Shooting

On Labor Day I took Christopher, Andrew and Mark (and Andrew Clark) and we joined the Dillon cousins for a morning of shotgun shooting at this really great range out in Homedale, Idaho (about an hour from Boise). Though last time we did this in January I did pretty well, yesterday I started strong but ended up shooting horribly. I was last amongst the Goodale clan, and close to the bottom of everybody that went. I am going to blame it on the hayfever-inducing "snow" (the wind blowing cottonwood tree "flowers" all around). Oh well that doesn't matter; we had a good time, anyway! Christopher actually shot really well, which I suppose is appropriate since he ships off to boot camp in a little more than a month!

Yesterday while driving on I-84 we saw a cool bumper sticker. It said "Annoy a Liberal: Work Hard. Be Successful. Be Happy." I guess it should have also said, "Go Shooting." :-)

Anyway, check out the photos here (part of the group here on the left; Christopher taking aim here on the right), but to see all the photos, please click here on Flickr, or here on Facebook.

Grad BBQ/Pool Party

We had Christopher's graduation BBQ and pool party today, an 8-hour extravaganza that was really fun! It was fun to have Grandma Nancy here, and we had quite a bit of the Dillon family clan here, as well. It's always so much fun getting together with the cousins and extended family! And several of Christopher's friends from school were here, as well. This first picture here is of Christopher and some of those friends, and Brianna.

We had BBQ'd chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. I love summertime BBQs and pool parties, and the pool was up to 88 degrees (it was only 64 when we opened it on Monday!). It's gonna be a fun summer!!!

The party got so wild that the law had to show up and calm us down, too. No just kidding - not really. Michelle's cousin, Mike, works for the Sheriff's department, and he came by on a break. Unfortunately, he was only here for about 10 minutes, when he got an urgent call. This picture here is of Ed, Steve and Mike Dillon, three of Michelle's cousins.

To see all 75 pictures that I've uploaded from the party, please click here for Flickr, and here for Facebook.

Mark Trumpet Recital

Mark has been taking private trumpet lessons for about a year now, though he recently took about a three-month break because of his bout of Bells Palsy. Last night his trumpet teacher held a recital for all of her students, and it was Mark's first trumpet recital. His teacher has been very impressed with how he learned to play the trumpet again, even though he's not quite fully recovered from the Bells Palsy (though he's now probably 95% or more completely healed). As you can imagine, it's impossible to play a brass instrument when half your face is paralyzed!

Below you can see a video of Mark playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" at his recital. E-mail versions of this will not have the embedded YouTube video, so please click here for the link to the video on YouTube.

Christopher: Graduate, Mechanic, Great Guy!!!

This weekend, it's time for Michelle and I to be proud parents. It's hard to believe that Christopher is graduating from high school. We now have a second child who is a high school graduate. Amazingly enough, though, Michelle and I are not getting older. HA! To the left here is the graduation announcement that I put together for him; the photo is from his senior pictures that we just took in March. I will get around to posting them eventually.

Earlier this week, Christopher made an interesting analogy, from the pulpit in church, actually!!! It had to do with churning horsecrap in to butter - it was really funny, though highly embarrassing to his parents, sitting in the second pew in the chapel at church. We could just feel the eyes boring in to the backs of our heads. :-) Check with Christopher if you're interested in hearing the details behind that analogy.

We are very proud of Christopher and the awesome young man he has become. As you can see from the announcement, he ships off to Army National Guard Basic Training on June 30th. After 8-10 weeks of that, he'll then go to Virginia for six months of AIT (Advanced Individual Training), learning how to repair Apache helicopters. Then he'll come home and still be in the Guard, but he cannot be deployed to any current conflicts (new conflicts are fair game) until he has had two years of school. So after AIT, he will do a semester of school at BSU, after which time he can take time off to serve a mission for the church, which he intends to do. Long term, he is considering a career in law enforcement, while he continues his eight-year commitment to the Guard. He LOVES those drill weekends, and I'm sure the two weeks of exercises every summer will be awesome for him, even if he never gets deployed to active duty military. But what are the chances???...

Christopher is a great son and brother, and a great guy to everybody. Christopher goes out of his way to help people in need, and everybody loves him. Through his three years of auto tech and through his own learning and experience, he has become a great auto mechanic. Just in the last week alone, he was requested to look at a cars by three friends and neighbors. To the right here is Christopher replacing break pads and rotors on a friend's car. This is just what Christopher does, and he enjoys it. In this photo, both Christopher and Brianna are making silly faces; only Christopher's girlfriend, Norah, looks normal!

We're excited for Christopher's graduation Tuesday night!!! And he is SO excited to be done with high school!!! :-)

Last Soccer Match

This past Saturday (May 16th) Andrew's teach had their last soccer match of the season. The team had a very successful season, and more importantly, the kids had a lot of fun. To the left here is Andrew on the attack. Andrew scored once in this last match of the season, and he scored at least once in most every game they played. Andrew played mostly at left midfielder, though he occasionally played as goalkeeper, as well.

Also in this last match, we had a guest player, as well. The Dahl family used to live in this area, though currently they live in Vancouver, BC. They were visiting this past weekend, and their daughter Katie joined the team for a day. I tried to get some good shots of our guest player, as well, and you see one here to the right.

