Sophie's Track Meet

Every time I drive by the track field with the boys in tow they will all scream out "Sophie's track meet!!!"  I'm sure they will still be screaming that when they go by for many years.

We all enjoy going to Sophie's meets.  The boys love cheering for her.  I love hearing people talk about her in the stands.  "Boy, that girl is fast."  "Do you see how she is smoking everyone?"  "She is lightning fast."  I get a kick out of the things people say.

 Sophie doesn't like me taking pictures of her.  I think I embarrass her.  So I have to take them from afar and hope she doesn't see me.

 There she is getting set in her blocks.

 Sophie has been training with a guy on Saturdays to make her transition from the blocks smoother and faster.  He has been telling her to do these arm exercises every day to train her arms using muscle memory.  I'm learning quite a bit about running techniques.

 Sophie does a couple of different events.  This is the 4x1.  She runs the last leg.

 Look at that determination.

 There is no one else around.

She may not always finish first, but that doesn't matter to her.  She is constantly competing with herself.  She is constantly working on her time.  She is a hard worker and very dedicated.  I love watching her run.

Paper Mache Turtle

John had a book report where he was suppose to make a mobile.  John decided to take it a step further and make his mobile a paper mache turtle.  I blame Anders' teacher for this.  She made paper mache dinosaur eggs with Anders' class.  John though the egg was so cool he wanted to do a paper mache project.

 I decided to wait to start the project until my mom came in town.  Paper mache is more my mom's expertise.  I'm not sure it would have looked like a turtle with my help.

 We had this thing sitting on our table for weeks.  It took several layers before John felt it was secure enough.

 Then he got to painting.

 He was very specific about what he wanted.

 He had to have 10 facts hanging from the turtle.  He wanted those to be smaller turtles.  He picked the pictures and the size.

 Then he typed each fact.  This kid learned a little about Microsoft Publisher because I'm not a cool mom and I don't do his projects for him.

 

The little turtles hung from the big turtle with yarn that looked like seaweed.

He really did a great job and went above and beyond.  I stressed to John's teacher that, while this may be the norm for John, the other two Fienes will probably NOT follow in his footsteps.  Actually, I can kind of see them asking to recycle the project.