First Soccer Game Kara

Hi!

Just a quick soccer update -- Kara's first game was last Tuesday. They lost, but I thought I'd post a few pics of Kara anyway.

My zoom lens gets in pretty close, even though it feels like a HUGE field. They play on the turf football field, and we sit in the (hard) bleachers.

Thankfully we bought our orange-and-black WAYLAND seat cushions, back when Teresa was in volleyball, for just such occasions...they give a tiny bit more cushion while you are sitting there.

The other thing to be thankful for, is warm temperatures. It's so much nicer watching a soccer game when the temps are in the 70's and 60's, and I know our days are numbered there. We'll take as many "nice day" games as we can get!

Here are some pics I got, with Kara in them. She is #3.

RWBY and Hatching Time

Hello!

Just wanted to share a few pics from the past week. (**You can click on any of these photos and they'll be BIGGER.)

COMIC CON. I'll start with David's cool costume he made. Yes, that he made! Ha. Last month he mentioned needing to go to the fabric store, and he wanted to transform one of his old missionary white shirts, into this costume.

"For what?" I ask.
"Comic Con, in Salt Lake." (As if I'm familiar with something called Comic Con. Ha!)

SLC Comic Con; David has his scythe

Actually, last year, he and some friends went to something like it in Boston. It's kind of a big, regional event that cities have, that celebrates movies or book series, and now they also do shows that are just on the Internet. People dress up like their favorite characters, and some people go all out crazy with these costumes.

They may invite the celebrities who star in the shows, and have panel discussions. It's kind of geeky when you consider the mind-boggling volumes of trivia that some of these people know (think Star Trek, Dr. Who...there are fan websites, video games and fan-written books based on these characters and their worlds.)

David went as Qrow (pronounced "crow") Cosplay, from the show "RWBY" (pronounced "Ruby.")  RWBY is "an American 3D Original Net Animation," which means it came out originally only on the Internet.

So. There's your background. David pulled out the sewing machine and actually made his costume! Started with a white shirt, added the black pieces for collar/cuffs/pockets, then the gray on the front. Cut a cape and Voila! :) :)

Not "over-the-top," like he said SOME of the costumes were, but it was pretty impressive. Here are pics of the animated character, and David. And I'll pull a photo from facebook of the 4-some who went on Saturday.

NATURE HIGHLIGHT.
OK -- now for the Nature Highlight from Saturday, here on our street, just 3 houses down. I was taking my morning walk, and saw some movement on the ground by the neighbor's mailbox. OH COOL, it's a BABY TURTLE! So I run home 3 houses, grab the camera, and tell Frank: come see a cool piece of nature, guess what I found!

walking (suprisingly fast) across the street

compared to a basketball

checking out Frank's finger when he
 put it down there for size comparison

I got back there and he was gone. We look around. Oh, there he is! Then Frank sees another one. And another one. We count 6. "Look," says Frank. "One is poking his head out of this hole." What??

It turns out, it was a nest, and we caught it at the very few minutes when the turtles had just hatched and were coming out of the nest!

We watched for 20 minutes, and Frank counted TWENTY-ONE baby turtles come out of the nest hole and walk across the street to the conservation land/kind of swampy marsh over there.

Here are some pics, because of course I took a ridiculous number of pictures.

Fun facts: Snapping Turtles look prehistoric, because, well, they kind of are. They have not needed to evolve or change at all, over the last hundreds of thousands of years, because they are already "perfect." Of course the eggs might be eaten by racoons or skunks or other animals, and birds might also eat these little baby turtles. But by the time they grow up into adolescents and adults, snapping turtles have very few, if any predators! Their spine grows into their rock-hard shell, and besides that they are known to be aggressive. Animals leave them alone. They are home free.

Have a great week!
Kari

Philadelphia quick trip

Hello!

Just a quick update, that we got to go to Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago. They have completed the Temple there for our church, and anyone can take a tour through it.

It's so beautiful! The tour guides told us they had 2 architects working on it. And that those 2 architects looked at 1000+ pictures of historical sites all around Philadelphia, to incorporated as much as they could of those landmarks and colonial buildings, into the architecture and interior of the temple. It's very cool.

They also put a garden on top of the visitor's center next door, so you can walk upstairs and be on the roof. Then you see a cool view of the city buildings all around you. It's a really neat setting.

We stopped at the U.S. Mint that afternoon, just before going to our session time for the temple open house tour. Haven't been to that mint...it seems like we may have gone to the Denver Mint when we lived in Colorado? I can't remember now. Maybe I went there when I was a kid, but didn't take my OWN kids. That might be it.

There is also a cool boardwalk over the River that runs through the downtown area. We took a walk later that evening.

We stayed overnight, then got up and spent a couple of hours at Valley Forge.

Here are Kara and Teresa outside some of the huts they've recreated, that George Washington and his men lived in for the winter months they lived at Valley Forge.

Now we are back! And actually, last week we sent off David and Teresa, back to BYU for their fall semester! :( :( :( :( Where did the summer go?  We got up bright and early last Tuesday for them to catch a 6:15 flight. We of course had to stop for the traditional Dunkin Donuts.

David and Teresa started school this past Monday.

