Friday, October 30, 2009

School concerts and carnivals



It is that time of year again, time for talent shows, school carnivals, and concerts! The season started off with Lindsey participating in her school's talent show. Her chorus class "Highlights" performed Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

Then Lexi's school had their annual fall carnival. Lexi was selected to take pictures during the setup of the carnival and then the first hour. She also was part of the group that was painting people's hair. Lexi had a blast doing this.

Then it was Lindsey's turn again with the Fall chorus concert at school. Her chorus participated in three numbers, one of which was a reprise of their talent show performance. (see video below)

Finally, it was Lexi's turn when her band instructor had a concert for selected students to perform solos and ensembles. He directs the band at three elementary schools here in Mesa and the orchestra teachers had also selected students to perform solos and ensembles at the Mesa Creative Arts Center. Lexi was chosen to play Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter with two other students at Crismon. (see video below)

Talent Show at Rhodes JHS:


Crismon Fall Carnival:


Rhodes JHS Fall Vocal Concert:


Crismon Fall Solo and Ensemble Concert:


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Fall Break



Steven mentioned the Tour de Fat in the last post. We went and rode in the ride and had a great time. The Tour de Fat is sponsored by Fat Tire Beer. They hold an entire day of events with each ride. The ride is about 3 or 4 miles around Tempe. People wear costumes and decorate their bikes. We saw some very old bikes, some very tall bikes and some bikes that were decorated to go with the riders costumes. We had a blast and it was fun to see how much the girls enjoyed their ride. They also learned how to take their bikes on the Light Rail trains. Since we rode the light rail to Tempe Town Beach, where the festivities were being held, they learned how to hang their bikes on racks in the train. During the ride, they learned to ride their bikes without being too wobbly and to keep from running into other riders.

The girls had fall break that next week. Steven was lucky enough to take some time off with them. I had to work. I have a new job, teaching massage therapy at PIMA Medical Institute. I love it and it feels good to be back in the classroom in a teaching mode. Anyway, Steven thought it would be good to exhaust the girls on Monday and took them hiking up Camelback Mountain. They had a great time, getting up early and heading up the mountain shortly after the sun came up. The east side of the mountain is a nice climb that has steps and some rock climbing. Steven was very impressed with how the girls just went for it. I came home from work to find them in the pool. Yes, in the pool in October. Temperatures were still in the upper 90's and low 100's that week. The next day Tuesday, they held a Wii tournament while I was at class(one i am taking not teaching). Lexi was victorious over Steven in some of the different games they played like bowling and tennis. Thursday the girls went to class with me. Since my class is on the Polytechnic Campus, they got to see a different ASU campus and were impressed. It reminded us all of Virginia Beach because it is on an old Air Force base. The rest of the weekend was spent just hanging around the house and being together. Since it got to a 100 on both Saturday and Sunday, we all spent some time in the pool, but that might have been the last weekend for us doing that. Monday was back to school for both girls and they went but with much grumbling.

Fall break was the end of the quarter and report cards and conferences were seen all around. Lindsey had a good report card almost making honor roll except for a "C" in math. But we are proud of her for her fantastic efforts, she has been doing a great job and almost got that "B". No conference needed for her. We receive her report card in the mail since she is in junior high. Lexi being in elementary school has parent teacher conferences. We went up there Tuesday morning and received a pleasant surprise. Lexi made honor roll. This is the first time that she has ever had this happen. We are so proud of her. She also had perfect attendance this 9 weeks. I just hope we can continue this trend.

Stay tuned for more ...

Tour de Fat:


Hiking on Camelback:

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Back Online



Opps, a lot more time has past than we meant since the last post. The end of July and August was pretty much spent hiding from the heat. July was one of the hottest on record, and with morning lows in the 90s, we tended to stay home and watch TV or play Wii. We should have been posting anyway from one of our MacBooks, but the lack of pictures left us unmotivated.

Then as we started doing things, the iMac died and it had all of my pictures on it. I did some work on it, but determined that it was a hardware problem. We had delayed getting it fixed due to fear of how it would cost, but when we finally went to the Apple Store they repaired it for free. I think they have a customer for life. So the girls are glad to have their Sims 3 back and I have access to my pictures.

While the iMac was out of commission, Rhodes Pool reopened. Mesa has a partnership with their school district and parks & recreation department, every junior high school in Mesa has a pool. The pool at Rhodes had been closed for "upgrades". The pool received some major work, including the addition of a FlowRider, a wave machine. The FlowRider at Rhodes is the only one in Arizona and one of the few publicly available ones in the world (most are at resorts and theme parks). We went to the grand opening of the pool on Labor Day weekend despite some storms that were moving out of the area. The storms cleared in time for the ribbon cutting and for the fun to begin. We had a lot of fun and was very excited to sign up and be part of the first one hour session available on the FlowRider. See the video below to see how much fun we had.

I also had a chance to take some early morning bike rides as the weather cooled. One Sunday I head to the ASU Polytechnic campus to take some picture of the LEED Certified environmentally friendly buildings that had been built on the grounds of an old Air Force base.

Lindsey also had a talent show recently where her chorus sang "Girls Just Want to Have Fun". Her chorus has also auditioned to sing the National Anthem at Suns game, but we have not hear if they have been selected to perform at a game yet.

This past Friday, we continued our monthly tradition of going to the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk. This month the Walk featured the Zombie Lurch and the girls dressed up for it.

This weekend is the Tour de Fat, so you can count on a blog post soon.

Pictures from ASU Downtown Campus' new Nursing & Healthcare Innovation 2 building:
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Pictures from ASU Polytechnic Campus:
            

Rhodes Pool Grand Opening:
   




Other pictures:
 

First Friday Art Walk - Zombie Lurch: