My birthday present to myself is to do something unusual, learn a new skill, or just do something that makes me nervous. In Hawaii I enjoyed trail riding (horse) with a few girlfriends, a Hawaiian canoe paddle, a long run, etc. Here I have done a couple things, like paddle boarding, and last summer I rode my bike down stairs at the school because I’d seen the 10 yr old boys do it. Looked fun, but I didn’t want to when a ton of kids were watching, so I waited for summer then rode down them. A bit nerve-wracking. You want to go somewhat fast, and not turn your front wheel. Then I had this image of myself biking UP the stairs. I got halfway up and toppled. This year I knew it had to be the climbing gym. Lots of little kids go there for their birthdays, and the grownups watch. I have always wondered if I could do it – strength, agility and fear of heights were concerns. Well…today was the big day! Dad is in town, so I took the two boys and Dad for the adventure. It was SUPER fun!!!!

Cameron is my belayer. He’s telling me the commands to use. I’m thinking of Uncle Tom here, big time!

I’m motoring on up the wall. I found that if you just keep going, it gets less scary. If you stop and think, you get a little nervous. Better to keep thinking about the next hand hold and not look down. I wore my riding gloves for inspiration. This wall cannot buck, so it’s far less scary than an annoyed grey mare can be! I did three different routes and a total of four climbs. I will be back again! This was a really memorable experience.

I’m even more proud of Sam than I am of my feat. He is very nervous about heights and still he asked if he could climb. He tried several times and got higher each time. It sure takes guts to challenge yourself to overcome a fear. Kudos to you Sam! You made it more than halfway up this time!

Sam, Hap and Eli getting some good coaching from Jeremy McCann during a D2 game. They got to “play up” because the next division up had a team short on players. It was a great experience for them! Very hot, and second game in the heat, but they did fine. I think they actually won even though technically the team had to forfeit due to the roster change.

Ben (on the right) is climbing all the way up to the top! He is so brave! I don’t think I could do this. It’s a local climbing gym where a friend was having his birthday. I may need to try for my birthday. I always do something that I’m nervous about doing on my birthday. It’s a tradition…Maybe Ben will coach me?

The boys and I had a pretty productive Sunday. Ben and I sold 9 dozen eggs – took some work. People were really not in a buying mood. We had to work our sign spinning pretty hard. They must not realize eggs are in demand in the East Coast area due to avian influenza killing off 46 million birds. Oh well. I didn’t price-gouge 😉 Then we fixed a broken sprinkler timer, and finally cleared the trails of massive spring overgrowth. Sam had the machete, Ben his favorite clippers and me a weird golf-club like machete thing.

Just as we drove home from picking Dave up at the ferry (he’s been in Connecticut), Dave goes “There’s a raccoon in the coop!” I could not believe it. Truly. We drove up JUST as the marauder was in attacking our birds. A few feathers were lost, but all the birds were ok. Seriously a miracle. I went back out with the staple gun and repaired the fence. Mommy was already a little tired and cranky from end-of-school insanity, but this did me in! Thankful I still have a flock, what with the bird flu and all!!!! I was not pleased that my friends the coyotes were back, literally howling as I stapled. JERKS! No licking your lips over chicken dinner!!! I will howl back at you. I have before. You just wait…

Oh – the lucky coin bit. We hide things for kids to find on Halloween. It’s always fun to find them later…I actually found two coins and a dead opossum. Is that lucky?

The boys and I were out clearing trails of spring over growth and I found this in a pile of hair. Ick! It smelled a bit, but then I got past that and the biologist in me got super interested. There were wormies crawling around decomposing the carcass, and I found the whole skull and jaw bones. Even a paw! All were connected by what was left of the backbone. I carried it off to hang it all from a stump so I could find it later (would also be a super cool Halloween decoration, right?). Then I found SCAT! Wow! The picture was complete. Here are my artifacts on a mossy log. Dave is disgusted. I should probably not mention I actually did think about cleaning it up and bringing it in to my little “artifact shelf” in our entryway. I Googled the jaw bone and think it’s an opossum.

