Road Trip Day 2

Monday, July 6, 2009

The highlight of today was Crater Lake, the bluest lake I've ever seen. The lake was formed from a mountain that erupted and then sunk down into the ground, and then the caldera filled with water only from snow and rain. It doesn't even look real when you look at it. We stopped at the Steel Visitors Center and then made our way around the lake, stopping at view points and doing a couple of easy hikes. At one point, we were rushed at by hundreds of orange butterflies which was pretty entertaining. We ended at the Rim Village gift shop and bought a few souvenirs. Jeremy and Kaylynn both got pocket knives (scary!). Anna bought some rocks and Amy got a stuffed bear that she named Billy. I got my usual Christmas ornament.
I'm trying to think of some of the other details of the day that we will want to remember down the road, but I'm drawing a blank and my brain doesn't want to function at 11:3o at night. I know I did a lot of yelling at kids to stay away from steep ledges, some grumbling about making too many stops to see the same lake, lots of mosquitoes, and pink snow.

Photos of the day:

Jeremy at the foot of Vidae Falls. He and Dan hiked up a little further:


Emily and Amy with Phantom Ship in the background. Jeremy didn't think it looked much like a ship. The water is even more blue than it looks in this picture:


Anna with her blanket wrapped around her with Wizard Island in the background. It was pretty chilly on this side of the lake, and there were a lot of patches of snow, which was pink in some areas. We never found out why:


Playing in some of the snow:


The kids sitting in front of the full-service gas station. Apparently that's how it's done in Oregon? We thought it was pretty weird to have someone else putting our gas in. Another thing about Oregon--no sales tax.

Road Trip Day 1

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Between two cars and three drivers, we managed to drive about 12 hours to Klamath Falls, OR. We only had only one kid throw up, but it wasn't in our own car (Sorry, Lara!) We came equipped with not one, not two, but three barf buckets, but failed to send one on over to the other vehicle. We made good time, but when we got to the hotel we reserved, the pool was green, so we went elsewhere. The kids have now finished swimming and they're enjoying watching cable which they don't have at home.

Here are some pics of the day:

Blowing bubbles at a rest stop near Lake Shasta:



Mount Shasta in the background to the left:

Anna and Amy in front of Mount Shasta:



Welcome to Oregon:


We were amused by this sign at McDonalds (Yes, I know we hate McDonalds, but we needed wi-fi to find a new hotel.) "Parents are welcome to play in the toy." That just sounded funny to us:

Our Own Little Awards Ceremony

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Because of the kids being at four different schools, sometimes it is difficult logistically to get to the awards ceremonies. Luckily my kids don't seem to be traumatized when I can't make it. So we try to make something special of it at home--a mock awards ceremony at dinner. Here are couple of pictures of our grand event, with Dan as the Principal and Jeremy as Vice Principal:

Anna received an award for A/B Honor Roll and a certificate for completing her AR (Accelerated Reading) goals. Great job, Anna!



Amy got Principal's Honor Roll, and a certificate for reading at Level 24. I love the look of mock surprise in the second picture:



We also had party blower/noise maker thingies (I don't know what they're called.)

I'm thinking next year will be better for assemblies because the girls' schools are swapping bell schedules, so as long as they keep their assembly times the same, it will be perfect. But knowing my luck, that will probably change too, and I'll be in the same boat. But if that's the case, we've got it covered!

May

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Believe it or not, my life is filled with things other than books, period dramas (*edit for clarification: I'm talking about movies, not hormones) , and Star Trek. Here are some scenes from May (minus our camping trip, which I'll put in another post).

Some trampoline action from Amy:

Anna and Amy decided to get dressed up in special outfits to play Wii Tennis. They look like champions, don't they?



The school on our street recently put in a digital marquee that lights up the entire street. We feel like we live on the Las Vegas strip. I talked to the principal, and he's at least going to have it turn off at 8 p.m. instead of 9.



This is just a super cute picture of Kaylynn and her cousin Emily:



Amy got to go with Dan and a scout troop that he helped with a Railroad Merit Badge to the Orange Empire Railway Museum:



Amy is quite the creator. Give some paper and boxes and she'll make just about anything. Here she has made a bunny getup. Sometime I'll have to do a post of all her creations:



Anna was in her class play, "It's Electrifying." She was a crazy electron:



I feel like maybe I already put these on here, but just in case I didn't, these are pictures of the kids working on Dan's Chargers blanket that we gave him for his birthday:

So that's May, except for a wonderful camping trip to Barton Flats. Pictures soon to come!

American Lit Chick Flick: The Buccaneers

Thanks to the convenience of my new laptop along with Netflix instant play, I watched "The Buccaneers", a BBC miniseries based on an Edith Wharton novel. The Netflix instant play is great because you can stop watching the movie, and when you start again, it's in the exact spot that you stopped, unlike our DVD player. This is great, because I fall asleep easily and then, of course, there's life that interrupts. It's four or five hours long, so it took a couple of weeks to watch.

I had never even heard of this one until it presumably popped up on a recommended list, I don't really remember. It's disappointingly lacking in handsome male actors (I'm shallow, I know) and that feel-good romantic aura you get with something like Pride and Prejudice, but it was tragically gripping after about an hour or so. Here's a summary from Amazon:

Deemed nouveau riche and shunned by elitist New York society, sisters Nan and Virginia St. George, along with their friends Lizzy Elmsworth and Conchita Closson (Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino), try their luck in London. The girls' New World spontaneity and impertinence constitute nothing less than a social invasion of Old World society and they soon find themselves courted by a coterie of fascinated admirers. But as the old and new worlds come to clash, something has to give.

There's some ugly stuff in this one--marital abuse, desperate affairs, etc., but I liked it enough to want to read the book. Apparently it was unfinished though.

I definitely feel grateful to live in this time and have more choices and options than these women depicted in the 1870's. So, while there's no Colin Firth in this one, I'll end up giving my own wonderful husband a few more kisses (when he gets home from Oklahoma, that is!)

Here's the one video clip available on YouTube:

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