Play update

Well both Julia and Lea are in the play but neither got a primary role. They were a little disappointed but still excited to participate.

Julia and Lea Try Out for the Play

Today Julia and Lea both tried out for the play at our Church. The play is called "The Silent Bells". They didn't try out for any particular part although there are a couple of parts for young girls. The try out involved reciting a short paragraph from some of the dialog for the play. It is a musical but neither Julia or Lea sang so probably wouldn't get a main lead part.

Both felt good after they were done so we will keep our fingers crossed for them.

Nicolas Writes His Name

At the start of the school year this fall Nicolas started in his pre-K pre-school and although he knew his alphabet and is an avid colorer and always interested in books he wasn't really writing letters and such. Well what a difference a few weeks makes because today he wrote his name on a card for our friend Carol's baby shower.

Well we were all pretty shocked because we thought he might just write the same letter over and over or something but instead he methodically wrote out N I C O L A S!

Well done little man and welcome to the world of writing!

Old College Friends

Last weekend we had a rare treat of a visit to the bay area from a few of Melissa's college friends Marybeth and Beth. They were in Santa Rosa touring the wine country and we went up for Saturday afternoon wine tasting and a nice dinner out. It was a lot of fun seeing Melissa interact with these friends and she appeared to be in college again! From the first moment they saw each other they were giddy reliving old times and drawing up old memories. They reenacted old 80's style dance moves and even called some other old friends back east late in their evening to reminisce about old times. Wondering where other friends were. We had a great time and stayed up late. Fortunately the significant others got along really well so we were able to enjoy the fun and the great food and wine!

Oh and yes we are wearing sun glasses at night in the photo above! Too cool for school!

Family Camp 2008!

This year over the Labor Day holiday we again went to our favorite family camp out at Redwood Glen family camp with our church. This is always a great weekend full of fun activities for the kids and adults. We have lots of friends there and really enjoy ourselves. We stayed in our regular cabin which we share with another family. There are marshmallow roasts, water rocket launches, hikes, singing, games, great speakers, all camp ice cream Sunday's and more!

We always have a ton of fun and the weekend crescendos around a "talent show" where anyone can get up on stage and do anything (that is appropriate for all ages) on stage for 3 minutes.

Here are some pictures from the weekend including some from the talent show where Julia and Lea sang a song from High School Musical of course.

Getting my repair mojo back!

For the last couple of months we have had a minor issue with the hot water lever to the faucet in our bathroom. Basically the handle had come loose and would fall off when touched. This was an annoying situation but it was not really clear how to fix because it was not clear how to re-attach the handle.

So we lived with it for while until finally I had a weekend with enough free time that I decided to tackle the handle. After studying it for a while I decided I had better just take it a part. The faucets are the ones that came with the house, Moen, and have a number of moving parts. After some dis-assembly I went to the Moen website and I was able to see a blow up picture of the very faucet we had and this enlightened me on the problem. It turns our there was a small screw inside the faucet itself which had fallen out and needed to be attached. I could not figure out how to get inside and I could not figure out how to get inside or get it off of the sink.

During that session time ran our and we had to live without that sink for a week. Ultimately I did discover how to get top off of the remaining faucet parts and get access to the screw that was deep inside the faucet.

After re-attaching the handle and aligning the faucet we were back in business!!

So after a shaky start I am back. Now if I could just get the grass in my back yard to grow evenly!!

Video from Florida

A few weeks ago we had a wonderful trip to Florida where we combined a little work and a lot of relaxation with Mom & Bill in Ft. Myers. Fortunately we had a video camera handy. We captured some fun video of the kids and good times there.