Not to be outdone, Kara started HER classes yesterday. She's our resident Junior in High School! She's been in soccer for a week now, and she also found out after tryouts that she made the Varsity Girl's Soccer Team. Very impressive, Kara :) :) :)

Good luck this semester, David, Teresa and Kara!

Tough Mudder Half

Hola!
Just a quick update on last weekend...Teresa and Kara signed up at the beginning of the summer, for a "Tough Mudder Half." (BTW if you click on these pictures, they will be BIGGER.)

Now, a "Tough Mudder" is a 10-12 mile mud and obstacle course, designed to push people to do some hard physical exercise, and much of it is muddy or through muddy water at least! There is a lot of "teamwork! We're all on the same team! Help each other with the obstacles!" kind of mentality. There are 20-25 obstacles in a Tough Mudder, and you must be 18 yrs old to participate.

Tough Mudder Half, as expected, is half of all that! It's 5-6 miles, with 10-12 obstacles, and you must be 16 years old to participate. This New England obstacle course was in New Hampshire, about 90 minutes from us.

So, Kara and Teresa's start time was 12:45 p.m., thankfully--we didn't have to drive at a ridiculously early time! We left about 9:30 and got up there and parked by 11:30.

They registered, and it was kind of a carnival atmosphere, with individuals, small groups, and large groups getting ready to run. There were booths with food and drink, athletic advertisements and giveaways.

I had a "spectator ticket," so I could walk the loop for spectators. I couldn't see them go through all of the obstacles, but probably half of them. I took pictures at some of them, and supposedly the professional photographers along the way will post photos within a week. The girls can find the ones of them, and download those.

It was pretty cool! The best part was the "We're all on the same team" mindset, so everybody helped everybody else through the obstacles. Not JUST Teresa and Kara helping each other (which was a fun thing, though), but everybody pitching in.

It was a very fun day! :) :) :)

Lake Como and Lugano, Switzerland

Ciao!

After we walked around downtown Milan with a LOT of other people, we made our way out of the Plaza and found our rental van again. We got ready for an 90 minute drive, and drove to Lake Como.

DRIVING RESPONSIBILITIES. Throughout the trip, Frank drove the van the whole time. It was nice, though, that he got to 'spread the wealth' of

This was my view, for the whole trip!
from the passenger seat in the van.
(Frank wears wrist protection on long
drives to avoid carpal-tunnel symptoms)

responsibilities, to David a little bit. David found an app for his phone that pulled up maps of Italian city streets. He could type in our next destination, and it would find us, then he could tell Frank, "turn right at the next roundabout," or "not this next exit, but the next."

view from inside the car, driving towards Switzerland

It was NOT flawless or stress-free, of course! Sometimes it would not find us until we had already passed the street we were supposed to turn on. David would say "Oh." (as in, "great: NOW it found us...") "Sorry, you need to turn around as soon as you can."

looking down from our balcony--they're eating
breakfast on the dock

Or, we would be approaching an exit and Frank would slow down: "Is it showing that we should turn? Is it this one?" And David would be at the mercy of the slow app! "It doesn't say yet...okay, yes -- turn HERE!"  A fly on the wall of the van would have been laughing, I'm sure.

Mom DID go on this trip! Here's proof :)

Kara greeting the day from our balcony

LAKE COMO. Wow. I can only say "Wow!" This is a place where George Clooney has a summer home with his wife, Amal (an attorney who also happens to be beautiful). We took a little while to find our condo...like I said, the app was not without delays and a little confusion at times. So it was getting dark when we finally got there, and the nice little lady next door helped us confirm that this was, indeed the right address and then the owner showed up with a big smile. All was well!

Lake Como view from the balcony. Yes, really :)

We woke up to a gorgeous view of the lake. Everybody got up and had the same response: "Oooooh! Wow! Beautiful!" We took pics and walked around.

AIR BNB. I have to say that airbnb.com worked out wonderfully for us this trip! It's a website of places to stay all over the world (U.S. included--LOTS of places available nationally). People either make their homes available, or a room in their home, or they own an apartment that they rent out, and they live 5 minutes away or something. You can look at pictures, and read reviews, and email back and forth with them before you officially book a room with them.  This whole trip we used airbnb, renting the whole unit so we always had a kitchen and space to spread out. AND, we met some really nice people! Our only miscommunication was with one lady, ONE night of the stay. It was awesome.

SWITZERLAND. One afternoon we drove to Switzerland. Yes, a short drive over the border, is the town of Lugano.

We wandered around downtown Lugano, and walked in to a grocery store. We made a point of buying some yogurt flavors we don't have in the U.S., and of course Swiss chocolate!

We had that as a snack, and bought enough to last us awhile...

TRAGEDY. Then at the next condo, we put our chocolate in the refrigerator and forgot about it. YES! UGH! We left withOUT our chocolate!! :( :( :(

Oh well, such is life, right! Funny story with that: when we returned from the trip, we got a note from that lady where we left the chocolate in the fridge. "THANK YOU for leaving me chocolate in the refrigerator," she says! Then a side: "I hope you didn't forget it...I am eating it in your honor." We did get a chuckle out of that.

Kari