Marching Band

Tim started his college career last Sunday with Marching Band Camp. They worked hard for 3 days to prepare for Azusa Pacific University opening football game last night. It was the first football game I had attended in MANY years. Unfortunately, for 23rd ranked APU they were playing the number 1 ranked Carrol College from Helena, Montana. It wasn't pretty for the Cougars.

But hey, the band sounded really good. It's a small group compared to what he was use to at San Dimas. However, their commitment to music and their desire to be there makes a huge difference. It was fun listening to them and watching their half-time show. Hopefully, at the next home game I'll be able to use Ken's camera and get some better pictures of the band.

Here are few from last night.

Click on the group pictures to find where Tim is!

Happy 18th Birthday Round 1

September 12, 1991 was Tim's first birthday. On that day his "middle name" name's sake, Ron Collins gave Tim a present. On the outside of the card it said, "Do Not Open until your 18th birthday." Well, it just so happened that this August Ron was back in L.A. for his 30th High School Reunion. So we decided it would be okay for Tim to open this 18th birthday present a little early.

So tonight we met up with Ron at In & Out to open this present. Of course, there was 18 years worth of dust covering it (my bad).

The gift was the complete set of 1990 Upper Deck Baseball cards, steal sealed.

Tim and Ron (and Mark of course) and the 18th birthday present.

Tim reading a birthday card, written 17 years ago. (I haven't read it yet so no idea what Ron said way back then).

94 Years Young

On this date, 94 years ago Helen Larson was born. Of course, her name wasn't Larson then, but I don't think I've ever heard her maiden name.

Today all the kids and all but 3 grand kids and many of the great grand kids joined together to have cake and celebrate Grandma's birthday.

Helen took a fall a couple of weeks ago and ended up taking an ambulance ride to ICU for a few days. The doctors seem to think it was her heart but can't be sure without doing more extensive test that all feel would not be worth the risks. She seems to be doing fairly well and in very good spirits.
Tomorrow her church, is having a potluck in owner of her 94th birthday. I'll try to take more pictures.

GATE Program for Mark?

Yesterday we finally received the letter from the school district indicating that Mark qualified for the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) Program. The hard part is for him to experience it to the fullest, he needs to go to change schools.

He really doesn't want to leave his current school. The letter indicates that if he stays at his current school, they will work at giving him a more challenging curriculum.

I tried to call the principal this morning but didn't hear back from her. In talking with the Admin. Asst. it sounds like it could be no more than giving him extra work. Which I'm afraid will come across to him as "punishment." I'll have to try again tomorrow to talk with the principal and see what we can do.

End of a Dynasty?

Back in the home schooling days, Tim went on a tangent that he wanted to learn how to bowl. And being the mom I was (and still am) I signed him up for the "Learn to Bowl" class through the local Parks and Recreation program. He had a good time and wanted to continue. During the time we were home schooling he played in the bowling center's Home Schooling Youth League. After we completed the home school stage of our lives Tim continued in the regular youth league. When Annette left Covina Bowl to form Turtle Bowl we moved with her. Tim has had many partners and teammates during bowling. But the last 2 or 3 years he's been bowling with Carlos and Peter. During that time they have won most of their leagues. Carlos is just amazing with a 0 handicap. Peter is also a very strong bowler with a very low handicap as well. The bad part of that is they have to be "on" every week or they loose to the other teams who have the higher handicaps.


With Tim's fall schedule he won't be able to bowl in the Fall 2008 league, so it was nice that he was able to end this season as part of the champion team. Here's the team of Peter, Carlos, and Tim after today's banquet and awards ceremony. (Don't they look excited)

End of the Week

This has been a very long week. Lots of training with our Student Services Student workers, which for the most went well, except for a "typo" in one of my PowerPoint slides. But I don't want to talk about that.

The next two weeks will be insane, but it always is in August. This year a little more so with the Eiro project. But hey, keeps me busy and off the streets!

