More tap

This piece was just their warm up. I loved it!

Alexander's tap class

This week was "parent observation" week at YDance classes. I went to Alexander's tap class, and was treated to this. He's the only boy, so it's easy to find him. This is the beginning of their April recital piece. Looking good so far!

Benjamin's solo audition

Benjamin has applied for Lutheran Summer Music, a program I attended from 1985-87! Here is his solo audition:

For more information, go to www.lutheransummermusic.org. I attended when it was held at Wittenberg University, Augustana College, and Concordia College. He'll be going to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. We plan to fly him there (via Minneapolis) and then pick him up so we can hear all of the ending concerts. We're both extremely excited.

Trip pictures

Here are the pictures from our trip to Cincinnati, Arlington Heights, and St. Louis. Sure wish we would have had more time, but school starts next week...

http://www1.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4541910015/a=1283235_1283235/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Fun with the waterproof camera...

Trip Reflections

I know I have not updated the blog in awhile, but we are now back home, and I have a few reflections on our trip. We were gone for almost exactly 6 weeks. We began the summer with Chris flying to Cincinnati for AP Reading. When he returned, we drove to Wisconsin Dells via Indianapolis, then back to Allentown via Springfield. 2 days later, Chris and I flew to London for a 2 week trip while the boys spent a week at Bear Creek. 4 days after that trip, I flew to Spokane, Washington, for the Triennial Convention of the Women of the ELCA. After a week to chill in Allentown, we headed for home. Here are some of our summer stats:

• Number of states visited: 16 (Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado)


• Number of countries visited: 3 (USA, England, Norway)


• Number of Facebook friends visited: 22


• Number of Facebook friends we missed because time ran out: Too many to count!


• Weddings: 1 (Tom and Michelle Kurtz)


• Waterparks: 7 (All in the same complex, while in Wisconsin Dells for the wedding)


• Airports visitied: 7 (Philly, Newark, Heathrow, O'Hare, Spokane, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Daytona Beach)


• Airlines traveled: 6 (Delta, United, American, British Air, Air Alaska, Frontier)


• Hours spent in the Denver airport: 7


• Airlines I was booked on out of Denver: 3 (Frontier, Continential, American. I ended up flying American, arriving in Newark at 1AM.)


• Miles driven on our car: 4,196 (NO KIDDING!)


• Movies we saw that were new to us: 7 (Harry Potter 7 1/2, Killing Bono, The King's Speech, The Social Network, Bridesmaids, Red, Unknown)


• Colleges visited: 2 (Wittenberg, Gonzaga)

We leave again in a few days for a wedding in Chicago (via Cincinnati.) Then when we return it will be time to start school sooner than we think. What a wonderful, crazy summer!

Cruising!

Beachfront apartments in Dover.

More beachfront

This is the port where you can take a ferry to France.

Our room was the tiniest room we've ever stayed in. In fairness to the hotel, it was described as a "small room" when we booked it.

Only one person in the bathroom at a time - you could barely turn around!

We really enjoyed the Dover Museum. They had great exhibits, including a stone-age boat that was discovered when they were doing street work. But what we liked the most was this small exhibit on the 80's! Quite a flashback!

At 12:30, we checked in to the Ocean Princess and found our room This is the view from our balcony room (we were upgraded from an interior cabin - yea!) Cliffs in the background. Again, it was a bit overcast.

This police boat guided us all the way out of the harbor.

After guiding us out, one of the officials had to climb down a ladder from our boat and get into the police boat. It was quite a sight to watch in the waves!

Dover, England - Day 1

Day one! We landed in London on time, around 630 AM. We had a good flight, but were unable to sleep much. We did watch Harry Potter 7 part 1 on the way so we are ready for the next episode.

We took a train to Dover. It took about 2 hours, and I slept through most of it. When we arrived, we dragged our luggage through the town and found our B & B. It was only 11AM, so we dropped it off and set out to explore the town.

Our Bed and Breakfast - The Hubert House.


We decided to hike, not ride to the Dover Castle. It was probably the steepest climb we've done! As we got closer, we saw these flowers around the outer fence.

We were able to go into the church on the left, but not allowed to take pictures.

The main castle. Henry II had the castle built. From the top tower, you can see France - 21 miles away!
Chris was a bit too tall for this door, wasn't he?

The gate leading into the castle. There was quite a moat surrounding the castle. You can understand why the castle was built here.
The Roman lighthouse. This was the oldest part of the castle, built by the Romans in 1st century (ish).

The famous white cliffs of Dover. It was a slightly overcast day, so they weren't as impressive as I expected. When we returned a week later, they looked much better.

More pics

Want some more Dells pictures? Here are all of them, which I finally uploaded to snapfish. You'll have to copy and paste the link to get to it.


http://www1.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4329817015/a=1283235_1283235/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

We're off again!

Tomorrow is the big day! Chris and I leave for London at 6:15PM, flying out of Philly. From London, we're taking a train to Dover and staying overnight. On Saturday, we will board a cruise ship bound for Norway. It's a 7 day cruise, with 4 stops. After that, we'll spend a few days in Canterbury and fly out of London 2 weeks after we arrive. Meanwhile, the boys will be in Allentown with my parents, and they will also attend one week at Bear Creek Camp. They're excited for camp. We're excited for Europe. A good vacation all around. We'll be off of facebook and email for awhile, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of pictures to share when we return.

Dells boat trip, part 3

Well, the boat trip wasn't all about getting wet. We saw some amazing formations.

At one point, we got off the boat to walk to "witch's gulch." Here all the cousins are looking at something....

I was amazed how the trees seemed to just grow out of the rocks!

This was certainly true. When we went in circles, we slid all the way across the bench. What fun!


Another formation

Dells boat tour, part 2

Our guide was great - he did all sorts of tricks in the water, splashing the entire boat. The kids loved it! It also gave us a chance to try out our new waterproof camera.

Just a bit wet...

Look! It worked!



Tom, Cindi, and Chris getting splashed.

Somehow my time/date stamp got turned on during our trip. It was NOT January 4th, 2009!

Dells boat tour, part 1

We decided it would be a good idea for the kids to see the actual dells, not just the water parks. There were two choices for tours - a slow boat ride that lasted 2 1/2 hours, or a jet boat ride that lasted about an hour. We chose the jet boat tour. Here are our "before" pictures while we were still dry. Mom and Dad Weinrich chose to take the slow tour while we were on the fast one.

5K in the Dells!

While out to dinner Friday night, we saw signs for a 5K. We quickly looked it up and saw it was for the next morning. Chris and I decided to go run it. That way we could eat more cake at the wedding:) Turns out it was a race to raise money for Melanoma research. They raised $40,000 that day!

Finish line afterwards

Finish line




For a local race, it was pretty big. We both had good times. It started at 8:30, way later than in Florida. Perfect weather, and a beautiful course!

Then someone offered to take our pictures together. How nice!