beehive surprise

John's been doing quite a bit of work at our new house. A few weeks ago he was taking out the walls in the master bathroom, and discovered this:



An old, HUGE abandoned beehive in the wall. Sweet. How fun that must have been to live with. I'm convinced that the previous occupants were either both blind and deaf or drunk, or perhaps all three. Not only did they not see or pay attention to the obvious disrepair all around them, but they apparently couldn't hear the insane amount of noise that thousands of bees in their wall would have created.

Last week John mentioned the beehive once again and I asked him why he hadn't removed it yet. I figured it was long gone by then.
"I didn't want to destroy it in case the kids at school want to see it," he answered.

Oh, okay, good thought I guess. I better find a way to write to someone at school and ask them without sounding like a crazy person.

I didn't have our science teacher's email address so I wrote to the twins' teachers and asked them to forward it along, admitting that this was perhaps the strangest email I'd ever written. I got a very quick answer back from the science teacher, "YES! I'd love to have it, we're talking about insects right now. Fantastic!"

So John removed the hive as carefully as he could, but managed to only keep about half of it intact. Still, that was enough to fill a good part of a huge plastic storage container, and I brought it to school. The science teacher was thrilled.

This morning John said, "I have a bunch of badly termite-chewed scrap lumber we removed too. Do you think..."

Um, sure. Load it up, I can bring that in this week.

hooray number 103

On saturday Erin had her first official competition as a Highland Dancer, which is something she's wanted to do since about week three of dance lessons last summer. She's been asking when and where she can begin competing for many months. She's registered with the american highland dance association and has her regulation dancer's photo card and her regulation dress highland kilt outfit and finally seemed all set. We picked a very local small-ish competition hosted by her own dance school as her first contest, which unfortunately conflicted with her sisters' softball game, so John and Kate and Allison couldn't be there. But Uncle Brad and her cousin Jacob and his mom Cindy came to watch and cheer her on. It was a cool, overcast day that threatened to rain off an on, so we even had some Scottish weather for the event. First, some warm-ups after everyone signed in. Erin's class partner since day one, Andrew, the only male dancer in the school and in this competition, was set to compete also. Erin and Andrew are registered beginners, which is the lowest class of dancer you can be if you are seven years old or older. Besides the two of them, I wondered how many more beginners we'd have today and as it turns out, there were six more. I didn't recognize a couple of the girls so they must be from out of the area, but the rest of them I did know, I just didn't know they are beginners because they are older than Erin and Andrew, have been dancing for much longer, and are in more advanced classes at the school. As soon as I saw who Erin would be competing against I knew this was going to be a rough contest. Erin didn't seem to mind. She competed in four dances overall and I thought she did really well. The lone judge was flown in from Denver for the day for this event. Her last dance is one of the "national" dances and requires a different outfit. Video of her last dance, "The Lilt" (the dancers had to wait for the piper to tune up, this was after a break) Afterwards she posed with her teacher, who told me she thought Erin did really well. Here are all the beginners lined up ready to hear how they placed at the end of the whole competition. The adult second from right is an experienced Irish dancer, who started doing Scottish as well a few months ago, so she's a "beginner"? Um, yeah, sure. The tall dancer in the middle is eleven and has been dancing for 2-3 years, and the girl second from the left is Andrew's older sister, Elizabeth. She's nine and has been dancing about 3 years also. She's GOOD...really good. Everyone knows that. She does both Irish and Scottish dancing and seems to be a natural at both. I thought for sure she'd be competing in a higher class, but nope. My heart kind of sank when I saw that Erin would be up against these three dancers in particular. I watched Erin and the other beginner class dancers as objectively as I could and I thought Erin fell somewhere in the middle of the pack. She wasn't the best, but she sure wasn't the worst either. For each dance the top six dancers were given medals. After the top six was announced for the first two dances, Erin hadn't won anything, and I was kind of stunned. She was better than some of the others, I know she was. Obviously I'm missing something here...then for the third dance, Andrew was announced as the second place winner, but his sister didn't place in the top six at all. Huh? Andrew and Elizabeth's parents were seated right next to me. "What the...?!? That isn't right!" said their mother after she heard the results. Their father's jaw just kind of fell open in confusion. Erin didn't place at all in the third dance either. Then the last dance for the beginners, and Erin was announced in place #6 which earned her a medal, Andrew got #4 there if memory serves. The results of the third dance notwithstanding, Elizabeth placed first in the other dances, making her the winning overall beginning dancer, no surprise there, she really was the best and the recipient of a big trophy. And finally all the competitors from all the different competition levels from Erin's school posed together.   We both congratulated Elizabeth and Andrew, who we've come to know quite well. Erin did great, I'm really proud of her, I only told her only that. She's now put this day behind her and is looking forward to the next competition, out of our local area and about 2 hours away in the beginning of June. Most importantly, I want Erin to have a good time, but I also wouldn't mind seeing a different judge there.

