Thomas Ongoings: January 2018

11. what january holds

We are lucky to live next to a community center that has Friday night rollerskating. so many fun options for Friday nights... violin group lesson, or swimming, or roller skating. we'll definitely do this again. I want E to enjoy it like I did as a child.

R and E gave me a great Christmas gift of a quilting workshop. A new technique for me called landscape quilting. I took this photo of a photo in our work conference room. I liked the shadowy layers of mountains. The teacher was great. she helped me step by step, and i'm excited to try again!

here's my rendition of that photo above. she helped me see the picture in layers. starting from the front/bottom: land, water, land, water, island and mountains, then sky. to complete it, I can add trees, clouds, and sun.

E took this photo of the dog. he laughed seeing L wearing R's shoes. He wanted me to post it on the family Cluster site, but i couldn't get it transferred from R's phone to mine...

handsome guys ready for church. smiles showing lost teeth.

E&E at P's 7th bday party. E's first movie in the theaters. Paddington 2.

10. here we come 2018

R's shots again. we started off the new year with a beautiful hike to Rattlesnake Ledge.

E enjoys coming to my work once in awhile. this green building won't be ours much longer. our new research building will be ready for us in April or May. I didn't get to work at Oxbow much, but loved the location on the Duwamish River and the beautiful environmentally friendly space. here you can see water coming from the rock because we've had lots of rain lately.

Hoorah! All the Reflections participants received medals at the PTA meeting. E got two. I'm proud of him for spending all the time working on his two entries and for his creativity and good messages about reaching for your goals and building a kinder loving world.

When R travels, we take the dog on a walk before school. we go by the beach and this morning we saw so many birds feeding together or for some reason all gathered together in the water. Does anyone know why that might have been?
one morning a woman took many photos of us walking by the water, which we noticed was a really high tide. she said she was taking pictures of the King Tide. I researched a bit and think she was a day late for the real peak King Tide. i never found our photos or her story.

we have FHE with our friends now and then. Here, sweet O is wearing his Dad's boots.

E's diorama business in his 2nd grade classroom town. (if we remember the name of the town later, we'll put it here.) One street is named 201st Street, just like 201, the classroom number. His store "Rock Star and Hats" sells hats and microphones, so on a cold winter day, you can sing in the streets. He and his friend Carson made a 2 story building with their businesses.
The gray thing hanging from the ceiling is a cool chandelier that E made.

nice Christmas gift idea. homemade spiced glazed nuts and pretzel mix. this is half of the gift... we'd already eaten lots of them.

9. Gold Creek Pond snowshoeing

R's nice shots.

we are grateful for this fun family to be our neighbors!

Grandpa would probably like this place because they have malts!

S friends are great to host a New Year's eve party.
the kids had fun!

8. Within Reach

E put a lot of work into making two entries for the PTA Reflections contest, one a poem (literature) and the other a 3-D visual art piece. see the Halloween post for pictures and more details.
Both of his entries were included in the 12 from our school to move forward to be displayed at the Seattle Center Armory. Then all the Seattle school entries at the Armory were scored, and his literature entry received an Honorable Mention!
With a couple of days still free in our holiday break, we went to the Armory to see all the entries.