These guys just popped out over the past week! It’s getting pretty warm here, a sure sign that summer is around the corner. Just a few more days of school left, and it feels like we’re going out with a bang. May and June are always frenetic, but we’re finding time to just be together between the spurts of frenzy. I finally got a good night’s sleep last night so I’m ready for this week 🙂 I’m also looking ahead to the summer – lots of unscripted time, as well as time to focus on neat projects we don’t have as much time for as we’d like during the year. The boys are very lucky to have teen mentors who will be working with them (and a few friends) on hockey and skating, maybe learning how to skateboard (Ben and me), programming and robotics and indulging in the card/board games they love. The teens benefit from being paid to do things they love to do anyway, while mentoring the younger guys. And they get paid about twice minimum wage. Good for everyone! This is my second summer coordinating this informal co-op of neighborhood boys. Wish me luck! 🙂

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

Sam scoring a goal! I can’t believe Deborah (Coach Harris’ wife) caught this action shot! The puck is actually in the air.

The game started out with a 0-0 first period – tight game! In the second period we came back from being behind by 2 and just rallied with 8 goals scored in all! I think the game ended 8:3. Lots of great passing, defense and teamwork.

Coach Harris – another most AWESOME coach. We are so lucky! In the hoodie is Asst Coach Ethan (in high school).

Coach Harris made this “Tough as Nails” award. Sam earned this one for finishing his shift strong after blocking a shot with the side of his leg. He actually has a decent lump there – it missed the shin guard.

The start of a beautiful Mother’s Day hike with friends – this is at Point No Point Lighthouse. 11K walk through the Hansville Greenway. From L to R: Sam, Adam, Ben.

I had a wonderful day with my boys – only missing Dave due to work (inspection week). We went on a long hike with some friends up near the coast in Hansville. Since my friend was sick and had opted for an easier hike than originally planned, I thought we were doing a 2-3 mile jaunt. Poor Sam was sick with a sore throat this morning, so I figured that would work well. Turned out to be an 11K tour of the Hansville Greenway! But thankfully I brought snacks, water, and bought even more at the tiny grocery. Turned out the white powder donuts (who doesn’t want that sugar kick on a hike?!) were MOLDY! I proudly handed them out and Adam took a nice bit then Ben said “Hey Mom, what’s this hair stuff?” I thought it was ok at first (those things don’t look natural anyway), then we saw green hairy stuff further into the package! Ewww! Everyone had a nice laugh about that. The expiration date did not include a year, so who knows how long they’d hung out on the shelf next to the lonely looking bear claws?

The greenway is a place I’d visited with Sam when he was 9 months old. Kim had hiked there with baby Adam as well. It was fun to go back with our big “babies”.

Hiking the Hansville Greenway when Sam was 9 months old 🙂

Anyway – came home to clean the chicken coop and bury a chicken who unfortunately passed through the night. Sam now has 102.7 fever, poor guy! So – got to experience it all in just one day 😉 But who am I to bemoan a bit of work? The frontier ladies probably didn’t even have a Mother’s Day!

All three throwing nearly at once!

Some Scotch broom of a different variety. Pretty – but a weed on the “noxious” list. Poor weed!

Chickens are helping in the garden…NOT!

It’s been a busy couple weeks even though hockey season is over! Gramma and Richard came up for Easter and stayed for two weeks, although it feels like much longer given how much work got accomplished in that short time!

On Friday, 4 boys and 4 parents crammed into a minivan to attend a math competition in Seattle. Here’s a link to the story, and a photo below.

The Math is Cool 4th grade team competing in a regional contest – this is the exciting College Bowl where they collaborate then pull a cord to ring a buzzer when they have an answer!

On the ferry ride home, enjoying cookies and frosting, compliments of Coach van Schaick!

A sample of the questions… and this is only one portion of the 4 hour event!

Mommy has been dubbed the “Work Horse” of the family. I spread 30,000 pounds of material last week – 7 tons of gravel, and 4 tons each of dirt and bark.

Looks great around here! Thanks to Mom and Richard for buying!!! I am happy to spread the wealth around…literally 😉

Eating peanuts and playing Magic together. They are having a relaxing afternoon after a busy week with ice hockey, science fair and other stuff…

Sam doing some raking during a big yard work effort!

