2009 Flute Recital

Cynfor and Jessie's flute recital was on April 17th, 2009. Both of them played very well. Below are the pictures of the whole group who played, and Cynfor and Jessie with their flute teacher. At the bottom - check out the size of the flute that Jessie is standing "under." Yes - this is a flute, and the flute teacher demonstrated it at the recital. It is a "contra bass" flute - and the sound is two octaves lower than a normal flute. Very lovely sound, but apparently takes a lot more effort to play to make the sound come out - a lot of hard blowing!

 

 

 

 

Cynfor and Jessie playing Piano

Cynfor and Jessie were invited to help thank the volunteers at the school at their "Volunteer Luncheon." Both of them played piano as part of a mini concert to thank the volunteers.

 

 

 

 

Tara's birthday trip...

We headed north to Washington State, to a place called Great Wolf Lodge. It is just outside of the city of Olympia the capitol of Washington.

The whole family enjoyed the time we had there, swimming in the pools, going down the huge water slides, getting water dumped on us from a 1000 gallon bucket from on top of a play structure. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the trip to share.

 

 

 

 

Trip to the Coast

Although it was cold, it was great to see the sun shining across the Oregon Coast, which is pretty spectacular. Here are some pictures of our day trip to the coast.

 

 

 

 

Spring 2009

Spring is here, and so we would thought we would show a few pictures of the lovely flowering tree out the front of our house.

 

 

 

Jessie's 10th Birthday

Today was Jessie's 10th Birthday Party. She had 10 of her friends, and we all went to a "ceramics painting" store so the girls could all paint their own ceramic figurine, jewelery holder, vase, etc. Jessie also was able to paint a dinner plate, which we put a happy birthday jessie with all of her friends signing the plate on the outside. She can use the plate to eat off, or she can hold onto it and hang it on the wall as a decoration. She has not decided yet. We will not see the finished works until next week.

She also worked hard on Saturday making the cup-cakes for the day. She chose to have those instead of a full cake - much easier to hand out than slices of a full cake! They were a hit, with most of the girls wanting to eat two!

 

 

 

 

Sick Kids...

Unfortunately Darren came home sick on Monday night from work, only to infect Cynfor on Saturday, then Jessie on Sunday. Here are the "sick kids" hanging out watching the Basketball all "rugged up." As you can see by the photographs below, they are still pretty high spirited, but both not feeling fantastic. 

 

 

 

Girl Scout "sock puppet show"

Jessie's Girl Scout troup had a "sock puppet show" on Wednesday. Some of the show pictures are below.

 

 

 

 

Aussie day 2009

Because of the time zone differences between the USA and Australia - Australia day was actually happening when we celebrated at Jake and Jenny's house on Sunday. As you can see - several of us got right into the spirit. Jessie's flag actually ended up being hung on the outside of the house after she paraded around the house a little. (Jake and Darren in the background getting the pole ready)

 

 

 

 

Chinese New Year - 2009

We celebrated Chinese New Year's eve with Jake and Rachel at Wong's King restaurant in South East Portland. As you can see, we had a good spread of food - some was new to Rachel, who had not experienced an Chinese New Year meal quite like this before. 

We had a great night out with both of them, and enjoyed the food as a group.