Slideshow Test

I thought I would try out this slideshow thing. It’s really cool! This is Hannah and Sabrina playing on the playground at the school after the jog a thon ended. Hannah loves to play there whenever she can. Sabrina will too, I’m sure, once she masters climbing up the slide. I have a feeling she’ll be taking her first steps any day now, so it won’t be long!

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Jog A Thon ’07

This morning was the Jog-A-Thon fundraiser at the elementary school. Hunter and Emma did such a great job running! It reminded me that they need to do it more often on their own. They went to their classrooms to take roll, and 15 minutes later the whole school came out to the back field. There were two tracks, one for the upper grades, and one for the lower. Everybody ran for 45 minutes, and the kids seemed to have a lot of fun as some volunteer parents counted their laps. I took a ton of photos, but only posted the best ones. There are some fun pictures with great action in the gallery!

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Our Southern California Family

On St Patrick’s Day we had a little luncheon with our family here in southern California. Jeanette and Dan came down, and Chris, Tracy and Adriene came up. As it happens we are exactly in between the two of them and so it worked out great. Everyone contributed something to our picnic style lunch, and we ate and chatted for a while as the kids all played. After we ate we walked several blocks to the Lake nearby. There is a playground there and we fed the ducks too. Jeanette was wondering why we brought so much bread, almost 1/3 of the loaf, until she saw how quickly the kids threw it all out to the ducks! Adriene was just eating the bread as a treat for herself because she doesn’t get white bread very often. It was so fun to have our little cousin Adriene here to play! She is such a cutie, and is talking so well now. We can hardly wait until Easter when all of the cousins on my side will be together again. That hasn’t happened for a long time, I think since Matt came home from the Philippines!

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A New Look

I have a new site design! It all started because we (meaning Rob, I don’t really think about these things) wanted to break free from the last design that was tied to our web host. It had some limitations that were frustrating to him, including the web address ending with “/blog”. Now it’s just bizzert.com which is nice and clean. Rob had me sort through the hundreds of themes to find one I liked, and this one really seemed to fit for me because it was simple and fun. It also fit in nicely with my other site, Polka Dot Island. The box about the author was also Rob’s idea, and I’m not crazy about the silly photo he used, but I guess it’s ok for now.

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The Bicycle Thief

Rob and I actually got all of the kids into bed at a decent hour and watched the movie, The Bicycle Thief. It is an Italian movie with subtitles, so Rob was especially excited to see it. He said that there was a pretty thick dialect so he was relying a lot on the subtitles too. We both really liked this movie!

It’s hard to say that I love it, because it is a bit depressing. It takes place in an impoverished community post World War II and follows one man and his son as they search for a bicycle the father needs to keep a new job. There are no special effects, and the plot is simple, but the emotions of desperation and hope keep you locked into the story. The performances by the Father, Antonio, and his son, Bruno, are amazing. They really make you feel their pain. In fact, every character comes with a history and depth that you wouldn’t expect from such a simple story. I don’t want to say too much about it because it helps to go into the movie without a synopsis of its events. It helps add to that feeling of – what are they going to do next?- The movie makes you think and feel and sympathize. All things that don’t seem to be the motivation of movie makers now. If you’ve seen it, tell me what you think; If you haven’t, go out and rent it!

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