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.

JANUARY 31

January 31 was a full day! Let me tell you about it. First we watched Kenneth Copeland.Then, right after that, I got to go to a friend's house while the rest of the family (except for dad) played and decorated cookies with our friends, the Lobbs. At 3:00 my mom picked me up and headed to another friend's birthday party at Jump Sky High. It was a lot of fun. They had dodge ball, and there were trampolines everywhere--on the floor and the walls! The only thing I didn't like was that had so many birthday parties jumping at the same time. After we were done jumping at Sky High we headed to The Round Table Pizza Place and ate pizza. After our friend, Blake, had opened all his presents we went home.
You would think that was enough, but no! We kids got to go see "Tangled" with our cousins. When we got home we were exhausted. -- Colin

Toby Mac Winter Wonder Slam Concert 2011

On Friday January 28th Mom took me to go see Toby Mac in concert after gym. We arrived soon after the doors opened and immediately found great seats. We didn't go so far as to have "Freak Seats," but we were happy. The concert began at 7:00 p.m. starting with a less known band called "House Of Heroes". They did a few rowdy songs before the stage was given to Brandon Heath, whose songs were much less loud then House Of Heroes'. After Brandon did several songs the countdown began for Toby Mac. Everyone stood up when Toby Mac came onto the stage, which forced me to switch places with Mom so I could see. Toby did parts from most of his songs, including most of my favorites. At one point in the concert, when Toby was singing one of his slower songs, "City On Our Knees", everybody took out there phones plus other electronics and started waving them to the beat. The concert ended a little before 10:00, and Mom and I went out to the lobby to buy me a "Catchafire" t-shirt and "Tonight " hat. We spent half an hour trying to get out of the parking lot--it was that crowded. After a snack dinner at QFC we arrived home a 11:30 that night. I was so tired I went to sleep in my Catchafire t-shirt.

-Emma

Piano Recital 2011

The first piano recital of the year took place at Mills Music in Bothell this afternoon. Actually it is more of a late Christmas program - doing it after the holiday rush is actually a benefit. Teacher Sue Severin put together a great show with each of her about twenty students doing a showcase number. Here are Caleb, Emma, Colin, & Cian's performances.

New Year's Eve

Usually for New Year's Eve we go to Gail's brother and sister-in-law's house up the street to bring in the new year. What do we do to stay up that late?
Colin and friend Pedro played Kinect soccer:

Rilla and Cian played with cousin Sterling on the GameCube in the living room:

Caleb and Emma did computer-things with Quinn and Kyna in the computer room:

And a few of the adults worked on a 1k piece jigsaw puzzle:

btw: the jigsaw puzzle wasn't finished before the new year. Anyway, here's to an awesome 2011!

Hike around Lake Tye

Today we dodged the rain-squalls and braved a wind-chill to do a quick hike around Lake Tye in Monroe, WA. It might have been too cool for Ray(out visiting from Pensacola, FL) but all persevered...only a few complaints were heard from younger members of the group. Here is a shot that Colin took on his Sony Cyber-Shot.

Hike at Lake Tye 12.28.10

2010 Christmas Newsletter

Here is this year's post-card sized Christmas newsletter which we inserted into the Yuen Lui photo-cards. We had these printed at Cascadia Copy and Print in Snohomish. They did a great job - just taking the PDF that was created out of InDesign (no problem with the transparent background or drop shadows).

Christmas newsletter 2010