Congratulations

Lisa has been busy lately.

Last month she finished her personal progress program and received the Young Woman's medallion. Here are a few photos.

Other recent Lisa milestones:

* Won the recent playing test, and was promoted to first violin, first chair in the orchestra, so she is now the "concertmistress".

* She passed the audition and was selected for the high school chamber orchestra next year -- pretty good for a freshman.

* She passed another audition, and will be playing a piano/violin duet (with Lisa on the piano) with a friend for the middle school talent show the last day of school.

Whew!

And just for fun, here is a self-portrait she drew at a YM activity this week.

Good-bye Season

The spring soccer season ended last week. Daniel's last game was Friday (in which he scored an awesome goal, which I wish I had a video of), and then we had the end-of-season party at our house Saturday.

The plan was for a nice, relaxing evening -- toss some burgers on the grill, let the kids run around in the yard, or maybe even swim, while the parents kicked back and talked and enjoyed the greenery and the warm evening breezes and the setting sun photogenically illuminating a few puffy clouds.

It was a nice plan, but Mother Nature wanted no truck with it.

Instead what we got is 37 degrees and pouring rain (can you believe it's almost June???). So, the party good moved indoors. It was a bit crowded with 50 people (with 12 of them being highly energetic 11-year-olds), but it seemed to work out, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Just for fun, here are a few photos of Daniel's season.

The first couple are of Daniel totally owning guys that are much larger. They didn't have enough kids sign up to have a "select" league, so to compensate they had a few of the younger teams "play up" into the U13 bracket. So Daniel sometimes ends up going head-to-head with kids that weigh at least twice what he does. He doesn't let that intimidate him, though -- he just charges in anyway.

This next bit of ownage is even cooler because not only did he blast the ball past the big kid...

...but it went past another defender and the goalkeeper and in. Woo-hoo!

Here are a few random shots of him kicking the ball. Check out that power on the last one!

Seminary graduation

Woo-hoo! Way to go, Rachel!

Grand Designs

Rachel and Daniel have been busy putting their artistic talents to work.

Every year CHS makes t-shirts for the graduation party, and they have a contest to determine the design. Rachel entered a couple of ideas, and one of hers won.

Here's what the design will look like, printed on a black shirt.

For extra fun, you can pick out what the various pieces of the design are, including a couple of "hidden" messages. :)

The first draft of her design also got used on the graduation party advertisements, like this flyer:



Daniel's school also does shirts for the kids in their final year. Daniel liked Rachel's idea, and did his own spin on it. This is his artwork, which also won the design contest and will be printed on shirts for the "graduating" class. I don't know what color it will be, so this is just his original black-and-white artwork.