



Anna Week continues tomorrow with a review of her daring performance in a swim meet Monday morning. Stay tuned!

Anna Week: Lost her first tooth!

All right, so I realized when I looked through my photo queue for this week that it's going to be all Anna, all the time. So I'm declaring this to be Anna Week.

First up: Our girl has been working a loose front tooth for a few weeks now, and at dinner on Sunday she finally broke it free, with the help of some corn on the cob:



The Tooth Fairy dropped by that night and left the traditional reward for a first baby tooth in our house: a crisp $5 bill, and a coin from another country. (The Tooth Fairy makes the kids figure out where the coin came from, and then find the country on a map. Tooth Fairy turns everything into a learning experience.) Subsequent teeth get a dollar coin and a foreign coin - the Tooth Fairy's generosity is legendary but has its limits.

Remarkably, Maria was the one who pegged the origin of Anna's coin from Sunday night, which was a 50-pence coin from England. I thought this would be tricky for Anna, because nowhere on the coin does it actually say England, Great Britain, or anything else. But Maria immediately recognized the portrait of the Queen, and said excitedly, "That coin is from England!" Nicely done, Maria! Well, almost. The next thing she said was, "She died in a car accident in Paris." One out of two ain't bad.

Linvilla Orchards

While our friends were in town the other week, Chels and the kids took everybody out to Linvilla Orchards to pick some peaches and raspberries. We feasted on the bounty from that trip for a solid week afterward. I was working that day, but my camera went along for the ride, so here are a few snapshots:













If you're in the Philly area, I hope you've been out enjoying the amazing weather this week. I've taken lunchtime walks every day, and at least once every day I've been stunned to a halt by the incredible blueness of our clear skies. The big white puffy clouds have been delightful, too.

Happy weekend to all!

Phillies/Reds game

Maria wins things. It's a talent of hers. She won a trip to meet Mia Hamm in 2006, she won an iPod touch in a raffle at Take Your Children to Work Day, and most recently she won a four-pack of tickets to a Phillies game. Monday night, we attended that game, and it happened to be one for the ages - the Phils walloped on the Reds for a final score of 22-1.

Since our game tickets were free, and since it was just me and the kinder, we decided to take a radical approach: We watched as little of the game as possible. Instead, as I told the kids, we would plan on doing three things. One, we would eat food. Two, we would play games. And three, we would walk around the park to see things. Since the kids never get to do all of this when we normally attend Phillies games, they were thrilled.

We decided to take the train and subway to the game, which is always a big hit - my kids love public transit:





You'll note that Nick, the most rabid Phillies fan in our household, is also the only one not wearing a Phillies shirt. Instead, he is flying the colors of Alemannia Aachen, a second-division soccer team in the German Bundesliga. Poor Nick was at a friend's house all day and didn't get a chance to change shirts before we headed to the game. Even so, one of the ushers at the game actually recognized Nick's soccer jersey - turned out he has a German son-in-law.

Anna loved the big statues outside the stadium, so she got a picture of herself with Michael Jack Schmidt, and then took one of me with the Hall of Famer:





Once inside, our first stop was a big playground the Phillies have installed inside the ballpark on the first base side. Again, since we normally go to baseball games to, um, watch baseball games, we'd never seen this before:







Next we got some food - there is a "Phillies Phood" cart especially for kids that is situated near the playground, so the girls loaded up on kid-sized hot dogs, soft pretzels, and juice boxes. This was a nice find - the items there were much cheaper than everything else in the park. Nick, who is very nearly a man now, opted for adult-sized food.

Then it was time for some games. One of my favorite things in the new ballpark is the collection of FREE kids' games located in the right field corner of the stadium. As the kids play games, they receive tickets, which they can then redeem for prizes. The games include a pitching area with radar gun, so you can see how fast you're throwing, and a run-the-bases game. They even have a giant baseball-themed pinball machine:















The kids visited the prize table, figured out what each of them wanted, and then worked together to rack up the necessary amount of tickets. This meant, among other things, that they played run-the-bases about ten times... they even got me in on the action:











At length we had earned all our prizes:



Now, with the Phillies having their own fun out on the field, we did sneak a look at the game and the scoreboard now and then. Here's how things looked in the fifth inning:



We actually sat down and watched the last couple innings at Anna's insistence - I think after all this fun she started to feel a little strange about how unconcerned we were with the main event. In any case, we sat down behind the right field foul pole and watched the Phillies top off the game with a six-run eighth inning. I had just been saying to Nick that the Phils were probably laying off the offensive firepower when Jayson Werth hit a grand slam.

So it was a great night at the park for us, a new experience all around, and young Nick was well pleased with the outcome of the game. Of course, if you're a Phillies fan, you had to know what would happen next - the Phils lost by one run in the game the following night. La saison, c'est la guerre.

Big splash on the 4th

On the 4th of July we went to the Kings' swim club in New Jersey for a picnic and some swimming. (The Kings are my aunt Mary Jean, her husband Marty, and their kids. It's their family name, not an honorary title.) While at the swim club, our Anna decided it was about time to start jumping off the diving board all by herself. When Anna decides to do something, nothing can stop her:





Later in the day, of course, it was time for fireworks. Here are our kids with some of their favorite cousins:



And here are the adults:



Nick had some fun attempting to photograph the show:



As the fireworks were, well, firing, the kids and I talked about how there were planes flying overhead on their way into Philly International. I told them it's been a dream of mine for many years to go out flying during the night of July 4th, in order to see the fireworks all over the landscape from above. Someday.

We have been busy bees!

It's been nearly a week since I last posted, and man, we have had an action-packed several days - in a good way! Beautiful weather, lots of time with friends and family, and a four-day long weekend to boot. I'll have lots of updates this week.

Wayback machine: June 2007

This year was actually the first in a long time that Nick was not playing Little League baseball. He played for his school team, but with rainouts and cancellations, they only ended up playing a handful of games. Here's our man in 2007, getting ready to crush a fastball:



This will probably be my last post for the week. I'll be out of the office tomorrow and Friday, and during that time, I'll be using computers as little as possible. Happy Independence Day!