back to school

Time for the official first day of school photo...
They really do like each other... if you look closely you will see a big muddy footprint on the step between them... they were trying to avoid sitting on it.

Today went pretty well. It amazes me how excited the kids get to start school. You would think with homeschooling it wouldn't generate the same excitement... yet, they were ready to go a half an hour before I had planned on starting. (a little more about our day is here)

This was also our first day back to music class. This year I managed to get Alex in a private guitar class at the same time as Clara's violin lesson.... so convenient! This was Alex's first time meeting his new teacher and asked me before going into his lesson "does this shirt make me look like a guitar player?". Too funny.

Okay... gotta run... the girl is up here with questions!

'nite!

McDonald's Kids Triathlon

Yesterday was the day Alex had trained for all summer... the McDonald's Kids Triathlon! He was so excited! Jeff and Alex got up early and left the house around 6 am in order to get Alex set up in the transition area. Clara and I slept in a bit and joined them on the beach around 8:30. The race was supposed to start at 9:00am but the adult super sprint took place on the same course before the kids' race and it ran behind (it ended up starting about an hour late).

Here's the scene on the beach...
An excited boy with a cheesy grin...
With all of the extra time, Alex decided to test out the water...
He said it was cold but warmer than it had been earlier in the week at practice...
I blew out the sky in this photo... but I liked it anyway...
The swim course...

And they're OFF.....
(Alex is on the far left in this photo... look for the lifeguard on the left in the black wetsuit and then look for the boy in black closest to me - clicking on the photo will make it bigger)

I really tried to take swim photos, but... it was so hard to track them with the mass of boys and the waves. I did take a few but found out later that I was tracking the wrong boy with a black shirt on... oh well! :-)

Here's Alex coming out of the swim...
(he's the one right directly in front of the orange thing)

This time I didn't want to run around like a maniac so I didn't even try to get bike photos (although I found out later that given the layout of the course, it would have been totally doable... I know that now for next year).

So, I caught up with him again on the run portion...
Here I thought he was smiling and giving the thumbs up to Jeff and Clara...
Later, when he saw that photo, he said, "oh, you took that photo too?"... apparently his coach was near us taking photos too and the smile and thumbs up were for him :-)

With the layout of this course I was able to make it to the finish in plenty of time to see Alex come through.....

I was soooo proud of him!!!! He not only finished... but he finished with a smile! One thing I was really impressed with considering the size of this event.... they announced each child by name as they crossed the finish line!! How incredibly special is that?

Alex couldn't stop smiling after he finished....

He really enjoyed himself and was so proud of himself for not walking at all during the run this time.
Stats:

100m swim - 6:12
4k bike - 10:47
1k run - 7:17
total - 24:17

He took about 3 minutes off of his time from his last tri. It's hard to compare the times of the individual pieces of the races as this tri did not separate transition times as a separate categories from the actual swim, bike, run times. However, it does look like he made the biggest difference in his bike time.

So, here are the final bit of stats...
All 7-10 year old participants - 154/434
All 7-10 year old boys - 90/213
His division 9-10 yo boys - 76/137

He LOVED being part of the tri club this summer and definitely wants to do it again next year (Clara thinks she's going to do it too). He's a bit sad to see the season end but is looking forward to a few 5k's to get him through the fall! :-)

colorful

This week was a busy week with Vacation Bible School. The kids absolutely love VBS and can't wait to go each year. This year was no exception... they had a wonderful time.

After VBS yesterday, the girl and I decided to go and get our nails done (well, just toes for me).

She's into all things mismatched and colorful right now, so here are her toes...
And if that wasn't enough color...

she had two more colors picked out for her fingers...
I'll admit that she did get the idea from a friend of hers but this is sooooo Clara. :-)

sand

The other day it was time for me to get my weekly dose of sand in my shoes. It's really obnoxious. Somehow sand gets stuck underneath the insole of my shoe (actually, not sure if that's what it's called but I think you know what I mean) and for a whole week after we're there sand continuously leaks out of my shoes. I was sitting in the floor talking to the moms at Clara's dance class on Monday and shifted my feet to find two little piles of sand where my shoes had been sitting. This was SIX days after we had last been to the beach. It's sad really.

Anyway... while Alex was doing his triathlon training, Clara and I played in the sand....

I have been really bad lately about not wanting to tote around my big camera so I haven't taken many photos. But this day I remembered that I had my little point and shoot in my purse.

I really love that little camera. It's waterproof, dustproof and sandproof! My favorite thing to do is freak people out at the beach with it. It got covered in sand while we were there and you should have seen the horrified looks I got at the beach when I walked out into the water and dunked it under and swished it around! There were also several concerned adults when I let Clara take it out with her into the lake. Apparently I'm easily amused.

Not sure what I think of this last photo....
I tried an action on it I rarely use called "Seventies".... has a seventies kind of look, doesn't it?

road to wrigley '09

Yesterday we went to the Road to Wrigley minor league game at Wrigley Field.

