State Cross-Country Championships

On Saturday November 8^th we all went to Pasco to watch Joseph and Interlake High School compete in the State Cross Country Championships. It was a huge event with about a thousand runners across all the boys and girls categories (each race is run with schools of similar sizes – Class 1, 2, 3, and 4; 1&2 are run together so there are six races in all, about 150 runners in each race). Interlake competed in the Class 3 Boys race – along with the top 20 teams in the state from their class, plus the top ~20 runners who haven’t qualified with their teams run as well.

Joseph ran a great race – he beat his personal best yet again with a time of 16:41, and finished about 56^th, despite coming into the race with the ~85^th best ‘personal best’ time of any runner. But one of his teammates had a badly hurt foot and finished two minutes behind his usual time. Despite strong runs from others this was too much to overcome. But four of Interlake’s top five runners are juniors, including Joseph, so we hope to be back here again next year!

Here’s a video of the start of the race:

Halloween 2014

Halloween brought the usual range of tricks and treats. Joseph manned the house, handing out candy, while Jack went trick-or-treating with a group of friends, and Mom and Dad took Henry around the neighborhood.

Both Jack and Henry wore very scary costumes.

Jack

Henry

Interlake X-Country Wins District; Comes in Second in a Muddy Metro-Regional

The Interlake Cross Country team won their district with an impressive win at Lake Sammamish State Park on Thursday, October 23. Joseph finished sixth overall in the entire district with a time of 17:01 in 5K, tying his personal best. It was very cold and wet.

Interlake then went on to race in the Metro Regional meet in Seattle the following Thursday, October 30. It was a rainy day and the conditions were very muddy. The race was held at Woodland Park in north Seattle. Of the twelve schools competing Interlake finished second, with Bishop Blanchet winning the meet. Joseph finished at 16:55, his new personal best, and was 28th out of approximately 100 runners.

With the second-place finish Interlake qualifies for the State Finals, to be held Saturday November 8 in Pasco Washington. The team set a goal at the start of the year to finish in the top four in State - stay tuned for details on how it turns out!

Joseph approaching the finish line !

It was a little muddy

The Interlake Varsity Cross-Country Team

Interlake Shines in Cross-Country

Joseph has become a key member of the Interlake Cross-Country team this fall, making Varsity (top seven runners) and usually finishing fourth or fifth on his team. The top five finishers count to determine which school wins the meet, so his times have been important in helping Interlake off to a great start.

He's also got to run in some neat races. He's gone on overnight meets to Port Angeles (Salt Creek Invitational), which Interlake came in first place at (out of eleven schools), and also went to the Nike Pre-Nationals in Portland. KingCounty and District are still to come, and if they finish among the top schools in District they'll move on to State.

Joseph's best time was last Saturday at the Twilight Invitational in Marysville, where he ran a 5K (3.2 miles) in 17 minutes, 1 second.

Meet the Nats

In late August, the Washington Nationals came to Seattle to play the Mariners. We all went to the games and the kids got autographs and photos taken with some of the players during batting practice. The Nats won 2 of the 3 games.

The boys with Gio Gonzalez

The boys with Tyler Clippard

New Addition to the Family

For Henry's tenth birthday, he got a new hamster. He named her "Denalia", after Denali, the biggest mountain and National Park in Alaska we had just returned from. She is settling in well to life in Henry's room.

Denalia in her exercise ball

Denalia's home on a bookcase in Henry's room

Alaska !

We spent nine days in Alaska in August for our big summer vacation. We flew into Anchorage and then drove south to spend a day in Whitter and then four nights at a house we rented in Cooper Landing, which is on the Kenai Peninsula, a very scenic area with a lot of fishing (we didn't do any, but ate some great salmon and halibut). We did a lot of hiking and really enjoyed the house. From there we spent a day in Anchorage and then two days up in Denali National Park.

You can see our top 35 pictures at this link.

Here were the top 5 highlights of the trip:

1. The highlight of our first hike was taking a 'hand tram' across a river gorge.

2. Our most strenuous hike was to the Harding Ice Field. You climb up a mountain and then get an amazing view of a sea of ice with mountaintops peaking above.

