Student Art Show

Each year, the school district hosts a show of student art work. It takes place at the Depot(an old train depot) and Opening Night never fails to impress: student music, great food, and the pride of your kids make for a fun evening. Michael's piece was a leprechaun and Logan's was a japanese wood block print. This year, Gramma and Aunt Alice Louise got to attend, too. How special.

IN PROGRESS

The mud room: what a lovely color of green.

I came home from work to find Keith ankle deep in black insulation from our ceiling. I am not kidding. This stuff was at least 7 inches thick.

Above: where the cigarette butts and beer cans were stashed.

This is the chimney that is causing so much grief. We had just settled on the idea of exposing it with a wrap-around peninsula, when Keith uncovered this: someone in our house's history plastered it, making it virtually worthless. No problem... we weren't super excited about having a chimney exposed in our kitchen anyway, but we were going to gain cabinet apce by doing so. The rub... now we can't get rid of it. Well, we could, but we'd have to sell our boys. So, we get to build the wall back, wasting what little space there is, and I get to apologize for all the times I cursed the previous owners for the dumb things they did with this wall. Eating humble pie now.

BEFORE

Here are a few "bare bones" before pics of our kitchen-- the kitchen we have loved and lived in for 11 years. The kitchen we have been saving to remodel since we made an offer on the house. The litchen with only 3 drawers. The kitchen that was, as we are learning from so many interesting clues left behind, patched together so randomly it leaves our contractor scratching his head... daily. Our house was built in 1910, so you can imagine the stories these walls hold. We have found a collection of beer bottles and cigarette butts in our ceiling(from the upstairs floor???), a shot gun shell with the powder removed, and a quaint index card with a handwritten note from 1955 detailing what work was done at that time. Very cool. Guess at some point there were teenagers doing things their parents didn't know about upstairs. Surely that will never happen in our family:)

This was once the "art" wall, but I didn't think to take pictures until after I had taken all the boys' art off the wall:(

Our mud room. Again, I took this photo after I had removed all the shoes, coats, and other c-rap that lived here for years.

Welcome little Ava!

The newest member of our family was born one day after Logan's 8th birthday: Ava Lauren Boyd, proud parents:Cynthia Gintz Boyd and David Boyd. Our boys were so excited to go see her, and the icing on the cake was getting to hold her. Scrumptious. Just perfect.

Olympic Fever

Michael took this shot of the fireworks barge where they set off fireworks each night of the Olympics.
Couldn't resist a picture with Aslan the Great. At least that's what we chose to call him.

Robson Square, along with many other venues, offered free, family -fun activities throughout the Olympics. We just missed the noon ice-skating session and opted to not wait for the following one. Once we saw all those Canadian toddlers skating we knew we'd made the right choice. It's in their blood. We also decided to skip the free zip line that was running directly over the heads of the people in this shot. Too cool. But by this time, the boys and their little legs were quite tired. Instead, we headed over to the Olympic Superstore to wait in line for 40 minutes. Hey, souveniers are souveniers.

We didn't see any famous athletes but did have a friendly conversation with a Norwegian coach, who stood an imposing 6'10". Alas, no mittens to be had, but we had a great time and were glad we decided to make the trek, which, was made extremely easy by the friendly Canadians.

2010 OLYMPICS

We decided to head up the road to Vancouver to just take in the sights of the 2010 Olympic Games. We didn't have tickets to any of the events but knew we'd regret it if we didn't at least go up and be tourists. It's only a 2 hour drive to the border, and there was virtually no traffic: 2 cars in front of us at the Peace Arch. We drove to Bridgeport then hopped on the Skytrain to downtown. Then... we just walked all over, enjoying street entertainers, music, family activities, and just gawking at all the international visitors.

Paper Lantern Forest. This was super cool. Hundreds of lanterns hung to complete a street of art.

Logan's favorite

And my favorite. So much color and texture.

FIX IT!

Last October a treasure was lost: the trestle part of the Tommy Thompson trail burned. And boy, did it burn. It lit the entire sky up with black smoke for hours. This is the trail we ride our bikes on along the water, the trail Brian uses to commute each morning at 5:30am. This loss left a huge hole in our town's heart. And so, a group of determined citizens and private businesses, along with the Samish Tribe has set about raising money to FIX IT. This is happening by donations from all over, and hopefully, the bridge will be fixed by late spring. Brian has been risking his life in the dark on Highway 20 each morning and evening. Orange vest and flashing lights don't comfort me much.

Logan's class, along with the "Older Challenge" kids(5th and 6th graders) put on a "Walk-a-thon" to raise some money to donate. Well, suffice it to say, there wasn't much walking. The kids just ran and ran and ran... for an entire hour. Logan ran 5 1/4 miles in that hour, and his class raised over $2000. What a great way to support a local and good cause and to learn about giving back to the community.

And the Hanrahan Clan will continue to wear our FIXIT buttons with pride.

A rubberband around the wrist to tally how many laps each student ran. Makes collecting the pledges easier.

Our little author

And the winner is... Michael decided to write a story for the PTA Reflections Contest. It was about a dog who picked flowers and gave them to a balloon dog. Because of the warmth in his heart, the balloon dog came alive. So sweet. And really, I was just happy he decided to enter. Never dreamed he'd place, let alone win first place. We were all so proud when shy Michael went up to receive his award from his principal, Mr. Selting.

Still more Christmas pics

One day, the Kegels/Hanrahans decided to take a walk to the pond: Erne, Nancy, Alice Louise, Brian, Treva, Logan and Michael Patrick... and Fletcher, the Fetcher, the Snowball Catcher. And thus was born the award-winning story that Michael wrote for the National PTA Reflections Contest. More on that in a later post.

Two Kegel girls on a frozen pond

Just a really long day.

Uncle Erne convinced us to watch some crazy show about a man in suspenders who invents silly things. This on New Year's Eve.

Olympic hopefuls? hmmmmmm

We managed to scrap together enough of the little fallen snow to make a few runs with the snowboards. And really, how much snow do two boys need when they're in the woods of Kegel Mountain?

Watch out Canada!

When we arrived at Gramma and Papa's for Christmas, the boys got the best surprise of all:Papa had handmade hockey sticks, and seeing as this was the only winter in the history of the world that didn't involve feet of snow, we actually got to play some great hockey on a little ice pond down the back road. The boys, including Brian, had a fabulous time out there. It was quite addicting, and it got us primed for the Winter Olympics!