The boys expressed an interest in working for ACTUAL money, and Richard had a job in mind – sprucing up the living space on the property (not the woods – the area bounded by the fences and woods). He thought they could pick up pine cones and rake up piles of debris, then take them over to a dumping area off the side of the driveway. So – Richard spec-ed the job with the boys and offered $20 EACH! Ben listened to the job description and said “$20 for each piece?” That would be a good deal! Funny negotiator. They worked consistently for about 2 1/4 hours. I asked Richard to rate them on a scale of 1-10 for work ethic, attention to detail, and attitude – he gave them 8 out 10! I asked them to rate themselves as well and they tended to agree (although Ben gave himself a 10 initially, then regraded to a 9). They also earned a tip for going above and beyond. Lessons well learned. Thank you, Richard, very much for giving them a chance to work hard and earn a big reward! Sam is earning his way toward the fourth grade outdoor education field trip to IslandWood – $188. I think he’s nearly there after egg sales yesterday and work today!

His partner, Ben, hard at work!

Hmmm…some shenanigans as we finished up the job!

Mommy got stuck trying to get the wheelbarrow out!

Thank you, Richard, for hiring us! You are very generous!

Gramma and Benji before church!

I just spent an hour going through 480 pictures and annotating the best ones for the album, which is now updated. Just click on “album” above and  you can go see Feb and March!

Dave waiting patiently at the truck, amazed that we were ready to go on time, actually 40 min early. 🙂

I’m an Easter egg!

Boys stuffing Easter eggs.

64 eggs ready to hide!

OK, ready, go! Find those eggs!

My friend Ann is a great mom, runner, PTO treasurer, organizer of the charity fun run the Turkey Trot, and so much more. Well, we hatched a plan to do some fun runs with our kids over the summer. When we realized we’d both be around over break, we decided to hatch a plan to test it out sooner. I got my old jogging stroller fixed up (5,000 miles and lots of salt water had done it in – no brakes, flat tires, rust everywhere) to be our sag wagon for hoodies, Gatorade, phones, sunglasses, loot (rewards for after the jog), etc. We also thought it would be fun to allow the younger or slower ones to hitch a ride in the “stagecoach” now and again. The hare can push the tortoise 🙂 When we did rider swaps, we did it fast – like on John Butterfield’s first overland mail stagecoach run – go go go! Only time to change out horses every 15 miles…no rest for the driver! Sometimes two kids were stacked up. It was hilarious. As we loped around the 1.5 mile trail through the park on our first lap, we collected Ben’s friend Cole and his mom, Lisa. Into our second lap we collected a barefooted Finn and his mom, Brie! It was really a crazy parade then as Cole had a notepad and a pen (to document the silliness?), and Lisa was carrying an “official dodge ball”! Afterwards we enjoyed some ice cream drumsticks and a romp in the playground while the sun held. Enjoy the shots – it was a good time!

Evelyn is a smart girl! She was so sweet, waving to everyone like the Rose Queen in the Rose Parade!

We thought we were done because I forgot that we’d started in a different spot than usual. Sam reminded us that we were half a lap short – wow, talk about honesty! So we took off again and finished off our 5K!

And here they all are, wonderful joggers! That was fun!

Well deserved naughty treats!

Lisa joined in with a dodge ball in hand! Go Lisa!

Finn joined in, no shoes! Go, Hawaiian boy!

Will took everyone for a flight. He’s deep inside the plane in the cockpit.

This is seriously ominous sky behind us, but we really enjoyed hanging out together. Those ominous skies kept EVERYONE else out of the park. We were the only ones left to enjoy the narrow swath of sun over Bainbridge.

I just noticed it’s been 6 weeks since I last posted! Since then we’ve had a very exciting conclusion to hockey season with making it through our division’s 3-game playoffs and winning the final game! Here is a link to our highlights reel created by one of our parents who works for Adobe. Ellen has a great eye and stitches these reels together right on her iPhone using an Adobe app called PremierClip.

