Thank yous

Jon received a pile of thank you notes from Tim's class for being a chaperone on the epic three day field trip earlier this month. Below is by far the prize winner of all thank you notes:

Dear Mr. Graves,
You did a great job of keeping what order you could in our tee pee. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Brendan

Wax Museum

This is Ani.
Here's a picture of me during our school's "wax museum". Everyone got assigned a famous historical person, and I was Cleopatra. We had to dress up like that person and memorize a speech about them. Everyone had a shoe box with a bottle cap button, and when someone pushed the button we came to life and did our speech. It was only the sixth grade, and the fourth and fifth grade could come and parents were invited too. Here's a picture that someone took of me while I was doing my speech.

Frodo is starting to be able to say pretty bird and hello a lot better, and he's been making other noises, but we don't know what they're supposed to be...

wonderful weekend!

It is only sunday morning and we have had a great weekend so far!!! I got off work a bit early and zoomed out to Trestle Bay beach with the kids and saw friends out there and swam and played and finally Laura came out after work and we ended up not leaving the beach until about 7:45 pm... then I gardened ALL day on Saturday!!! Laura ran a great 5 k race and Tim had a friend over. Ani even helped me garden. We even bought a new love seat and really cool rocking chair that sits low to the floor and can go all the way backward so Tim pretends to play space ship as it blasts off!!!

HOT!

This is Ani.

The last two days have been really really hot!!! Yesterday it got up to 92 degrees! Today it wasn't that hot, only in the 70's and 80's, but that's hot for Astoria. Today we learned that Frodo really enjoys gardening. He likes playing on a small apple tree, but we banned him from it when he stripped two small branches of leaves. He also likes playing on the fence - he'll climb around and chew on other plants.

My mom ran in a 5k (3.1 miles) race today. She got first place in women, and got a medal! Her time was 29 minutes and 28 seconds.

http://www.vrbo.com/48060

http://www.carrilloclub.com/

Here are just 2 of our potential destinations in Costa Rica. I bought plane tickets today! We are really going! I have more work to do but it will be worth it!

Heading off from work soon to go referee chess. Tim is getting pretty cocky...

District Track

Yes, I (Mom) spent 7 hours standing in the rain to see my daughter race for a combined period of around 9 minutes. Actually it was probably the social event of the week - friends and friends' kids running and jumping, etc. It was all good fun, and Ani made personal bests in both her events and placed 4th in both in the 6th and 7th grade category. 1500 - 5:50, 800 - 2:59! Track is over, not to worry though, soccer tryouts tomorrow night... 5 more weeks of school, every night from now til then seems to have overlapping somethings and schedule snafus galore. Jon's Aunt Sally and her friend Amanda are here and we are having a great time - we went out to the beach today and demonstrated the cold and windy/warm and sunny within 2 minutes of Oregon coast spring weather.

Ta ta for now!

home again!

Jon Here: April 26th was the last time that I got to sleep in besides today! Seven out of the last 11 days I have been on a school bus for at least 6 hours!!! Field Trips galore!!! I have been to Oregon State University, white water rafting on the Deschutes River around Mopin OR and on our three day 4th grade field trip! I was the only adult in the back half of the bus trying to keep truth or dare under control, but not the noise level... It was sunny and cold in Centeral Oregon! We had an absolute blast! Tim was ecstatic to have the BACK seat of the bus on each 4-8 hour driving leg of the trip... While Tim is not allowed to have a gameboy or nintendo DX portable game system, he brought his magnetic chess board. It was a huge hit!!! All game systems around us were put away as everyone followed each chess game and played eachother. Sleeping in tee pees on the warm springs indian reservation; digging thundereggs (geod rocks) many museums and lots of fun! Here is a slideshow of some of the adventures!!!

Hole in the Sky

This is Ani.
There's a hole in the sky tonight! Here's a picture of a spot where the sun broke through the clouds.
Tim and my dad are gone on the fourth grade three day fieldtrip to central Oregon, so it's just me and Mom.
I still haven't found out the times for the track meet yesterday, and I'm dying to know!! Ironically, in computer lab at school today we found a website where you can do virtual hip and knee replacement surgeries, and I did a knee surgery. I had no idea that Papa was getting a knee replacement today! The website just tells you what to do, but it's cool to see what they do...here' s the website! edheads.org

Lawn mowing and travel

HI! Jon here: I returned on Sunday night from a weekend of white water rafting and camping with Astoria High School and back to work bright and early monday morning! We were in Mopin Oregon rafting on the Deshutes River. It was great! No one got hurt, but someone fell out of at least on raft on most of the rapids. The rapids were class 2-4 where 6 is NOT navigatable! It was a great time and really good bonding for me and my students.

On Wed. at 6 AM Tim and I are off on a 3 day field trip to central oregon too! Lots of bus time for Dad this week!!!! We will sleep in tee pees in Kah-nee-tah on the Warm Springs Indian res.; go to a cool rock ranch where we will dig for thunder eggs and buy cool rocks; visit the high desert museum in Bend; sleep on a middle school gym floor and visit other museums in amonst the long bus rides...

Ani has a track meet tues. and then district track meet on Saturday. My Anut Sally and her friend Amanda are coming on Sat. through Monday morning which will be really fun too!!! BUSY BUSY BUSY...

I am also trying to plan our route and somewhat come up with an itinary for our end of June drive accross America.

Here is a vid of Tim doing one of his chores! He really can start the mower cold! We did not even start it before this video!!!! Tim is so strong. He really wants an Ipod Touch while Ani is desparate for a texting cell phone... hope you all are well out there in cyber land!

Hi. This is Ani.
We're all doing good. This Tuesday is my last track meet for the whole team, and on Saturday we have the district meet, where only the top two people in each grade from each event will be going. I'm pretty sure that I'll make it, because I'm the only 6th grader who does the 1500 meter and the 800 meter. I'm going to continue trying for my goal of a 6 minute 1500 - last time I got 6 minutes and 1 second...
I'll have another blog after my next track meet.