This is DCW which stands for Dead Cat Walking, (but DC for short). Yep, Erwin named him. He's over all a pretty cool cat. He was born May 31st, 2007, while Tim and I were in Boston. As of last week he's the only cat in the house. His mom, Nazzi, decided to get outside again for the second time and she won't come to Erwin. (I think she remembers the bath he gave her after her previous vacation outside.)

We joke that DC is a dog trapped in a cat's body. More times than not when you call him, he will come to you. He doesn't mind being "patted" like a dog. But without a doubt he's my cat. He sleeps by my feet most nights or at the very least when he hears my alarm go off he jumps on the bed and wants to be loved on and actually every night before I go to bed he wants his head rubbed.

Back to the Olympics!

SeaWord, Legoland, and a Little work

This year as always we went to San Diego for vacation. Unfortunately, circumstances being what they are, Mark and I were only gone for a couple of days. APU's San Diego Regional Center asked if I could come down and do some training with them on Office 2007. Well, just about any reason to go to San Diego and I'm there.

So after church Sunday, Mark and I headed south to my favorite destination, SeaWorld. Had the chance to check out their newest night time show, with the dolphins. You just can't go wrong with dolphins. After fun as Seaworld we headed to the good ole Motel 6, where they leave the light on.

Next morning, training for a couple of hours and lunch at Applebees and back to SeaWorld.

After SeaWorld, we drove to Carlsbad for LegoLand on Tuesday. Another nice day with lots of fun. Except for the calls from work, but hey... makes me feel needed. Check me out with Indiana Jones!! OK, so he's made out of legos, it's as close as I'll ever get.

You can check out the pics at:

Mini Vacation 2008

Less than Exciting Final Night

Thursday night was the final night of the Kare Youth League Track meet held at Citrus College. Mark didn't have a stellar night. I was afraid it was my fault since the start time was an hour later and significantly closer I was able to fix him dinner. The "little" guy put away 4 scrambled eggs!

His first event was the 50 yard dash, he didn't run near as well as he did Monday night during the 100 yard dash.

Next he moved across the track to where he ran the 220 yard "run." Some of those poor kids had a really tough time running that far. Mark struggled with that one as well. And more or less walked across the finish line.
After the "track" events they moved to the field events. The first was the "heavy ball" throw.
For awhile Mark was in medal contention but was eventually eliminated. The last individual event was the baseball throw. Mark did ok, but not good enough for a medal.

Then there was a very nice closing ceremony, including a honor guard and one of Mark's coaches did a very nice job singing the National Anthem.

The last events of the evening were the relays. Which Tarheels (Mark's team) did very well taking first place! They ended the track meet in second place behind the dreaded Seminoles!
We found out after the track meet that his thigh was hurting him and that's why he couldn't run better. Regardless, of Thursday nights outcome he had a good time and is looking forward to doing it again next year.

Now we have the rest of the month off before we start football in the fall.

Mark and I leave for San Diego. Part work, part play. We'll go down after church and spend the evening at SeaWorld. Monday morning I'll teach at our Regional Center. When they are happy with the training, we'll head back to SeaWorld. When we're finished there, we'll drive up Carlsbad to go to LegoLand on Tuesday.

Then back to work on Wednesday!

Track Meet Night 2

Tonight was the second night of the Kare Youth League Track Week.

They started out with a team tug-a-war event. Tarheels ended up getting the Bronze medal, which they will receive tomorrow night.

Mark's group moved on to the "Individual Tugawar" event. Mark beat three other kids to meet his Tarhill teammate, Johnny. Which let's put it this way... Mark might be a little taller than Johnny, but Johnny probably outweighs him by a good 30 pounds. Very funny to watch that competition.

In the picture on the right you can sort of see Mark in his first round. With the expectation of the finals was his harder challenge.

The boys receiving their medals for Individual Tug-a-war.

Next up was the high jump. Didn't get any great pictures of it but here's one of Mark right before going over. The other picture is Mark receiving his Gold Medal.