Our progression through the playoffs (West Sound Warriors Black) and the little trophy icon 🙂

The semi-final was just about as miracle-on-ice as a parent could wish for – tied at the end so the kids went to a 5-round shootout (best of 5 would win). Sam was #3 in the shoot-out roster. The other team scored the first shot, then we went – no dice. Then they did, no dice. Then we went – Sam scored, tying us up again! The next two rounds no one scored, so it then went to sudden death and we proceeded through the rest of the roster – all 10 kids got a shot in! The home team scored in sudden death, and one of our guys scored his FIRST season goal to tie us up again (go Hap!)!!! A few more rounds – no scores, still tied. Finally our second shooter (Adam) went up again and scored the final goal to win the game! It was just unbelievable!

Sam beaming at the awards ceremony. I will have to get better shots of all the swag. I was pretty busy helping hand bags over and things. This is Coach Pike talking about Sam – “Mr. Persistence” who waits for the right shot or pass. He also got a medal, a shirt with his name and number, and you can’t see it but the best of all was a custom puck and stand with trading cards for each of his teammates made by the dad in the red sweatshirt in the back (Frank). You will NOT believe how cool they are, and how nice it is to thumb through all the buddies now that we don’t get to see them as much. The stories, personalities and locker-room shenanigans – not to mention the face-off shenanigans that I’m just learning about! – made for a wonderful season. Our team had the best morale and bond. We were very fortunate!

Ben’s basketball team wrapped up their season, too – UNDEFEATED! They had a couple really close games where they had to come from behind and won by 1 or 2 points. Nail biters! We have been so fortunate to have coaches for both boys who were just unparalleled in their dedication, professionalism, and commitment to helping each child grow no matter where they started in skills. Thank you Coach Pike, Coach Wilson (both hockey) and Coach Tomine (basketball). We are grateful! Enjoy your off time!

Ben showing his trophy while we are on our way to hockey playoffs! Ben’s team played their last game Sat morning, then we went for team lunch and awards, then hopped the ferry for Sam’s game. Can you believe it? Oh – notice he’s also proudly missing two front teeth!

So – life after hockey? We just ended Sunday. It’s taking a couple days to adjust. We’re all in a bit of withdrawal because we enjoyed the routine, the practices, the people and all the action. The kids are off school Wed-Fri this week for parent-teacher conferences so I served up breakfast outside this morning, just to mix it up a bit. The sun was magical coming through the woods. When I got back from riding, we hatched a plan to buy a card game which has taken the school by storm (Magic players, anyone?). We played at the same picnic table this evening. I got UNO for myself because I can’t stand learning tricky games. I have no patience for the learning process! Bad mommy. So UNO is for me!

Picnic breakfast with the crazies! Can you tell Daddy bought cereals? They don’t exactly match mommy’s desired protein:sugar ratio but they are GOOD!

I spent hours shoveling the heaviest, wettest, smelliest muck you can imagine this morning. A winter of muck. Heavy, wet chicken manure. I cleaned about 2″ of muck – a whole layer of ick – and wheeled unwieldy wheelbarrows full to a dump spot. I nearly landed in the muck after heaving the wheelbarrow to dump it. Then I shoveled five wheelbarrows of wood chips (from trees felled over the summer) into the run. The chickens spread it all out for me. They look SO much happier, and it doesn’t stink anymore. AND – this is HUGE – I was able to walk into the run in my sneakers, not my knee-high muck boots, to deliver food.

Happy hen feet, scratching.

More hen feet. Barred Rock.

Big Gordon giving approval.

More young hen feet – these are the young pullets who are just about starting to lay.

Does your family love photo-taking as much as mine? 😉 We wear our Skene family tartans and try to get ONE, just ONE picture, where everyone is looking decent. However, Sam enjoys photo-bombing tremendously. Enjoy!

This is our BEST shot – wait ’til you see the out-takes! Click on this picture to go see…

Guten rutsch ins neue jahr! (A good slide into the New Year.)

This is how you say Happy New Year in German. I like the “slide” part!

We went for a nice walk, each in our favorite hoodies…

On a neighborhood walk before dinner!

The boys were loud and nuts, as usual!

But the sun was out, and it was a very refreshing 34 degrees!

They love it when I try to capture a family photo 😉

Trying again!

Finally gave up and did this…

More silly out-takes…

Walking home to lamb dinner supplied by Mom and Richard, and cooked beautifully by Dave. Happy New Year to all!

The chickens seem to line up just fine for chicken family portraits. What’s the big deal?