Newspaper Article about Grandpa's Pan American Games Win

http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2008/07/25/sports/doc48895102f3cae525954702.txt

Lydia's Space

We are supposed to get our house Friday, and no one is more excited than Lydia. She has lots of collections/treasures/stuff that she loves to organize in certain ways in lots of space. This doesn't mesh well with sharing a small room with a 1 and 3 year old. The kids' room has a total of 11 drawers. When we moved in, all the kids had roughly the same number of drawers in the dresser and chest. Over the last six months she has convinced Seth of ideas such as he can keep his socks, underwear, and T-shirts together in one drawer and give her the unneeded drawers. Currently she has 7 drawers, Seth has 3 drawers, and poor Morgan is fighting hard to keep her 1 little drawer for everything she owns that belongs in a drawer.

Lydia's only refuge for treasures that she doesn't want touched and time alone is her bed- the top bunk. Since the three-n'-under crowd aren't allowed up the ladder, she keeps all of her special items on her bed. She also recently discovered Beverly Cleary books on tape and enjoys listening to books far from the reach of any annoying younger siblings.

Seth's Manly New Wheels

When our Amish friends babysat Lydia when she was a toddler, all the kids in their family had scooters they used to get to school. As a result, Lydia was thrilled when we got her a pink princess flower scooter for her third birthday. She used it a couple years until she got an older kid scooter. However, Steve has been less than thrilled to see Seth riding around the neighborhood (where he works in the retirement village) on the pink princess flower scooter. Steve used his credit card rewards that he usually uses to get his golf stuff to get Seth a more respectable manly scooter. Seth likes it although he never complained about his princess one. Now Morgan is dreaming of riding around the block on the pink one.

She's such a girl....

Morgan loves to brush her own hair. Tonight Lydia let her brush her hair also which Morgan loved.

Zoo Morning

While Lydia enjoyed daycamp at an area zoo, Morgan, Seth, and Mom spent the day exploring the zoo with cousin Joseph and his mom.

He won the gold!!

Grandpa competed at the Pan American Championships in Puerto Rico today. He competed in the Master's Weightlifting Division. He won the Gold for "Clean and Jerk" (204.6 pounds) and "Snatches" (136.4 pounds.)

The Fourth of July

We enjoyed Independence Day today with Grandma and Grandpa. We went to a local festival this morning where the kids played games, rode in a pony cart, and ate yummy foods. We then went to the Merry-Go-Round Museum next to the festival which had free admission today. Finally, we watched fireworks over Lake Erie this evening.

Summer Camp

Lydia went to girl scout camp this week and loved it. She is already begging us to sign her up for another camp session. She has been to daycamps in the past, but this was her first time at an overnight camp. The camp lasted for 2 nights and part of 3 days. She chose to go to the "Little Mermaids" camp which is based around water activites. She got to hike in creeks, play games in the pool, and do water slingshots.

She returned last night with $0.08 (left of her $15 spending money), covered in bug bites (next year mom and dad will have to do some training on using bug repellant- she told us she used 2 squirts and doesn't understand what happened), and with a suitcase full of very dirty clothes. Concepts such as not stuffing your mud covered, creek stomping clothes on top of your clean clothes are way too advanced for a six year old having fun at camp.