Our Champs!

The St Andrews School Girls Varsity Soccer Team finished the winter season as Florida State Semi-Finalists. Despite breaking her toe during a match in November, Ana was able to finish the season with a strong performance.

Rite of Passage

Aaahhhh. The top down on the car. My favorite song. The wind in my hair and that ever so wonderful feeling of freedom! Sam and Ana have been waiting forever for this special day. Extra special in the state of Florida where you need only to drive around the parking lot with your examiner to show the world you are road worthy. Look out.

Our First Family Race...for the Cure

We ran our first family 5K run as part of Team ADT for The Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure. My best college friend Monica Pockar Wagner joined us as we ran along the intercostal in West Palm Beach braving the chilly 50' weather. We are pictured on the right in the team photo with me kneeling on the end, Monica looking like Bono in her orange sunglasses and Scott and Sam directly above her. Ana had already moved onto the next event. Despite my marathon training less than a year ago, I had the slowest time of our family at a 9:19 mile pace. I guess the 30 year age difference doesn't hurt either!

Our Keys Christmas Holiday

It seems kind of crazy to take a Florida vacation when you already live here. It pretty much looks like a holiday everyday at home with palms and tropical plants everywhere. Regardless, we decided to take in a little R & R at the southern most spot in the US, Key West, Florida.
No tourist sights for us, unless you count gazing at the darling Conch House architecture and swerve from chickens running free through town. (We were told it is a $500 fine if you kill a chicken here!!) "A tropical San Francisco" was Ana's description. My friend Janean calls Key West the Wisconsin Dells of Florida! So true.

Games of the XXIX Olympiad

We spent a month again this summer in Beijing, China for the continued purpose of honing Ana and Sam's Chinese language skills. The kids and I attended a Mandarin language camp as we did in 2006 with an added bonus of seeing the Olympic games too.
Our gracious Olympic hosts had the city picture perfect with half the cars off the streets, which made commuting a breeze for busy tourists.
Ana and Sam were given the opportunity to do lots of English tutoring with both Chinese college students and Olympic volunteers . Take note of Sam teaching Physics concepts to a student familiar only with the Chinese terminology. It was also great fun hearing "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers" in a heavy Chinese accent! We were able to see good friends from both Maryland and Connecticut who made the trip as well. We all drank the milk, ate delicious and questionable food, but we'll leave the skewered scorpions for our next visit.

A Big First for Maria!!

With over 400 training miles completed since the first of the year, I ran the San Diego Rock N' Roll Marathon on June 1, 2008. I raced with Team In Training, the awesome endurance sport training arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Thank you to all our wonderful friends who made exceptional donations to help cure blood cancers. The society has collected $125M in donations so far this year!
I ran the 26.2 mile race in 5 hours 13 minutes which was in the 48th% for my age. I have a little work to do though, since the first place female finished in 2 hours 28 minutes! However, my training team mates Soledad and Pearl and I feel quite pleased with our times since we were able to run the marathon faster than Tom Cruise's wife Katie Holmes who ran the NY Marathon slower than us in 5:29 earlier this year!! (That is me in purple crossing the 21 mile mark.)
Although the race was difficult I seemed to recover pretty quickly walking a few more miles through downtown and even dancing at our victory dinner that evening. I am already back on the streets of Delray Beach running, hoping to complete another race later this year. If you have an interest in learning how to run a marathon, triathlon, or complete a century ride, Team In Training will help you reach your goal. www.teamintraining.org

Monkey Business

New Years 2008 commenced along the Oceano Pacifico in a Costa Rican village called Manuel Antonio. We joined our friends the Rankins who rented a spectacular Balinese style cliff house. Our activities included sport fishing, waterfall repelling and surfing. Scotter decided surfing was his New Years resolution since we now live so close to the sea. Ocean views in Manuel Antonio are some of the best in the Pacific. However we loved to watch the sweet little Capuchin and Squirrel monkeys who would sneak into the kitchen and steal any fruit...even out of your hands.

