An Afternoon Affair with Art

I was asked to take part in painting a picture of a horse at my art class at Northwest Art Center, an art studio in Duvall, for an silent auction to raise money for the art center. I painted a close -up of a green/blue horse's face with an orange/red backround. At the auction I watched as Mom was outbid by two ladies battling for my horse. One of them finally won by just paying the guaranteed buying price of $150.00.

Emma's 12th Birthday!!!

The day before my birthday my dad and I picked up my friend Cheyenne and went to Starbucks Coffee and got drinks. Chey slept over that night and went to church with us on my birthday. After shopping and arriving home again, Chey and I went dunking for marshmallows: a big bowl of whipped cream with a jumbo marshmallow hidden inside and chocolate sause drizzled on top.
See an image Dad took on his phone here.

Later that evening we all watched "The Spy Next Door", a movie from Netflix with Jackie Chan in it. Mom and I took Chey home at around 8:30 and came back and went to bed.

-Emma

Ostling Birthday Party for October, November, & December Birthdays

I don't turn 12 until December 5th but my mom's side of the family combined 3 months of birthdays together, October, November, & December, this year so I got to have an early birthday party. We held it up at our neighboring cousins, the Ostlings, house. Their dad, my uncle Ridge, works at Microsoft so they had the new Xbox Kinect set up to their flatscreen tv, which in about the size of a wall, and played it a lot of the time we were there. I got some very cool presents this year including an added up amount of $40.00, a 6-pack of Altoids, an electronic dog, a messenger bag, a Coldstone gift card, and a 5 pound bag of mini marshmallows. For desert mom & I shared a big chocolate/peanut butter cake, which was supposed to be doubled the size we made it, but it was already big enough. Much later on in the party we went a show by Tim Noah down in downtown Snohonish with some of the Ostlings and our grandma. We got home late and went straight to bed, having church in the morning we needed to get up early.

-Emma

G2 Camp 2010

Every year our church hold camps for City Kids (1st-4th grade), G2 (5th and 6th) and GC (Junior High -College). I am going into 6th grade so I went to G2 camp for the second year. Colin's going into 5th so he went to G2 camp this year. Unfortunately Colin cut his foot and had to have stitches two days before camp. He still went but he couldn't get wet and had cruches. My team was the Orange team and after they had rounded up the final scores it turned out our team had won! I'll bet G2 camp is one of the only camps were you get to sleep in college dorms, have Cinnamon Rolls for breakfast, shoot at human paintball targets, and have an amazing encounter with God! - Emma

Emma's Keyboard Creation

Here is a video of a song that Emma composed on our Yamaha keyboard. Caleb did the camera work and Dad did the video editing. Enjoy!

New Chicks

On February 10, Mom and all the kids decided to get chicks early (as the weather had been rather mellow this year),and went to the Dayville hay and grain store. Usually we get chicks at the Bothell feed store so the variety's a bit different then usual. Dad had wanted to get all Rhode Island Reds,but due to his absence, we only got two Rhodes (out of eight chicks). Only one chick death (Emma's chick) and the rest are all healthy and growing fast. In fact we have had to expand the chick box and soon we'll have to move them out to the garage. This works out in our favor because on March 22 we are getting more chicks and by then the first ones will be out in the garage and the box will be free. Then again we only have one heat lamp....
-Caleb

Super Sugar Cookies

Making sugar cookies is a blast but making them with friends is even more of a blast--and a blast is what we were having on Monday the 1st when our friends Grayson and Gabreilla Lobbs came over to make sugar cookies to eat and for the Lobbs to take home. Mom had already made the dough, so we could immediately start cutting out cookies as soon as lunch was over. Soon after starting Colin and I got a little tired of the small cookie cutters and made some giant hand-formed hearts. Frosting the cookies was definitely my favorite part of sugar cookie making. With five different colors; blue, red, white and green we could slab and spoon on colorful globs of frosting and dump on mountains of sprinkles. After we were done cutting out and baking the cookies we, of course, ate some and had also eaten most of the blobs of frosting and sprinkles from the table. We can all say that all the cookies we made that day were Super Sugar Cookies. -Emma (11)

City church Small Groups

As the City Church started making Small Groups, also known as City Groups, Mom and Dad decided they wanted to be Small group leaders and started hosting their Small group every Sunday at 3:30.The Teaching they used was all about Winning in hard Financial times. They used Kenneth Copeland Ministries teaching and books while also printing out little papers that had stuff about the message.In fact, its pretty fun getting to host a Small group except for the fact that we have to clean the day before. But overall hosting the Small group is very fun. -Emma (10)

CityGroup Adults 11.8.09

Sunny Sunday

Well, we've finally got A really sunny day this sunday! and with my camera handy I got some great shots. The day started by going to church.There we had a blast and headed home. As soon as we got home Colin started playing basketball. Here is the long video of him doing some hoops.

