Toe Touch

Rachel went to a friend's birthday party last night. It was a tumbling party. She practiced her jumps on their trampoline and into the pit. Her toe touch looks pretty good.

This is a herkie. It's my favorite jump.

Trade Fair

Rachel is in the EXCEL program at school, and every year the fifth grade EXCEL students have a Trade Fair. They have to create a "business" -- whether it's a game, a product or a service -- and try to make a profit at the Trade Fair. Rachel created a "Wishful Wheel." It is basically a spinning wheel game for prizes. She had three different prizes: 76ers beads, friendship bracelets and super balls. They can purchase various forms of advertising, such as hanging posters, making a commercial during morning announcements, etc. Any money they spend they have to keep track of and pay back out of their profits. So they were supposed to try to make prizes or use things from around the house and not use food as a prize.
Rachel's Wishing Wheel did pretty good. She didn't make the highest profit, but she followed the rules and had a lot of customers, so it was successful.
I think her next big project will be the wax museum. That should be a fun one.

Villanova Competition

Rachel's competition this weekend was at Villanova University. Her team took first place out of three! They looked so good, too. The middle of the pyramid that ends their routine collapsed, but aside from that it was a great performance. It was a long day. We thought we'd be home by 2:00, but we didn't get out of the gym until 2:00 or so. After stopping for lunch, we didn't get home until 5:00. It was a fun day, though. There was a parent team that performed, and they did surprisingly well. In fact, I think they inspired our organization to start one. Should be interesting!!!

Scenes from a Bus, Xian

Xian was our second stop in China. (Click here to read about our train ride from Beijing to Xian, here to read about our first day in Xian and click here to read about our visit to the Terra Cotta Warriors.)Okay. Technically, this is a scene from the overnight train we took from Beijing to Xian. I like the mountains in this one. This was taken probably about an hour before we arrived in Xian. The best part of the train ride was when the sun came up and we could see the scenery going by. It helped me forget how dirty and gross I felt from the day/night before.

We saw a lot of pool floaties being sold along the street in Xian, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where they would be used. China's not like the U.S. where every other house has a pool in the backyard. The only pools I saw while we were in China were the ones in our hotels.

A woman doing wash outside a shop.

Wires. Lots and lots of wires. Can you imagine working for the cable company or phone company and having to replace a downed wire!?!?!?!

Employees participating in team-building exercises before their workday.

Day laborers waiting to be hired. The little signs say what type of work they do.

Old folks in a park doing their morning exercises. We saw this happening everywhere we went. Sometimes it would be just one or two people; other times it would be large groups.

Scenes from the Bus - Beijing

While in China last summer, I took TONS of pictures through the windows of our buses. They are some of my favorite pictures from the trip. On days when I don't have any current pictures to post, I hope to post some of these pictures. I'll start tonight with ten photos from our bus in Beijing. (Click here to go to read all about our trip to China.)

Traffic. Sorry; I'm not sure why the picture is so crooked.

Punch Buggy!

This was a pretty cool building. If you click on the picture, you can see it bigger to see all the detail.

I have pictures of this theme park in my scrapbook from our first trip to China ten years ago. It was abandoned then, and it still sits empty.

It was interesting to see all the different modes of transportation and the many configurations of bicycles. There seemed to be no limit to the amount of stuff piled on bicycles.

Scene ON the bus.

Fascinating.....

.....simply fascinating.
Now if I could just get her to start doing the laundry instead of just watching it....

D.A.R.E. Graduation& Sixers Game

Rachel graduated from the D.A.R.E. program today, along with the rest of the fifth grade class. Over the past several months, they were taught drug prevention, how to avoid peer pressure and how to get themselves out of sticky situations. They each prepared a poster and an essay and awards were given out. Rachel's friend, Bianca, won the essay contest for the entire fifth grade, and she read her essay during the graduation. She did a great job.

The blurred faces is a little creepy. Sorry. I don't like putting kids' faces on the Internet without their parents' permission.

Our Mayor was there, along with our State Assemblyman and the Superintendent of Schools. They are public officials, so I don't have a problem putting their faces on the Internet!

Tonight we went to the Philadelphia 76's game. It was not exactly a sell-out. And it was boring. Basketball is definitely not our sport. But it was interesting to come to once.

I spent most of the game reading the manual for my new camera. I might have learned a few things. I was so frustrated after the D.A.R.E. graduation, because I got very few good pictures. Even closeups were blurry. The two pictures I posted here were from the old camera. One thing I did learn is that I need to get a telephoto lens. We left the game after half-time.