3. We biked in Anchorage and passed by a huge moose with her calf by the side of the trail.

4. Dad and the boys took a 'flight-seeing' trip in a 10-seat airplane to see the tallest mountain in North America up-close

5. Amazing scenery and hiking in Denali National Park. We saw moose, elk, ptarmigan (Alaska's state bird), and some grizzly bear.

Sunset

A mid-summer sunset from our deck..

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Joseph Turns Sweet 16

For Joseph's sixteenth birthday we rented an electric boat and went out on Lake Union.

(Mom and Dad thought this was fitting since we went for a pontoon boat ride for his first birthday. Joseph said he didn't remember that).

The boat was fairly hard to steer. Everyone (except Mom) took a turn at the wheel.

Afterwards we went for dinner at Olive Garden and opened presents.

Weekend in the North Cascades

In early June, we had a weekend free of baseball and we headed about 2.5 hours north-east of Bellevue to North Cascades National Park. We did a couple of hikes, and stayed overnight in an inn. The scenery is beautiful, with mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and rivers. We had dinner in Winthrop, Washington, which is an old Western town. We also played mini-golf (congrats to the winner - Mom), and had ice cream.

Here are some photos:

The boys at the end of the Thunder Knob hike

Mom and Dad on a foot bridge

Jack straddling the waterfall

Diablo Lake

Recent Photos

We finally posted our recent photos on Flickr.

Click here to see photos from late 2013

And here for an album of the first six months of 2014.

Steamboat Rock

In April we took our third annual trip to a baseball tournament in Eastern Washington. For the third year, we stopped at Steamboat Rock - a neat island in a lake with a tall hill you can hike to the top of and look down on the canyon. The weather was great - one of our favorite spots in Eastern Washington, about three hours from our house.

Jack Launches a Satellite

Jack joined the Tyee Middle School Satellite Club this year. Every Tuesday after school he would work with his group on their satellite - a cube about one-foot in each dimension that has a camera, measurement devices, and a lot of padding.

Then in March he went out to Ellensburg, and early on Saturday morning he launched the satellite. There was a large weather balloon filled with helium (about 10 feet tall when inflated) and then about ten satellites were attached to a wire coming down from the balloon. When the balloon is let go it rises over 100,000 feet into the sky, taking the satellites with them. This is the black of space, well above the atmosphere (airplanes fly around 30,000 feet, so it's three times as high). The kids set the camera in the satellite to take pictures at regular intervals.

Once it reaches a certain height the balloon pops and then comes down to earth (a parachute deploys so it doesn't crash down). Then the hunt is on - the satellite lets off a GPS signal, and we picked it up near Odessa, about another hour east of where it took off from. Very neat - pictures from the satellite to come!

Trip to California

In February, we took a five-day trip to California. We spent two days at National Parks: Channel Islands and Joshua Tree.

Channel Islands are a few islands off the Pacific Coast - we took an hour boat ride to get to one of them and took a hike. On the way back a school of dolphins swam along with us.

Joshua Tree is a couple of hours east of LA, and is where the Mojave Desert meets the Colorado Desert. The landscape is beautiful, with large rock formations you can climb around, cactii, and of course the odd-looking Joshua Trees.

After that we spent a day at Disneyland. Everyone enjoyed the rides, particularly the Matterhorn, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Space Mountain.

Super Bowl XLVIII Champs !

The Seattle Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos in Super Bown XLVIII 43-8 to cap a great season and win their first NFL championship.

In November we watched the Seahawks beat the Buccaneers at Century Link Field:

On the Wednesday after the Super Bowl the city held a parade for the Seahawks. An estimated 700,000 people converged upon downtown. Dad took the boys down to cheer on the local heroes. It was very cold!

Jack and Henry waiting for the parade to begin

Marshawn Lynch led the way - throwing Skittles to the crowd

Each position had humvees with the players riding 

Boys Trip to Oregon Coast

In early November Dad took the boys to stay at a house on the Oregon Coast for a long weekend. We stayed right on the ocean, though it was up on a cliff so we needed to walk down the block to get beach access. We played football on the beach and saw some beautiful sunsets. We also got to see the world's shortest river - the "D River" which runs 440 feet from a lake to the ocean.

Joseph at Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

Our house on the Oregon Coast

Jack & Henry at the D River

On the beach