Joseph Helps Save The Frogs

As just about everyone knows, Saturday April 28 is International Save The Frogs Day. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the local Seattle frog-saving chapter holds a 5K race at Seward Park, a beautiful park jutting into Lake Washington. Joseph ran in the race; this was his second 5K race he participated in. He finished in a little more than 27 minutes, faster than his last race. And, he was careful not to step on any frogs while running (he knew how embarassing would it have been if he had stomped a frog while running in this race!).

Here are some photos:

Joseph high-fiving a frog during the race

Joseph crossing the finish line

After the race

The Terror At Mount Rainier

Every year Henry's elementary school hosts a "Young Authors' Day." As part of the day, the students write a book which is then "published" in hardcover form. In addition, five of the books from the entire school are chosen to be made into short plays by the local middle school's drama department. This year, Henry's story was one of the books chosen and was made into a short play.

Henry's book, shown below, is titled: "The Terror At Mount Rainier". It tells the harrowing story of a park ranger at Mount Rainier National Park named Henry who saves his family from Sasquatch, who attacks their camping tents while they are sleeping. The title is not yet available on Amazon, but Dad is working on it.

Lakeside Knights in Wenatchee

In mid-April, Jack's tournament team, the Lakeside Knights, played in a baseball tournament in Wenatchee, Washington (about two-and-a-half hours east of Seattle). This was the first tournament for the group, who started practicing three months ago. There were over 100 teams in the tournament, split out into different divisions. Jack's team was in one of the 10-and-under divisions, with a total of eight teams.

Their first game was against a team who had traveled all the way from Lethbridge Canada (near Calgary - about a ten hour drive). They were a very good team and the Knights lost, 8-2. In the second game the Knights played a team from East Wenatchee and beat them 12-4. Jack got a key 2-RBI double in the second game to turn a 2-1 game into a 4-1 game. Jack played CF for more of his team's games, and also pitched one inning, giving up 4 runs.

After those two games, the eight teams get put in a standard single-elimination tournament bracket. The Knights were seeded fourth, but lost their first game to a team from Gray's Harbor, Washington, by the score of 11-6.

All in all it was a very fun weekend and it was great to come away from their first tournament with one win. They are scheduled to play in another tournament over Memorial Day weekend in Woodinville, Washington, just north of Seattle.

Here are some photos from the weekend:

Jack in Centerfield

Jack on second base after his double

The Lakeside Knights

Eastern Washington Trip | Part 2

Today, we travelled from Coulee to Wenatchee, Washington, which is in the middle part of the state. After getting a quick breakfast at our hotel, we checked out and drove to the nearby Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center. The center itself was pretty neat. It had lots of interesting facts about the dam, and tried to give a decent comparison to show its size. For example, the top rim of the dam takes up the same space as four and a half pyramids of Giza, and the outtake pipes are as wide as three school buses!

After watching a quick video about the history of the dam it was time to go. We got on the road to Lake Chelan, a popular resort location in summer. There, we had a quick lunch and threw some baseballs around at a lakeside park in the city. It was again a nice, sunny day, but not too hot, so we had a lot of fun before it was again time to move on.

This time, we were on our way to our final stop for the day, Wenatchee. As we got going, we passed through the heart of apple country. Washington grows lots of apples, through the apple trees aren’t the same as they were in Virginia. The trees are shorter and the branches have been sort of cut short, to save space and allow for more trees in a field. The towns were also very apple-themed, as we passed through one with the Apple Cup Café, the Apple Inn, and a large apple warehouse.

As we neared Wenatchee, we made one last stop in Lincoln Rock State Park. The park itself is named for a cliff that sort of looks like a profile of the sixteenth president. (The kids disagreed, however, as not only could the rock resemble anyone, but any rock could resemble a president if you look at it the right way). The park was nice by itself anyway, so we took a quick walk to the lakefront an then got going.

