Miscellaneous January pictures

For Christmas we got Andrew tickets to a Sharks game.  One of the companies I work with has 6 tickets and I was expecting to get 4 of the tickets, but they offered me all 6, so we were able to bring Claire and Andrew's friend Nolan and his dad Chris.  

Nolan had even made a sign.  Everyone else was dressed in Sharks gear except for me.  I did not wear enough layers and was cold. It was a great game with lots of scoring and a Sharks win!

Andrew doesn't watch cartoons in the morning when he gets up.  He now watches ESPN or some other sports recap channel or show.  He saw a commercial for and autograph signing for three Sharks players.  He wanted us to pay for it, but we said that if he really wanted to go that he could use his own money.  So he agreed.  Grant and I went along so that we could drop them off in downtown Palo Alto since there is no parking.  I had to return somethings at Nordstrom so we went to Stanford Shopping center while they went to the signing.  There was already a line out the door when we arrived, so our plan was going to work out great.  Danny said that Andrew was a bit shy around the players and didn't ask them much.  The first stop was Tomas Hertl.  He is only 20 years old but looks much younger and pretty much does not speak English.

The next player was Tommy Wingels.  He plays center as well as Hertl.

The last player is Joe Pavelski who is Andrew's favorite player.  He had just been selected to the US Olympic team so that was double cool.  Andrew had them sign a poster that he now has in his room.

We finished early at Nordstrom, so we had some spare time to stop by the American Girl store.  Grant loved seeing the dolls in all of the scenes.  

Andrew got invited to a birthday party for his friend Jayden from day care.  The party was at Vasona park and Jayden's mom had Spiderman come visit because Jayden is a huge fan.  Grant was a bit stand offish at first, but Spiderman brought lots of fun games like the Limbo as shown below.  They played games for about an hour and then we sang Happy Birthday.

They were trying to get a group picture, but Spiderman was showing the kids how to do the web shooter.

Claire loves to help out with Sunday dinner at my parent's house.  My mom kept them busy this day washing and drying grapes.  They, of course, loved this.  No need to tell them that grapes probably don't need to be dried after they are washed.

Claire wanted to read Grant his bedtime stories.  They got sidetracked doing a picture search though.

I took of MLK Day and I enlisted them as my workout buddies.  I ran and they biked 3 miles.  No complaints until the very end when Grant said he couldn't go any farther.  Luckily we were just at the end of our street. 

After than Andrew had a Cub Scout field trip to the police station and I was playing in the yard with Claire and Grant.  Claire suggested that they could run through the sprinklers and I said no, but she was persistent.  It was probably about 70 degrees and they lasted about 20 minutes.  They had a great time running back and fort and going down the slide.

I sent the above pictures to Natalie in Idaho/Antarctica and she sent this picture back with the caption, "My kids tried to find the sprinklers this weekend, does that count?"

And lastly, after church a couple of weeks ago, Claire dressed her dolls in matching outfits and left them in the family room.  Grant saw this as the perfect opportunity to do target practice with the Nerf dart gun. Claire did not find this to be humorous at all.

Claire walking home from school with her friends Hayden and Nolan.  They walk home every day together.

Pinewood Derby

This year for the Pinewood Derby Andrew wanted to make a Land Speeder from Star Wars.  My dad helped with adding some wood to the car to make it more rounded looking.  We found a picture from the internet that we based the car off of.  There was a lot of debate about how to do the engines for the Land Speeder.  

When it came time to paint, Claire and Grant really wanted to help but we had to keep reminding them that it was Andrew's project.

Here is the completed masterpiece.

As the defending champion, Andrew had high hopes of winning again. Unfortunately, that was not the case this year.  His car came in fourth place which was still really good.  Andrew did not seem concerned or upset about it at all which was good.  He's got one more chance next year before he is done with cub scouts.

This was the final race.  They raced it four times, giving each car a chance on every lane.  His car came in 3rd once and 4th the other three times.  The other cars were really fast.  They had lots of snacks and fun things for the younger siblings to do, so it was still a really fun night.

YMCA basketball

Andrew really wanted to play basketball at the Y again this winter.  Claire also wanted to play this year, so we signed them both up.  Claire ended up on a team with her friends Nolan and Ashleen from school.  Andrew also has his friend Addie from church on his team. Danny has been helping coach Claire's team because her coach travels a lot for work.  Here they are lined up at the beginning of a game.  She is #35.

Claire is definitely a bit afraid of the ball.  We are trying to work on this with her, but she hustles up and down the court.  Her games are four eight minute quarters.  They each play half of each quarter.  So far in the season she has scored one basket.  The teams are coed, so I think that she may be a bit intimidated sometimes by the boys. 

They wear colored wrist bands to help them know who to guard on the other team.

Danny was coaching today and Grant and Calvin were playing cars on the sidelines.  

Andrew really wanted to be on the same team he was on last season, but it didn't work out that way.  

All of the teams line up on either side of the key at the start of each quarter.  They play four ten minute quarters.  He likes to get the ball, dribble to the right and try to shoot.  At this age some of the kids are a bit of a ball hog, Andrew isn't one of them.  He could get the ball more if he was more aggressive about chasing it.  He has scored several times this season.  

Basketball through the Y is nice because it is a relatively short season and they only have one practice and one game per week.  It is nice to have them in an activity that gets them running around.