Backyard Cooking: Paella and Jambalaya

This year for Father’s Day, we got Steve all kinds of equipment so that he could do some gourmet backyard cooking. Steve loves to cook, and we have such wonderful weather here year round, cooking out doors can be a fun activity for him to enjoy with the kids. To give you a little back […]

Sean’s Team Finally Wins One!!!

Sean’s team finally won a game last night. They had a combination of good pitching and smart fielding to pull out a decisive 5 to 1 victory. Sean injured his big toe on Sunday night by stepping on a bamboo barbecue skewer and tearing off part of the callus. It is healing, but caused him […]

The Girls Win Big At Showstopper

Once again Suzanne and Savannah traveled to Phoenix to attend the Showstopper Dance competition. This year was a little different as they were the only two soloist from the dance studio to attend the competition. The only group that went was the St. Andrew’s/Alma Dolores Folklorico group. Suzanne kicked off the entire competition with her […]

Trans-Atlantic Cruise Pictures Posted

We have been working for several weeks now to get all of our pictures of the cruise edited and posted for you. We finally finished the process this morning, so we officially invite you to view our new 2008 Transatlantic Cruise Photo Gallery. We’ve included pictures of our pre-cruise stay and Barcelona, a tour of […]

PowerPoint Info Overload

Yesterday was the deadline for the kids to complete their summer reports on Barcelona, Malaga, Madeira, the Canary Islands, St. Maarten and San Juan. Those are all the destinations we’ll be visiting on our upcoming Trans-Atlantic Cruise. Since the kids will be missing two weeks of school for the trip, I required them to complete […]

New You Tube Creation

OK, we were totally silly this week and created another comedy/horror video for YouTube. Keep in mind that this all came from the mind of a 10 year old. [youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4cD-HTK_Y[/youtube]

Quick Showstopper Update

The kids and I are having a fantastic time in Anaheim at the Showstopper Competition. For the kids, all of their Solo and Group numbers scored in the Gold award category. Thursday was a full day with Sean and Savannah performing their Mexican Folklorico routines Then Savannah’s Polynesian class performed their number followed by Sean […]

Tune-in to the Showstopper Live Webcast

The Showstopper National Dance finals have a live web-cast of the dance competition so friends and family from across the world can view our dance routines online. We’ll be out in Anaheim next week for the competition. The competition schedule was released this week. The process of viewing the dances on the web is pretty […]

Summer Vacation in Michigan

While Michigan is not known as a summer resort destination, it turned out to be a great destination for our family reunion this summer. One of the best parts of our trip was our home base, my sister-in-law’s/brother-in-law’s place in Shelby Township. The house couldn’t have been a better fit for our group. There was […]

I’m In Love With Frankenmuth and Bronner’s

What a great day we had in Frankenmuth, Michigan. First, we visited the World’s Largest Christmas Market, Bronner’s! I have been bugging Mr. Papa to get an artificial tree for safety reasons for years. Our real trees are beautiful for about a week, and then no matter how careful I am to water the tree […]