Last weekend we had a mini reunion on Don Pedro Lake in central California: Shannon’s sister and her family drove down from Sacramento and her brother and his family made it their first stop on a 2 week expedition.
Grace was the March Hare in a community theater production of “Alice in Wonderland” for the last three nights. She worked hard for the last couple months and it paid off…she was great! Grandpa and Grandma Wride were able to drive down and take in a couple shows.
Our elementary school had an awards ceremony yesterday. Gavin won the Harvey Mudd College award for excellence in math and science!! Harvey Mudd is one of the top science and engineering schools in the country: highest rate of science and engineering PhD production among all undergrad colleges and 2nd ahead of MIT compared to all universities. It’s 1/2 mile down the street from the kid’s school. They sponsor an award for the boy and girl who score highest in math and science on the standardized tests in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades. He also got a presidential scholastic achievement award.
Grace got recognition for academic achievement, citizenship and writing for the school newspaper.
Dylan got an award for getting straight A’s at middle school.
They all had a great year and can’t wait for summer to start on Friday!
This is my nephew Jake teaching a couple that lives on a man-made floating island on a lake in Peru.
Shannon’s nephew Christian has his farewell this weekend. He is going to Uganda!!
Grace did a great job at the 4th grade year end Gold Rush play/ musical. She wrote and memorized her part. At crunch time she nailed it: spoke clearly and confidently.
Gavin and Grace had another band performance last week. Probably Grace’s last.
From going to the Craig Ferguson show I’m on an audience waiting list. Last week I got an email offering tickets to the American Idol finale part one THAT DAY. I said “Yes, please” and got 4 tickets! You have to be 12, so I took Dylan, Gavin and their cousin Bobby. It was a LOT of waiting around, but fun. The email confirmation was a ticket to wait in line for a ticket outside the Staple’s Center. After an hour in line we got our actual tickets, but had ~1 hr to kill before we could get into the Nokia theater. There’s an ESPN Zone right there, so we headed over there. Saw Brooke White up close doing the TV Guide show. After the Zone we headed to the theater. There was an interview area for TV stations to interview previous Idol contestants. Saw Scott, the blind guy and a few others. Matt Girard was practically begging people to get his autograph. We passed. Once we were in the Nokia we waited some more. It was cool to see the stage with all the neon AI signs. We sat near the back of the main floor. A few rows in front of Jason Castro. From the live audience you can barely hear what the judges are saying, probably by design. The girl, Krystal (?) was way better than Lee on all three songs. She got standing ovations every time from a crowd that was favoring Lee by a big margin. Lee seemed to have low energy and like he was just kind of going thru the motions. It was fun and the boys had a blast. The best part was the HUGE smile on Gavin’s face when I told him why he was getting out of school early!