Upon arriving in Wenatchee, we first checked into our hotel, then drove over to Arby's for dinner. Next it was off to the hotel where the get-together for Jack's tournament was. There were over 100 teams there from all over  the northwestern,  but Jack's division only has eight.

At the meeting, the names of the teams were announced after about half an hour of just making sure people could get there and hanging out. Then, Jack stayed to watch the Mariners game with Dad and Henry, while the rest of the family went home. We wound up watching the game there, and saw the Mariners lose to the Oakland A's 4-0.

-Written by Joseph

Here's some pictures of the dam and other stuff we did today:

 The Grand Coulee Dam.

 The dam and the power plants off to the right, with the hills in the background.

 The Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center.

 "Lincoln Rock" - the cliff between the trees looks something like Linocln's face from the side, though its hard to tell from this shot.

 Hills overlooking the lake at the park.

A dock stretching out into the lake with hills in the background.

That's it for today, check back tomorrow to see more about Jack's tournament and what we do in Wenatchee. If you haven't already, see below for yesterday's post.

Eastern Washington Trip | Part 1

For Spring Break in 2012, our family decided to take a trip to the eastern parts of the state. Over the end of the week, we'll visit lots of places, until out trip ends with Jack's baseball tournament on the weekend.

Thursday morning, Dad and the two older boys left for Snoqualmie Pass to go skiing one last time this season. Joseph and Jack got around ten runs in, skiing on one of the few slopes that's open this time of year. Mom and Henry arrived an hour later, and we headed east.

The weather had been very nice up at the pass, though maybe a bit hot for snow sports. As we drove eastward, the weather was bad for a bit, but soon got better and turned into a nice day. After a few hours of driving, we turned north, and drove past some scenic lakes. Soon, we got to Dry Falls, which, 2000 years ago, was the largest waterfall in the world. Now, it looks like Niagara Falls with pretty much no water, only a few small lakes at the bottom. This formed a pretty neat canyon, which although wasn't as big as the Grand Canyon, was still pretty cool.

In between a couple of these lakes we stopped at Steamboat Rock State Park, and did a short hike partway up a large rock. We didn't have the time to make it all the way to the top, a hike of that size would be worth a day by itself. However, we did see some great views of the lake surrounding the park.

Finally, we got to our destination for the day - the Grand Coulee Dam. The Dam in 550 feet tall, and powers seven states in the western US. After checking into our hotel in Coulee and getting some dinner, we ended a fun day in Eastern Washington.

                                                                                                   -Written by Joseph

Here are some pictures of the stuff we did today (taken by Joseph):

 The bridge we took over the Columbia river.

 One of the views of the lakes we drove by.

 A picture of Dry Falls canyon and the lake below.

 Dry Falls again, just to the right of the above picture

 Another scenic view.

 The large rock we climbed part of.

The view from halfway up the rock.













That's all for now. Check back later to see more about the rest of our trip.

Jack's Robot Arm

I recently made an robot arm with my dad. I got the Robot Arm on my birthday. It was a lot of fun. I took us about 4 1/2 hours to complete it but we did over the time span of 2 months. We did it in 30 minute to 1 hour in half segments. Making it was a lot of fun. First, we did a few starting parts to the base of the arm. Then, about 2 weeks later we started to make the arm, and it was starting to look like an Robot Arm. After that, approximately a month later, we completed the arm. All we had left was the control box/controller which we did the next weekend. Finally, we completed it! That day, I picked up the screw driver with the arm, the pliers, and a few other things with the arm. The arm can rotate, parts of the arm can go down or up, so you can move big parts of the Robot Arm or just little things(to make little or big changes). It picks things up with a plier-type thing which you can make go out or in (with the controller). It also has a light.
The whole building process was a lot of fun! Playing with it was also lots of fun too!

Here's a video of me playing with the completed Robot Arm:

A picture of the Robot Arm and controller:


And a picture of the controller only:


- Jack