Mothers Day

This year on Mothers Day, Mom enjoyed not one, but TWO breakfasts in bed.

Sam was the first to arrive with breakfast:

Later Pete brought a second course.

Mom was ready to skip lunch.  Actually, she ate her leftover hard-boiled egg that afternoon during the impromptu family walk to 7-Eleven for slurpees.

Jukebox Diner

The family went out for a nice Mother's Day dinner at Jukebox Diner in Sterling.  Sam had received a coupon from school for a free kids item.  Apparently this place was a bit lowbrow for most Moms, since they pretty much had the place to themselves.

On the way there, they stopped to look for a geocache at the top of a nearby hill overlooking the shopping center:

The picture was taken here.

Reflections

Pete submitted a story for the school literary magazine, Reflections.  It was something about a pencil trying to get to the pencil sharpener.

On May 21, they had a reception at school for the students who were published in the journal. Pete and Sam enjoyed some cake and lemonade, and reading the book.

Leaving the school, the family spotted this picture on the wall of Pete working with his Spectrum team on their park design project:

 

Boys' Weekend

During the week of May 17 - May 21, Mom went to the Biltmore in North Carolina with Nan and Aunt Jo, so it was a boys-only weekend.

On Thursday, Dad and Pete dropped Sam off at Lacrosse practice and played tennis with Tom and Jackson.  Then they went to Fuddruckers for Dominion Trail Spirit Night.

On Saturday, they grabbed some donuts and went to Sam's all-day Lacrosse tournament in Hamilton.  During the tournament, Pete and Dad looked for a geocache and played some baseball, frisbee, Lacrosse, and  football - when they weren't dragging all of their stuff from one field to another.

Sunday night they went to Chuck E. Cheese's.

Monday night was Pete's ceremony at school for the literary journal.  Sam was gald he came, too, when he found out there was free cake and lemonade.

Sam's Class

Above is Sam's 2nd grade class.  Pictured, left to right:

1st row: Dory Raterman, Angelica Hulbert, Brooke Smith, Sarah Faieq, Maria Kaffes

2nd row: Sam, Naila Corum, Kaitlyn Hricik, Christell Alvarez, Abbie Kern

3rd row: Mrs. Susan Weltens, Jake Bonds, Quin Dumouchelle, Alex Romero, Arya Kuchipudi, Awa Ndiaye

4th row: Haleigh Allred, Ashley Cavanaugh, Joey Dombrosky, Ashia Savin,  Damien Harris

Chicks

Sam's 2nd grade class hatched some chicks this year in the classroom.


Here are some videos of the chicks:
1. First chick emerging
2. Two more chicks emerging

Each kid in the class got to name a chick.  Below are the names that they gave to the chicks.  See if you can guess which name was Sam's:

• Peeps
• Jeff Gordon
• Katrina
• Peep Peep
• Chirpy
• Jojo Jones
• Lizard
• Lemon
• Jackie
• Fuzzball
• Pinball
• Fluffy
• Puffy
• Fluff
• Bobo Jo
• Little yellow fluffy ball, best and dearest chick of all, not another on the farm, boasts such beauty wit and charm

Hint to see if you guessed correctly: Sam's name has 3 J's

Lacrosse

Sam is playing Lacrosse this Spring for the Ashburn Bandits.

At last week's game, he got to play goalie for the first half.  Sam gave up two goals, and the game ended in a 4-4 tie.  The team's record is now 0-1-2.

Sam has several friends on the team, including Nick, Matthew, and William.

Sam is often seen practicing Lacrosse out on the street in front of his house, until after dark.  He recently purchased a "Trick Stick" from Charlie for $5.  It is a pretty cool stick, colorful and a little bit smaller than the standard stick.  Note, the stick in the picture above is the special goalie stick.

Trumpet Concert #2

Pete is playing trumpet this year in 6th grade at Farmwell Station Middle School.  Last Thursday was his second concert.  He was on stage in the school auditorium, with about 100 other people playing flutes, clarinets, trumpets, saxophones, french horns, trombones, tubas, percussion, and oboe.  The nice thing about these concerts is that they start right on time and are over in about 20 minutes.

These are the songs that Pete played in this concert:

• Brazilian Street Dance
• Fire Dance
• Comet Ride
• Surge
• The Olympic Spirit*

* The Olympic Spirit turned out to be a bit of a disaster, with one of the drummers playing a tempo that shared no similarity with everyone else.  Other than that it was a good concert.

Unexpected Damage

Sam came in from playing golf outside and was telling Dad about it.

Sam: I got a triple-Eagle playing golf outside
Dad: That's great!  Are you damaging anyone's yard?
Sam: No, I just took a few blades of grass in some cases, but no holes
Dad: What balls are you using?
Sam: Mason's little yellow rubber balls.
Dad: Can they damage anything?
Sam: Only if there was a baby sitting at the top of the lamppost.  If you hit the baby and it landed on its head, it would get damaged.

Penn State Spring Break Trip - Day 4

It was the final day of the Penn State trip.  After packing up the car, they drove over to Rec Hall and parked  by the Nittany Lion shrine.  They took a few pictures:

They played some basketball on the stadium court at the legendary Rec Hall:

They walked around Rec Hall a bit, and had lunch at nearby Otto's:

When Tom arrived to meet them at Otto's, the family trip ended and Dad's golf trip started.

The boys walked over to the Creamery for a farewell ice cream cone, and then headed home.  (Black Cow for Pete, and Death By Chocolate for Sam).

Penn State Spring Break Trip - Day 3

Wednesday began with a brisk walk followed by a long and leisurely breakfast at the Old College Ave Diner:

Next stop was the Penn State Natatorium for Pete to do some high diving.  However, the high dives were unexpectedly closed for no reason, so everyone played some basketball at the Intramural building instead:

Then everyone walked over from the hotel to the Discovery Space Museum for lots of fun activities (not a space museum, by the way).

Instead of the original plan (PSU baseball game), they went to get some candy at CVS and then to see The Hunger Games over by Nittany Mall.  Dinner was pizza back at the room.

Penn State Creamery

Pete and Sam enjoyed the Creamery so much, they went there twice.  See if you can guess what happended just after the above picture was snapped:

(a) Sam decided that he didn't like the ice cream
(b) Sam dropped his ice cream on the ground
(c) Sam went into a rage and threw his ice cream in the trash
(d) The boys were abducted by aliens (Pete suggested that we include this choice)