Sunday, May 25, 2008

Getting Started

Welcome to my new blog!

I am very excited to have this opportunity to share updates on our family, funny stories, links to pics, trials and tribulations in our life, with all of you.  So here is my first attempt to blog away.  Enjoy!

Life here at our house is never dull.  We seem to be on overdrive most of the time, and just completed a hectic week of fun and games!  One of my goals for the remainder of this year, and especially this summer, is to slow down a bit and enjoy the moments.  I was recently inspired by a new blog I found - more on that later.  As a few of you may know already, one of my new year's resolutions this year was to create a simpler life for myself and my family.  Rog and I have recently expanded that to include reducing our family's "footprint".  We will share our adventures into this somewhat new area in the coming weeks and months.

Enough of that, though!  Let's get on with the updates!

School officially ended for the 2007-2008 schoolyear this week.  Zach officially "graduated" from Kindergarten in style with a music program and cookie reception on Tuesday.  Emma enjoyed her final day as a 2nd grader on Thursday.  And, on Friday our summer break officially began.

Emma continues to enjoy her career in gymnastics and will begin practice as a Level 5 gymnast this summer. Notice the reference to "career"? It has to be close to that when an 8-year old spends 13.5 hours per week training away from her family - don't you think?!  And let's not even talk about the six-pack abs and brick-house body - we are a bit afraid of swim suit season! Roger is going to be knocking the boys away at the local pool!  We are waiting with baited breathe to see if she can hang with the increase in time, skills and conditioning.  Seriously, though, she has great talent and is beautiful to watch!  You can check out highlights of this past competition season at Roger's photo posting site: akitanik.smugmug.com.

After less than successful attempts at soccer and basketball, Zach has recently joined a baseball team made up of 15 of his friends from Kindergarten.  We are pleased to announce that he has found a sport that really gets him excited!  The boys began practicing in March and had their first game on Mother's Day.  We have had so much fun watching Zach learn the ropes of baseball and be successful increasing his skills with catching, fielding and hitting the ball!  His team is official named the "MudDogs", and Zach's team name is Zee-Dog.  We are lucky to have a great group of dad's, and one mom, who are awesome coaches.  You can't even imagine how hard it is to keep track of 15 kindergartners during practice and games.  Are hats are off to "Dog Trainer", "Dog Catcher", "The Big Red Dog", and "Scrappy" - our fabulous coaches!  You can see pics of Zee-Dog and his friends in action at Roger's photo posting site I mentioned above.

As for Rog and I, we continue to plug away at our respectful careers, work on home improvement projects, cheer our children on, and enjoy time with our family and friends.

I think that is enough for now - I want to keep you interested - not bore you to death!

We will post again soon,

The J9