I've uploaded 40 photos from the match. You can see them here on Flickr, or here on Facebook.

Hiking/Camping

Our Boy Scout troop went camping this weekend, to a campsite that we had to hike in to. Andrew and Mark went on this campout, and I love going with them on their campouts, as well. To the right here is a photo of the group posing on a bridge over the river downstream from a dam's spillway. Notice the patches of snow in the background... it was somewhat cold up there, with the overnight low Friday night dropping to near freezing. None of us felt too cold, though... I think the 3.5-mile hike in, in hilly and snowy conditions, made us so tired that we didn't care that it was cold in our tents and sleeping bags! :-)

We really had a great time!!! Most of us brought freeze-dried meals that we "cooked" with boiling water - those meals aren't half bad!!! Saturday morning, though, one Scout even finalized requirements for his Fishing merit badge by catching, cleaning, and cooking a fish all on his own, and then of course eating that fish!

It was absolutely GORGEOUS up there, as you can see from the photo on the left. We went to Sage Hen Reservoir, about 65 miles northwest of Boise, Idaho (about a 2-hour drive). To see these and all 40 of the pics I've posted from the campout, please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook.

And thank you, Scoutmaster Sant, for a great campout!!!

Prom

Today was prom at our high school, and it was fun to see Christopher and Brianna with their dates, heading off on a double-date with their dates. For dinner, the four of them went to Olive Garden, and good big brother even called ahead to see if the restaurant would puree noodles for Brianna. Fortunately, Brianna was having a good day today, and hopefully the pureed noodles went over well (they're still on the date as I post this). What a drag to be in a liquid diet on your prom!

To the right here is a fun shot I took of them, and below you'll see a few others. For all 18 pictures I've posted, please click here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.

Christopher and Brianna. Christopher is such a good big brother, and Brianna's going to be a wreck when he leaves home in less than two months. We're taking donations of Kleenex cases in advance of that event!

I love the "attitude" look here by Christopher's date, Norah.

Christopher and his date, Norah.

Brianna and her date, Jeff.

Wu Zhen Tour

Today we went by car about two hours from Shanghai, to a town called Wu Zhen. On the way there, though, check out this photo on the left. The little kid, being held by the girl on the back of the bike, is sound asleep, and this looks so dangerous. This would be SOOOOO illegal back home!!! Anyway, Wu Zhen is what they call a "water town" because most of the town's buildings are built on rivers that run through it. According to a legend told by our tour guide, it started because a successful merchant doing business from his home needed room to expand, but there was no land. So he extended his home out on to the water. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounds good so I'll go with it!

It's still an active, functioning town today. Of course today was a national holiday and it was REALLY crowded, but I'd have issues with tens of thousands of people strolling past my home and gawking at my neighborhood! Or "boating" by my home like you see in the picture here (we took one of these boats, too).

The town was filled with various museums and what not, including a museum that feature all kinds of beds built in the day. You'll see some of those if you click through to the photo links. We even got to see a cute little Chinese shadow puppet show (pics and video via the links). Oh... it was a bit weird, too, because the entire day we saw just about one dozen non-Chinese (whereas in Shanghai westerners are very common!).

Finally to the left there is a picture of our Shanghai crew on this trip: Mark Atkinson, Nicolas Schulz, Areil Cai, Barbara Bernad, and moi. To see all 71 pics/videos I uploaded, please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook (not all posted on Facebook).

Shanghai Tour

Today was China's national holiday, Labor Day. As such, nobody was working and we had no meetings, so even though it was a Friday, we totally became tourists. When my team and I checked in to the hotel here (Marriott Executive Suites with apartment-style rooms), even though the rooms had been pre-paid with a company credit card, they double-billed 4 of the 5 of us again, on our personal credit cards presented for incidentals charges. OOPS!!! They are in the process of refunding the charges on our personal credit cards, but in the meantime to make up for the screwup, they booked a professional tour for us, with an English-speaking guide. Leo, I thought, was pretty good. However, he spoke English with an Australian accent. It was pretty weird!!! The accent and the face just didn't go together.

This first pic posted here is taken from our first stop on the tour, some famous gardens that, of course, I have already forgotten the name of. I like the pic because it's a contrast of old and new. In the foreground are the rooftops of some old buildings, while in the skyline in the background features Shanghai's three tallest buildings, from left to right, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Jin Mao Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Center. This pic was also taken just after we participated in a Chinese tea ceremony.

From there, we went to the Shanghai Museum, but got there ten minutes too late to get in. From there, though, I took this picture, to the left; I really love some of the architecture in Shanghai. Having missed the museum, for the fun of it Leo took us to Shanghai's French quarter. Weird to see European style architecture in Shanghai! Then he took us to a silk "museum" where of course after the brief tour by a very energetic little English-speaking Chinese girl, there was more silk than you can imagine, all on display for purchase (of course!). Yes... I did buy something for Michelle.

Following dinner at a Chinese restaurant that frankly wasn't very good, we went on a night time boat ride on the river. It was pretty cool.

To check out all 82 photos and 4 videos I have posted online, you can click here for Flickr, or here and here for Facebook (in two albums).