July 4th, 2009

My brother Joel has his birthday on the fourth of July. We usually spend the 4th with my mom, Lawrence, and my brothers in Merrimack, NH. This year we went up to NH. After such a rainy June it was finally a beautiful day and enjoyed by everyone!



My mom has a pool. Rachel LOVES to swim and play around as you will see!

Rachel learned how to snorkle today! She would spend a long time swimming around the pool breathing through the tube. She wants to get one for herself now!

Rachel convinced Uncle Noah to join her in the pool for some noodle fun!

These googles are ours. Kathy Dancy bought them for the NC beach trip one year. We took them home. There are functioning lights over the eye pieces so you can see under water. She brings these googles to eveyone's pool so she can see underwater.

Carmen got into the pool later in the day and was having noodle wars with her sisters.

Sarai always uses a float in the water. This float we've saved over the years from our pool in the last house we had.

After the pool time was over, Carmen and Sarai "rested" on the hammock. Really, Carmen tried to rock Sarai out.

Abram, Tobin, Noah and Joel began the game of Bocce. Matthew and I played Abram and Tobin and swept them. We tried playing against Rachel and Carmen but that didn't last too long.

Afterwards, Abram decided to go for a bike ride and......

rode Rachel's bike around the culdesac my mom and Lawrence live on! This began a string of others riding Rachel's bike.

Noah -


Tobin -

and finally the person the bike was meant for, Rachel!

This bike was Carmen's last year. Carmen now has outgrown it and passed it along. Rachel began using this bike the first week of July.

There are more biking adventures to come!

Aquarium Visit

June 28th all but Carmen visited the New England Aquarium. Carmen went to the Revolutions game instead. The organization honored the tickets we bought, but never used from the previous week at Footbolito.

At the equarium we saw Penguins

Sea turtles

Rachel was able to hold starfish and hermit crabs. The one in Rachel's hand has lost a leg, but we learned that each leg on a star fish has an eye. Ths star fish had grown its eye, so they assume it will begin growing the leg soon!

A really unnique sea creature. I have no idea what this was. I just saw the face and had to take a picture!

And other cool fish, like the tiger fish

Marita, Isaac, Jenna and Adain came with us. Actually, I believe it was Jenna's idea first!

Don't forget Travel Monkey! He came too!

After the aquarium we went to Faniel Hall to have lunch. There are almost too many choices for food there.

Futbolito at Guilette Stadium

On June 21st Carmen and 6 of her traveling soccer team entered a Futbolito competition at Guilette Stadium. They played on the main field and the "practice" field.

It was a 4 v 4 competition. The games were short. They played on tiny fields, no throw-ins and 2 out of three games were on astro turf. It was also a cold, drizzly day! Notice the umbrellas in the background! Carmen is wearing a red pinnie.

We arrived at the stadium around 8:30 and didn't leave until 3:30. Our last game was delayed because there weren't any refs! I think they were wet and cold like the players. It had been raining steadily all day. Dave King was able to come to see one of her games. He had finished a triathalon that morning nearby. He saw her make one of two goals for that game!

The plan for the day was to stay and see the Revolutions play their game at 6:30pm, but we were too cold to stay.

The organization did honor the tickets for the following weekend. Carmen went with her coach to see the Revs play. The rest of us went to the aquarium. That adventure is for another blog though!

Summer Life is Busy

Wow, I thought that I would have more time to blog now that I'm not working, but I was wrong! The week after school was over I took a graduate course in Photoshop for Teachers! It was a great class. We spent over 36 hours in class that week. Here are a couple of collages I created during the class:

I am hoping to use the skills I gained to great a pleasing web page. All the teachers have access on the school website to keep an updated webpage. Also, I should be able to create memory pages for the parents at the end of the year of skills each child has mastered!

I recognize that I still have to perfect these pictures, but I wanted to share some of the work I did.

While I was in class, Sarai was the babysitter. Tobin began working at Synqor 3 days a week. The kids are growing up!

End of School

School got out today (June 19th) so I hope to catch up on the blog.

Monday, June 9th, Carmen had her end of the year band concert and Tobin had his Spring Sports night. I don't have a picture of Carmen because she was in the second row and I could see her face at all!

Tobin's award night began at the same time as Carmen's concert. It gets very buys at the end of the year. Tobin received his 3rd varsity letter this year. He is hoping for 12 letters by the time he graduates.





The next night Carmen had soccer tryouts for fall soccer while Sarai had a select choir concert.


This video is of a song that two eighth graders taught the rest of the group. One was in charge of directing the voice while another played the piano. The director of the choir, Bryant Clark, never influenced the song and directing in any way. Last year the select choir would sing together Sara Bareille's song "Love Song" before or after their rehearsal time. They asked to perform it during the end of the year concert and they were fantastic. Hence a tradition was born and hopefully keeps being passed on. Enjoy.

Carmen's field trip

On June 4th I was priveledged to attend one of Carmen's field trips. We walked from her school to her science teacher's home.

There the kids, all 50 of them, were given a huge scavenger hunt/ discovery to do in 2 hours.

They had to answer questions such as: name 5 things birds use to make their nests. Here teacher had this display of nests for them to look at and study.

We had to disect a flower and find all the parts. Look for different kinds of leaves, flowers, trees, slugs, water insects and so many other things. All of them could be found in her yard!

There was a brook running through her yard. The kids could treck through it with water shoes on. They measured the temperature of the water and took water samples to look at under a microscope.

After this field study pizza came for lunch!

and Ice Pops

Before walking back to school they experimented with Mentos and Diet Coke!

Notice the soda geyser! A package of Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke will produce this. The experiment was done 3 more times. Carmen wants to try it at home. We will try to see if Root Beer or Fresca will do the same.

I enjoyed this field trip. It made me think more about teaching science to the older grades.

Sports dictate my weekends

So much has happened since I last posted!

I will begin with a photo or two of Sarai playing in with her Shamrock's team. When she has a tournament weekend she has 4 games to play in. On the weekend or May 30th and 31st she had a tournament in Easton, MA. This was a late tournament. She had two games on Saturday, but didn't attend them because she attended a friend's BarMitzah and celebration. She attend both games on Sunday; one at 4:10 and one at 7:55pm! What were they thinking assigning us (we had an hour plus commute) the last game of the night.

Sarai is number 32.

The following weekend she had 4 games in Natick. Thankfully, they were close by because we were assigned games with a good amount of time inbetween. This allowed us to squeeze in my last game with coaching Rachel's U8 soccer team....

Rachel is using some her footskills she's been working on here.

Team cheer at the end of the game.

After the game I gave out trophies,

and popsicles

The team was very kind to give me a gift certificate to the local liquor store. I have used it already to stock up on Sangria ingredients!

After this celebration was over I took Carmen to her soccer coaches house for a pool party!

Rachel is wearing the large goggles. Carmen's friend is doing the handstand.

It is great and tiring to have all the kids so active! I am looking forward to a "slower" pace during the summer.