We also worked some, or at least mom & dad did. Here is a shot of Cian & dad flipping dirt. Colin, Caleb & I did play with squirt guns though. Unfortunately I only got a couple shots of us. In the end I did end up raking the leaves and got a pretty big pile. If you want to see the all the pictures here is my photobucket site.

Skagit Valley Daffodils

Here is an image of Colin and Emma at one of the daffodil fields in the Skagit Valley after their Trampoline meet. More images at our Photobucket site.

City Kids contest

At my church they give each grade a memory verse to learn each month and have decided to make a contest to see who can say all their verses by heart. The contest starts in June and I can already say the verses from July 2008 to March 2009. Whoever wins gets to go to City Kids camp for free! I am going to do the contest and also memorize Psalm 91!

Skagit Valley meet

Last year, I started the trampoline & tumbling team. We had our second, and so far, my best meet on Valentine's day in Skagit Valley. All the things that I missed at the first meet I got at this meet. I got a gold, silver and a bronze medal. I was level 6 on tumbling and got a 45.9/60.0, level 7 on tramp and got a 20.0/30.0 and level 7 on double mini and got a 57.0/60.0. I had a great second meet!

-Emma

4 years ago I started the Northshore's trampoline & tumbling team. We had our second meet on Valentine's day. Here our my scores on tumbling: 48.3/60.0(just so you know I got a gold, another gold, and a silver medal!). On tramp, I got a 20.6/30.0. On double mini, I got a 57./.60.0! I had a great meet! -Colin

Early Emma Video

Here is a early video clip of Emma when she was two - straight from the dusty archives (and now converted to Flash format). We put it together from stills of a photoshoot she had at Yuen Liu where she just started dancing around and the photographer just started taking shots.

Snow Blog

Here are some snow blog reports from the Brenchley kids. See more images at our Photobucket snow site.

"It snowed very hard and high last week.and we built a giant snowman. We also sledded on our hill. that is a road. and it was fun!!!!!" - Colin (8)
"We went sleding down the road while there was lots of snow.We had so much fun! And when we got home we had popcorn,hot cocoa and watched a movie." - Emma (10) "My snow blog - We got snow, on the week of Christmas! On the first day it was 6 inches at 19.8º The truck door's seals were frozen and when Dad finally hairdriered the driver door open the engine wouldn't start. And we had to hairdrier the hood and charge it too. Then a blizzard hit and some places it was 4 inches and some was 2 feet! Papa Ray landed safely, and Alaskans may laugh but this is our storm of the century!" - Caleb (12)

This year I've decided to put one of my versions of the "Twelve days of Christmas" in. Hope you enjoy it!

1 X-Box 360
2 Wiis
3 Nanos
4 Game boys
5 Wide screen T-vs
6 Zunes
7 I-pod touches
8 Cell phones
9 I-pod shuffles
10 Nintendo D-s
11 Computers
12 Million dollars

Unfortunately I didn't actully get any of these things for Christmas - Emma (10)

Soccer Camp

Caleb, Emma, and Colin, attended the NW Soccer Academy camp this week. Here is Emma's artwork titled, "Go Team!"

"Go Team" by Emma (9)

Award Winning Art!

As the older three kids were taking an art class in Duvall at the Northwest Art Center, they entered into the Duvall Days Art Show. Emma actually won first place in her age division and netted an award check for $65 (and mention in the local paper)! Her dog painting, "Puppy Angel" was displayed at the local dog wash business - not surprisingly. More surprising was that her color choices fit in quite nicely. Not to be outdone, both of the boys did well. Here is Colin's runner up Dragon. Here is Emma and her art on display:

Emma & Art 6.6.08

2007 Evergreen State Fair

We try to make a yearly excursion to the Evergreen State Fair - especially since it is only a few miles from the house. This year we again had a great time. Here is some art work from the kids: Emma (8); Colin (7); Rilla (4)

Memorial Day Weekend

Typically Memorial Day is to honor those in the armed forces that have given their lives for the freedoms we enjoy. It is also the unofficial start of Summer. Here is a taste of what we did this weekend.

On Saturday, the whole family went to put flowers on Grandpa Chuck’s grave at the Floral Hills cemetery. While Chuck wasn’t killed in action…he still served in the Navy from 1948 to 1952, during the Korean War. As a medical corpsman assigned to the 13th Naval District in Seattle for the majority of his service time, he once told Jack that he would often process paperwork from buddies who had died in the war. See an earlier blog about Chuck. Anyway here is a shot of Jack and the kids at his grave.

Jack had called ahead to Floral Hills and had asked where his grandparents were buried since he really couldn’t remember. With the map they provided we found the marker as well. Here is a shot of Gail and the kids (with Colin hiding) at the grave site. Also at Floral Hills there was a live military display which had a lot of artifacts – including a couple of running WWII Jeeps! We also bought cookies at the Vietnam Veterans cookie sale which has become a tradition as well. Pictures have been saved up to our Photobucket site including a funny vblog (a.k.a. video blog) sequence of Cian who had had enough of Memorial Day.

Other pictures of the weekend include: Caleb on the tractor; Emma doing chores; Rilla on her trike; and Cian sandwiched in the screen door. Colin is noticeably absent and was probably playing Age of Empires on the computer. Gail blames his Uncle Ridge for this! We finished up the weekend having the cousins down for BBQ'd Buffalo burgers (Jack's idea and they were pretty good) and smores, and in the end we all stayed up late to watch A Night At the Museum. Here’s to the official start of Summer!

Jack and kids 5.26.07

Level 4 State Gymnastics Meet Trip

Emma has had a remarkable first year in competitive Level 4 Girls Gymnastics. In fact, she did so well at Sectionals that she qualified for State! So on May 3rd we packed up the car and drove clear across the state to the Tri-Cities where we stayed at the Wingate Inn in Kennewick. If you think that we made the trip without any stops you haven’t driven any distances with children; how about five (actually six on the way home). Here are the stops: One (Snohomish Library – yes, this still counts!); Two (the pit toilet rest stop just East of the pass – note the wee bit of lingering snow); Three (dinner in Ellensburg); Four (bathrooms at the Bi-Mart in Sunnyside – probably best not to visually chronicle that one…). Actually four stops before our destination isn’t bad…

The first day we drove around to figure out where Emma’s practice session and meet was, had a picnic at Wye Park, did a short hike across an isthmus, and even found the Costco! Plus swimming at the hotel and dinner with the whole team at Red Robin!

The next day after dropping Gail, Emma, and Emma’s friend Ariel, at the TRAC pavilion for the first day of competition, Jack and the rest of the crew went to Columbia Park. Here is a shot of the kids and some baby geese. That afternoon we collected the girls and went to Sacajawea Park where we had lunch, played, and soaked up some sun in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Alas, we only spent a few hours here rather than the few days the Corp of Discovery stayed. But we did go through the newly opened Sacajawea Interpretive Center and even dropped in on a medieval group, the Barony of Wastekeep, a branch of The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). With the Hanford Nuclear Site in its realm, the name ‘Wastekeep” is truly fitting(!). Anyway, here are pictures of the kids: Caleb; Emma; Colin; Rilla, & Cian at the park.

Before Emma’s competition the second day we zipped up to the Ice Harbor Lock and Dam on the Snake River where we went through the Visitor center and watched spring Chinook heading up the ladder. Here is a picture of the kids with the dam in the background (and including Emma’s friend Ariel!). Then back to the TRAC pavilion and lunch at the baseball park across the street before warm-ups.

At the meet a local beauty school did the girls hair. Here is a picture of Emma’s web.

At the meet Emma did a great job! In fact her all-around score at State was the best so far! Here she is right before her salute and floor routine – and you can tell she is really focused! Obviously her parents need to get a better camera to focus those distance and speed shots since most in the set are blurry! Oh well!

Here is Emma's State Certificate.

The trip home was uneventful except for finding Winegar's Ice Cream in Ellensburg. Sort of, ‘icing on the cake’ of a packed but fun weekend/trip/meet/vacation.

Here is the 'good-luck' ad we created for Emma for the Level 4 State Meet Program: