Rest in Peace, Indi

You were such a good dog.

Winter, 2008

Spring, 2011

  We miss you.  

Love, Us

Bulldog!

Fire Service Program "Bulldog" Award

October 2010

Ben received the first Bulldog Award of the year, which was voted on by classmates and awarded to recognize positive individual behavior within the Fire Service program. The Fire Service Chief told us he felt they made a really good decision awarding it to Ben.

Awarding Criteria:

Safety minded

Shows leadership qualities

Gives the most effort

Always is willing to help others

Always shows respect for other students, instructors, and others

Exhibits self discipline

Exhibits positive behavior

Good attendance

Work book is up-to-date

Neatness and appearance

Always ready to perform

Opportunities and Invitations

Last week, we went to Motion Boardshop in Seattle, and Ben brought his newly built longboard to show the shop owners and builders there what he had built.  They seemed impressed.  He had been to the shop a few times before, asking them questions and seeking input about materials and board-building methods, so it was fun for him to show them his finished board.   At the same time during our visit, a traveling sales rep for Rayne Longboards (Vancouver, BC) was there offering freebies and promoting their longboards.  The rep saw Ben's board, also seemed impressed by his work and design, and asked him several questions about the board and his building experience.   He asked Ben if building longboards was something he might like to do in the future.  Ben smiled and replied, "I'm doing it now."  :)

The rep appeared delightfully surprised by this forthright answer and suggested Ben come visit their factory store in BC in order to talk and hang out with their main board builder.  He said there are only a handful of good board builders and designers, so they're always looking for interested people.  Ben exchanged contact info with the rep who said he'd email soon. Ben wrote a nice follow-up note today to confirm his interest in visiting the shop.  We'll likely go there for a weekend to give him a chance to visit, observe, and meet people there.  Ben's quite exhilarated by this opportunity!

Re-Building a Bike

Here are a couple pretty photos of the finished bike Ben just rebuilt from an old bike someone gave him a while back. 

In order to make it look so nice, he took the old bike, stripped it down, sanded it, primed it, painted it orange (in a homemade cardboard spray booth in the back yard), got some new parts and a little help from a local bike mechanic, and then assembled it!  I think the new color choices are quite appropriate for a kid born on Halloween.

In case you're curious to see the transformation, here's the old bike frame, and some pictures of the process.

Old bike frame

Back yard spray booth

Primed bike fork

Primed frame

Painted frame

Cool orange pedals

Matching chain

Happy New Year

We enjoyed having some of Ben's camp friends over for New Year's this year.  A few were from out of town, and some were local.  They had a good deal of fun together.

  

   

Lani, Susannah, Emily, Ben, Kitty, Hayden, Tava, Dan

Josh and Aaron 

 

There was much time to relax, talk, and hang out. 

  

They made some beautiful designs with all the pattern blocks. 

  

 

 Susannah and Emily

 

Ta da!

Fun with Words

Life is more fun when you play with words!  Wordle is a great way to do this.  I took the words from the little bio on the side of my blog page, and used their program to create this word cloud.

Ben at Camp

* Photos thanks to Kitty and Susannah

Windsurfing in Ashland, Oregon

Last month, Ben and I took the train to visit our good friends, Josh and Laura, in Ashland, Oregon. It was a lovely adventure filled with warm days, good conversation, and lots of fun. One evening, we went with their whole family to a lake where Laura's husband, Nick, took Ben and Josh windsurfing. They worked really hard trying to keep the sail up and catch enough wind to keep going. Nick was a great mentor for Ben. It was a wonderful challenge that Ben really enjoyed.

Wheat Harvest

It's harvest time on the Trinidad farm. Thanks to Cousin Margaret for these great photos. They still remind me of my Grandpa Ted, when he would take me with him to survey the wheat and ride the combine, oh so many years ago.

Happy Mother's Day

It was a beautiful day for a bike ride, so we rode our Xtracycles to the farmers market for a nice lunch with the family. We found some apples, pears, radishes, and asparagus at the market, as well as a ginger mint plant that I'll find room for in the garden soon. Of course, Don and Ben found a lovely bouquet of flowers for me as well. They're good to me.

Yesterday I took a few more garden photos while thinking about my own mom and grandma. These are for us. Happy day.

Red rhododendrons for my mom...
These are blooming so beautifully right now by the front door in the front yard. As a girl, I used to watch bees buzz in and out of them. I still do now. Thanks for planting them, Mom. And yes, I promise to deadhead them later this spring.

Forget-me-nots for my Grandma Lena...
She had lots of perennials in her back yard gardens in Quincy, so these remind me of her. I loved playing in her yard and picking flowers when I stayed with her during the summers.

Apple blossoms for me...

These are from the Queen Cox semi-dwarf apple tree that we planted in our front yard seven years ago. The blossoms are so big and beautiful this year. Let's hope they bring us lots of delicious fruit this fall.

Fun with Words

We've been playing lots of games of Bananagrams lately. Ben has loved the challenge of creating long words to include in his word lists.

Climbing Fun

Climbing Friends

A few of Ben's friends came over yesterday to help with a portion of the climbing wall.

Ben took a few test climbs...

Building an Indoor Climbing Wall

Ben has done a lot of indoor climbing with friends this year at Vertical World in Everett and Stone Gardens in Seattle. They were trying to decide if they might like to get a monthly membership to one of the gyms so they could climb a few times a week whenever they wanted. Then Ben noticed a corner wall in our garage that had some good climbing wall potential. And so the indoor climbing wall project began.

As usual, Ben did a good deal of research about what would be involved, talked with people, analyzed the space, made some designs, calculated costs, and set a project budget. After he figured out his plan, he began by cleaning up the garage and organizing things to make the space he needed. We made a couple trips to the lumber store for plywood, 2x4s, and screws, and he ordered some climbing holds and brackets for the wall. Then the real fun began.

Ben was happy when the supplies arrived.

He sorted and counted everything in order to plan a grid for the wall.

The climbing holds can be arranged in a variety of patterns along a grid so the climbing routes can be changed to make them simpler or more complex.

Stay tuned for more photos.

Bicycle Photo Fun

The good people at EcoVelo are having a bicycle photo contest this month. Their site "celebrates the beauty of the bicycle and the joys of everyday bike riding." I've enjoyed reading their posts, and the photos are terrific, so I thought it would be fun to participate by submitting a few of my own amateur bicycle photos. My favorite is #2, Gardening with an Xtracycle.

You can see all of the entries here. Feel free to post all kinds of nice comments about my photos. Thanks!

Happy Valentine's Day

Young love, 1984