They have a policy that the kids can only get two medals a night. Mark really wanted to run the 75 yard dash, but they wouldn't let him, even though he understood he wouldn't get a medal.

Tomorrow night is the final night which is held at Citrus College. So glad I don't have to drive to Arcadia again! Hopefully, he'll have more medals to talk about tomorrow night.

It's all about the music

Back in May or early June, Tim applied for a scholarship from the San Dimas Center Center. Thankfully, he received a $600 Scholarship from them. Yes, my 22+ years working at APU does get him free tuition, but there are a lot of other costs involved!

One of the agreements for the scholarship was he come to the center and thank the folks for their support. Because he was a musician he was also encouraged to play for the group. So today Tim and I visited the Senior Center. He first played "The Rainbow Connection" on French Horn and I accompanied him on the piano. (Thus the reason there's no picture of him playing the horn.)

He next played one of his favorite Disney toon's, Cruella Da Vil. The boy does like Jazz! And he plays it pretty well, he'd hoped that I would play along, but after our rehearsal last night, he fired me!

Love jazz, just don't play it well, YET! I wasn't at his Senior Luncheon when he received his "big" check from Prudy and Judy. So I took the opportunity to get his picture with them. Prudy, the "shorter" one of the three and Tim share a birthday. The day Tim turns 18, Prudy turns 91!
It was a lot of fun and the folks at the Senior Center really seemed to enjoy his music and appreciated him coming down. He received many "Good jobs" and "Good Luck" wishes on our way out.

KYL Track Meet!

Kare Youth League believes in giving a child a well rounded athletic experience. In the fall we play football, the winter, basketball, spring baseball and summer soccer. But for one week in August they run track. Tonight was the first night of this four day event that will finish on Thursday at Citrus College.

Tonight Mark participated in the "short" jump, long lunch, baseball throw, basketball shoot, and 100 yard dash.

Well the 100 yard dash turned out to be Mark's sport.

As you can see Mark is running away with the race.

He did a great job!

We get to go back to Arcadia on Wednesday for more fun and games. This being Mark's first year to participate in the track meet we have no idea what to expect the rest of the week.
The nice thing is we have the rest of the month off and start up with our second season of football the beginning of September.

Our Civic Responsibility

Pastor preached from Romans 13 today. I learned a lot about my pastor, for one he is very "political." He confessed that in the past he would allow his political views to overshadow almost everything else, until the Lord convicted him.

It was interesting in that he pointed out that Paul teaches us that our first civic duty is to submit to the government authorities. I had never thought about that. I always liked the passage from 1 Timothy 2. Where it talks about the need to pray for kings and those in authority, so that we might live in peace. The other passage, from 2 Chronicles 7:14 - If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (NIV).

But as Pastor pointed out, Paul clearly directs us to submit. The hard question is, when we don't submit to the authorities of the land, or we indeed failing to submit to God?

It is also our tendency is to rebel against authority, before one becomes a Christian we are in rebellion to God's word. Our sinful nature causes us to rebel and think we can do things ourselves.

Room to grow. I have never been a political activist by any stretch of the imagination. But I haven't always been the most supportive of our government leadership. With the presidential election coming this year, the need for prayer has never been greater.

BTW, the picture is from San Diego Wild Animal Park when we visited back in June. I can't rememb what type of bird he is, but he was beautiful.

Champions!

Thursday night was the Soccer championship for KYL.

During the first half "Kentucky" appeared to have scored. But it was ruled that the ball didn't actually go it but bounced off the top bar and went straight down. The other coach complained but only a little bit.

The first half ended 0 - 0.

It looked like we were going to head toward another shootout when we finally scored!

Just a few minutes later one of our midfielders who was just across midfield on our side kicks the ball back toward the goal. Amazingly enough it went over the goalie's head and into the goal! We need the game winning 2-0. It was really neat considering the fact the kids only won maybe 2 games all season! But they worked hard and got some breaks.

Next week is track, which Mark will be participating in for the first time. Should be fun!