Florida Gators(not the crummy university that beat OSU for two national championships last year not that I'm bitter or anything)

We had the chance to experience the "real Florida" this past Labor Day weekend with a visit to the Everglades Holiday Park(click above title to link to site) to ride in their "state of the art" airboats for an hour or so (Apparently the state of the art has been frozen in time since about 1975). For those of you familiar with 1970's southern fried revenge movies, I was waiting for Buford Pusser to enter glade right. Nevertheless, the Everglades, its scale, and its non-human residents are wholly impressive. Large gators calculating whether its worth the effort to make a meal out of you as they glide by; flocks of vultures hoping the gators decide in the affirmative; massive non-native iguanas which would just love for you to try and pet them if you have a couple of fingers to spare; and just to throw you off vibrantly colored happy looking birds. Oh and don't forget the poisonous spiders and deadly snakes hanging out in the lily pads. Now I know it caused massive environmental damage which our children will pay billions of dollars to repair, but its not too difficult to understand why a century and one-half ago Governor Broward thought it might be a good idea to drain the Glades considering his contemporaries were misguided enough to try and live around here in the first place. An interesting way to spend a half of a Saturday.

One More From Orlando: A Hard Tackle

Making the Turn - Team Boca: 4-0

Team Boca moved to 4 & 0 this past weekend playing in 100 degree heat in Orlando. Ana's posted two goals and three assists so far this season against tough competition.

Team Boca!

Ana has joined her new soccer club, Team Boca(sponsored by ADT). A highly talented and very nice group of girls. Looks like it will be a good season. Rhonda the coach plays on the Scottish National Team and does actually have the accent to go with it.

First Day of Highschool

Junior and his "little" sister headed off to HIGHSCHOOL this week. If that's not scary enough, in the state of Florida they are eligible for their driving permit at the age of 15. I should emphasize "eligible" as I have certainly not conceded that "eligible" means that they actually will get such a permit.

Matrix finishes as top WAGS Maryland team

Ana's U14 Division 1 team, Matrix, ended a very successful spring soccer season finishing 1 point out of second place and as the top ranked WAGS team from Maryland. Ana will continue playing with a top South Florida club, Team Boca, and for St. Andrews High School the 2007 Florida state champs in their division.

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Home Sweet Home #13

We found Florida house hunting to be a bit unusual. We now are the proud owners of a home with a 2 and a half car garage(with an actual half door!). That additional pint-sized space is techincally reserved for a golf cart. However let's not forget the absense of basements in the Sunshine State. It is likely our Christmas boxes will have first priority in that prime spot.
Our new address is:
16469 Braeburn Ridge Trail
Delray Beach,FL 33446
561-638-2813

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On the road again

Last November Scott was offered a new position as VP/GM for a division of Tyco Safety Products in Boca Raton,FL. As always we were up for another new life adventure despite the minor inconveniences related to house relocation. The home sale in Maryland and purchase in Florida went quite smoothly, as did a high school search for Ana and Sam. When we first shared the news of Scott's promotion and upcoming move with the kids, Ana was totally unphased stating that 10 of her friends already have 2nd homes in the Boca area!! On the other hand, I will greatly miss my dear friend and real estate partner Dillon. Luckily our new place has a guest house.
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Divisional Champion

Sam continues to embrace things Asian, thus his move to karate this past year just seemed natural. His most recent karate tournament was a success with several awards including Divisional Champion.
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Esteemed Eighth Graders

Like clockwork, autumn takes us to the front porch for that first day of school photo. It will be a good year. We are the oldest in the school. We know the drill. We get the back of the bus. Extra special is the fact that after eight or so years Sam is finally taller than his twin sister. It will be a good year.

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The Fortunate

Our return to Maryland brought us face-to-face with 3 strangers squatting in our backyard. What happened to our lovely little guinea keets?? Well, in a nutshell- the resident fox nabbed three birds, a red-tailed hawk flew off with one, and our dog Ed made a raid too. But with an extrafortified coop the remaining three fowl grew by frightful proportions. Our dogs now keep their distance and the turkey-sized creatures roam free during the day keeping our yard pest-free...at least for now. Notice 2 of our darlings enjoying a nice fresh dust bath!
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Good Fortune

The final week in Asia was spent getting reaquainted with Hong Kong after a 9 year absence. Scott dropped by to take in the sights too. We were so pleased to see that our favorite home was still the same, yet much more squeeky clean, likely due to the past health scares. A typhoon followed us onto the island offering a bit of excitement. We hiked our favorite trails at Tai Tam Resevoir, and received fortunes at Wong Tai Sin, the largest Taoist Temple in the area.
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Shoppers Paradise

"Is your Christmas shopping list completed?" This was one of the first things my mom asked me when I called home. Given the amount of goods imported to the US from China, one could imagine Beijing as a bottomless Target store. I dreamed of finding a complete set of Louis Vuitton luggage, while Ana was hoping to secure something a bit more practical- a 220V hair straightener to use while in China. We know straightening irons exist in Beijing, but with a culture of straight hair it can't be a big seller. We'll just browse for now.
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