easter saturday

Easter itself seems to involve enough stuff to do but no weekend is uneventful around here and the day before Easter, Erin and Kate volunteered to be in a local Easter parade with some of the other Highland dancers.


They first posed for some pictures with a local pipe and drum band that they would be following in the parade, and then they were off.


It was a really short parade route of about a half mile and they stopped at about mid-way to perform a dance for the crowd.





Then they came around the block and back to the beginning and did the route a second time. John and Allison passed out candies on one side of the street to kids along the parade route, and I passed out candy on the other side. And Erin and Kate got to practice their "parade wave" while walking down the street in between dances.

Later than afternoon the twins had a softball game and they had a great time. Kate made another out while playing first base again. Allison had a couple of great hits and here are some of the better pictures I managed this time:

scavenger hunt

On friday the girls colored a ton of eggs and this morning a finding they baskets they headed out to the backyard to find all kinds of plastic eggs filled with different candies. I got started turning those colored eggs into deviled eggs while they were hunting,

Later, with two desserts and the eggs finished, we headed up to Grandma's where "EB" had a whole scavenger hunt set up. Each of the girls got a decoder chart:

And after a location was revealed by the code the girls raced off to that place and there each of them had another clue to solved.

Extra goodies were hidden away along with the new clues and some more colored eggs. I think they visited 5 locations at Grandma's house in all, and by the end they had a truly impressive haul.

Jeff's dog enjoyed the easter hunt also. He found a couple of eggs before the girls did he and decided they were delicious.



And we finally got to sit down and enjoy the true meaning of easter--ham.

the easter miracle

We had a truly remarkable easter miracle on this fine easter sunday!
Here's the back story:
Late last summer I stocked up on extra summer clothes for the girls: bathing suits and cover ups and swim shirts and sandals. All these things were purchased (on clearance!) in preparation for our december trip to Hawaii, at which time finding good kids' beach clothes would be a lot tougher. The girls always wanted flip-flop sandals but I always preferred getting them a pair that doesn't slide off and has a better sole, so that they could wear them to school on hot days and to amusement parks and such where a lot of walking is involved.

But I happened to see some flip-flops which looked better-made than most and on sale very cheap. I bought them and asked the girls to only wear them to their swim lessons so that they would still be in decent enough shape by the time december came around. It turns out that they wore them a little more than just to swim lessons--they often liked wearing them around the house for some reason.

One day about two weeks before our Hawaii trip I saw one of Erin's flip-flops on her floor and I asked her to put her shoes and some other things away. After a couple of minutes she told me she couldn't find the other sandal so I told her to look under her bed and under her dresser and in her closet, but still nothing. So I began looking with her all over her room and I couldn't find the missing sandal either.

For the next two weeks I looked everywhere, and I mean, really, everywhere around the house for that sandal. I was tremendously frustrated and I wasn't going buy another pair. The other shoe was at home, certainly, somewhere. Erin thought the other sandal could be in the backyard, which I thought seemed strange since one was in her room, but we looked there too. And John looked.

So our Hawaii trip came and went and Erin wore her other sandals while we were there, and we still saw no sign of the missing sandal when we returned. I figured we'd never see it again until we packed up to move.

Then today while the kids hunted for easter eggs in the backyard, Erin found the missing sandal:



And now I know what exactly to do if we ever lose something at home again. Note to self: It's much easier to spread out some candy-filled eggs and have the kids find what you are looking for rather than spend two weeks turning the house upside down.

divide and conquer

For the past two weeks we've had tons of rain so the twins' first two softball games were cancelled, but finally we had a sunny saturday and the girls would finally get to play. Unfortunately for me, Erin had an activity scheduled in another town at about the same time so John and I had to split up and I didn't get to see their first game. I wouldn't get to take any pictures of their first game either, and that is equally upsetting. Instead, I gave a camera to John and since I have a friend on the opposing team who is much more skilled at taking sports photos than I am, I did end up with some really great photos. The girls have had several practices with their team and they were raring to go.