We went last year and had a great time... this time.... we were just HOT! My goodness, we're not used to this kind of heat this summer! It was in the 90's and super humid. We had really good seats (7 rows from the field) but they put us out in the sun which was brutal for a while.

My boy...
... for some reason he likes to sit by me at ballgames.

Yet another scoreboard shot to add to my collection...

Alex was so excited to be sitting in an area where he might possibly catch a foul ball...
He almost got one too! It came straight down at him... hit his glove, mashed his pinkie on his right hand and bounced out of his glove. After getting over the sting of the mashed finger, he was pretty impressed that he almost had one!

A shot to prove that the girl was there too...
She sits by Jeff most of the time so I have very few photos of her at the game.
The kids were so excited that the Zooperstars were there again this year...
Oh look! There was an actual game going on too! :-)
Back to the entertainment....

Shark McGwire....

The dancing bat boy....

And Clammy Sosa....
After the game was over, it was time for the running of the bases! Last year we got rained out before the kids could ever get on the field. This year we were cutting it close... as they started rolling out the tarp since it looked like it was going to rain.

Here's Alex's walking out to first base...
Is it only my kids who wave directly in front of their faces??

And he's off...
And here's Clara running like the wind....
After we got home we went next door for our neighbor's going away party.... big day for the Radtke family!;

pretending to be cool

Yesterday the kids and I got to pretend that we're cool. We got to spend the afternoon and evening with Shirin Askari and Christopher Straub from Season 6 of Project Runway.

Shirin used to babysit for us when we lived in Texas and she was the best babysitter ever. She was up here for a promotional event this weekend out in Schaumburg and wanted to get together if we were available. She called right before leaving the hotel to let us know that Christopher would be joining us too.

We decided to brave the rain and head out to Millennium park.

Here we are with Shirin out in the fountains...
I had my big camera with me but given that it was raining pretty decently, I decided to just use my little waterproof camera.

Here's Alex deciding that if you're already wet.... what's a little more water....
He's lucky he didn't destroy his sister's umbrella :-)

After that we went to the "bean" and then across the bridge to the Art Institute. We spent quite a bit of time there. The kids had a lot of fun showing Shirin and Christopher their favorite art pieces.

From there we hopped on the L back to our neighborhood for pizza before Jeff took them back to their hotel.

I did take one photo with my big camera.... but I can't post it here... because it's posted HERE.

We had a really great afternoon and evening.... and now we're all very excited to watch the show this season!

oops... forgot to add a title to this one

This week has been busy! However, we appear to not like things any other way :-)

Tuesday the kids had swim and the boy had tri club.

The girl and I sat in the sand and played...


I decided to bring my wide angle along and that was my toy for the afternoon. I really love playing with it... such a different perspective.

I got this bright idea this week to try a new recipe everyday from some cooking magazines I've been hoarding for years. So far, it's been a HUGE bust... haven't loved anything yet. Oh well... at least we've had some variety! :-)

Today was crazy... I discovered at 8:35 this morning that the kids has an appointment at 9:00 (I had put it in my planner as being at 10:00). At the moment of discovery, the kids were eating breakfast and still in their pajamas! Thankfully the appointment was close by (although we did have to take a ridiculously short cab ride there in order to make it on time). That kind of chaos just threw my whole morning off. Clara ended up being called in to work this afternoon :-) (she has a summer job as a mother's helper for the family next door). She loves her job and the little girl she helps with.... it is so good for her to have something where she gets to be the responsible one.

Our weekend could go two different directions... either jammed packed with activities or rather quiet. We have quite a few tentative plans that would make us very busy, but there's a chance that some of them won't pan out which means we have a fairly calm weekend. I'm good with either one!

Alex's first tri

I have been a very bad blogger this summer. :-)

Anyway... a couple of weekends ago Alex had his first triathlon. He competed in the junior division (7-10 year olds). This division had a 100m swim, 4k bike and 1k run.

Here he is at the swim start...
They couldn't dive, they had to go in feet first so Alex decided to start the race off with style :-)
He did well with the swim considering he hasn't begun swimming with a team yet. He swam freestyle two lengths, did a length of breast stroke in order to catch his breath and then finished the last length with freestyle....

He finished the swim with a respectable 3:45.65.

Then it was off to the transition area to begin the bike portion...
Here he is starting off on the course....
I'm not sure what happened with the bike portion since we didn't go out to the course, but he had an extremely slow time for him. From what we could tell from his start, he was being overly cautious (he was slowing down to chat with the course volunteers to make sure he understood which way to go instead of just following the pack). His time for bike was 14.07.70.

Finally it was the run....
He was pretty well spent by this point. He started out walking some and then he took off running and ran the entire way to the end. He had another respectable time with the run... his time was 5:59.30.
Look at that smile! He was so excited that he did it... he actually did a triathlon! He didn't care how he placed overall, he was just so proud of himself for starting it and following through. He's got the triathlon bug now! I think he may end up doing two more this year.

Adding in his transition times, he ended up with a time of 27.11.85, which put him at 55th place out of the 114 junior participants!

I am so proud of my boy! :-)