Things are a bit different in this league. The softball fields for the 6 year-old division is smaller and they don't keep track of "outs", or even make a runner who is tagged out leave the field.


According to John, the twins played pretty well. They each did okay at hitting and fielding, and Allison in particular ran the bases just as hard and fast as she could.

Here is Allison batting:

And here is Kate playing first base, and successfully making an out at first.

It sounds like the game was tons of fun and I'm sorry I missed it, but there is always next week, if it doesn't rain anyway. Meanwhile, Erin wanted to dance in a small local Scottish fair along with a few others from the dance school. I recently ordered Erin her own official Highland dance competition outfit (used...wow those things are expensive) and here she is before the performance along with her teacher, who would also be dancing.

This was a small fair and a small stage compared to the huge Highland games we have taken the kids to each year, but it was good for Erin to have some extra performance practice because next month is her first real competition. A local pipe band provided the music for the dancers.

And there were 6 dancers altogether, including two of the three instructors at the school. Erin was by far the youngest, and the only beginner. She danced one number on her own.

And after the others danced individually or in pairs they did a final dance together.

Afterwards the dancers posed together for some pictures and they also posed with the band since one of the drummers is the father of one of the dancers.

I know there are another couple of games that Erin and I will likely miss because of upcoming dancing events, and I guess for now I should just be glad that between John and I we can manage to get everyone where they want to be. Don't ask me what we're going to do when the day comes when all three of them have different activities at the same time.

skiing with Jonny

Jonny Moseley (US Olympian 1998, 2002: Gold Medal in Moguls) grew up skiing at Squaw Valley. He skied on all of their youth and racing teams and after he won his gold medal, they named a popular ski run after him. He now is some kind of mountain host for Squaw and one day while we were there the public was invited to "Ski with Jonny". Our friends the Hsiens saw the signs for this opportunity first and told us about it. Diana was determined to participate and I agreed to go also, but when the time came she backed out and John joined me.

I wondered how this would work. It was a busy saturday, would 1000 people show up to ski with him? Here he is with the striped jacket at the designated meeting place. There wasn't 1000 people, but there was probably 50.



He talked for a minute and took some photos with people and told us which lift to take and where to meet next. He said we'd start off skiing some intermediate terrain and gradually build up the difficulty and anyone who could keep up could follow along.

John and I took the first lift and got to the next meeting place, where we ran into another Olympian, Peekaboo Street (blue coat, white helmet). I know that was her because her name was embroidered on her jacket. I don't think Jonny knew she was there, he seemed surprised, they talked about doing a challenge together sometime during her visit, and Jonny's group skied off.



We went down an intermediate run first and it was impossible not to be astounded by how amazingly FAST this guy skis. I mean, there's fast, like some people think I ski, and fast like I see other people skiing on any given day, and then there is Olympian fast. I've never seen anything like it.

After the next run John decided not to continue on this little tour and he waved me on ahead. About 30 others felt the same way.

And we were left with a core group of about 18 or so and we headed to advanced terrain. I was skiing as fast as I possibly could to keep up with him, and I never did. I was always 20-30 seconds behind him at best, which maybe doesn't sound like much, but when you're flying you cover a lot of ground in that amount of time.

I was skiing with a really, really, good group of people and NO ONE could ski at his pace. Mercifully, Jonny always started the run and stopped at about half way down. There he chatted with people and waited for us to catch him, then kept going.


And he not only skied but went over boulders and did flying flips and twirls and "helicopters" and grabbed his skis in mid-air and landed perfectly again. I don't have photos of any of that, I could never predict when he would decide to do these things and I was too awe-struck to work a camera in those instances anyway.

We skied with him for 2 hours, and I was one of only two women who stuck out the entire time. We ended the tour by going up KT-22 and going to the famous run which is named after him. It's a steep, loooooooong run covered in moguls, and I tried to take a video of him, but as always, he was gone in a flash.