End of summer blog post

O.K. first of all I'd like to apologize for not posting in weeks. I have a lot of things to blog about since V.B the worst of them being that I got a palate expander - a stupid piece of metal stuck in my mouth that I had to wind with a wrench. I don't have to wind any more but it's still in my mouth.

I also had two weeks of swimming lessons which were surprisingly easy because I did swim team at school. I learned the butterfly and got better with all my strokes and passed all of the lessons. Next year I am doing Jr. lifesaving.

My dad competed in the dragon boat races for his work team the "Jefferson Radiators" and did O.K. considering they were up against club teams.

We went to see our neighbors summer home up in Rhode Island it was fun and Aidan really missed Owen for the whole summer and it was nice to see the family again. We went out on their boat a few times and did water slides.

As many of you know there was a hurricane that swept the east coast of America and we were hit by it. We were not harmed in any way at all. A few of our neighbors don't have power and we've been helping them out a little bit, to us it was just a big rain storm. We stayed inside and there was no problem. I spent most of the hurricane working on my boat.

As a few of you know, I have been building a "Fairwind 900" RC sail boat in the basement with my dad. We painted it and now we have the radio controls running and are almost done with it. I am going to call it "Tranquility". The RC only adjusts the rudder and the boom so it has to be a windy day for it to work. I am building this so I'll be ready to go sailing with my grandfather this september. I'll post about the sailing too during the school year.

Overall this was a summer to remember. Post more next summer

Hello blog readers, yesterday was Friday, the last full day of VB (AWWww!) and we spent it jumping the HUGE waves that were there (so much for stand up paddling). The waves were up to 8 feet sometimes! We tried to boogie board them but fell over at almost every wave. That was very fun but got us very tired.

As many of you know when we go to VB, we always have a polite contest And every year we get a prize at the end of it. This year we got a t-shirt that says, “HEDGEHOGS why don’t they just share the hedge? And under the saying, a picture of a hedgehog saying “No.” That is the coolest shirt ever. After going to get ice cream, we went almost straight to bed, only to wake up having to leave. We were all very sad to go but knew we had to. I’m really going to miss it and the Muellers.

Good day blog readers on Wednesday I spent the day as a "beach day" full of stand up paddling. In the morning the waves were calm (very good for stand up paddling) and my Dad let me use the short board. I didn't fall once because I'm smaller, and my dad did great on his big board. But the boogie boarding was also really good because the waves broke in the shallows where we all could stand. Because it was my turn to be turned into a sand sculpture, I became a centaur (a half man half horse Greek creature).

On Thursday we woke up early to go to Ocean Breeze water park. We went there last year and really enjoyed it, but this year was even BETTER! They remodeled the old part, the mat slides and replaced them with new tube rides! There are four of them in the new section called Neptune's Revenge. "Trident" and "Earth Shaker" were essentially the same ride with BIG OPEN SIDEWAYS PARTS! Except for one of them was oriented left and one was oriented right. The ride "Sea Serpent" was relatively calm but it was entirely in the dark, with little holes in the top making it look like you were driving in a dark tunnel. The finial ride was called vortex and it had a TOILET BOWL AT THE END OF IT! That was my favorite ride of the whole park.

Jamestown

Hello blog readers Yesterday my Dad got us the long awaited stand up paddle boards! They where AWESOME! For those of you who don’t know the stand up paddle boards are like surf boards but much wider and longer, and you go out before the breaking waves and stand up and paddle. I got to do it with dad and I only fell in twice my dad fell in five time (in his defense his board was much skinnier therefore harder to balance on). We also spent time bogie boarding and building sand sculptures (we turned Alaina into and octopus!). For dinner that night we went to the best pizza place ever called Primo’s pizza.

Today we all woke up at seven o’clock to drive to Jamestown. It was a daylong trip full of archaeological dig sites, skeletons, and reenactment colonists and Indians. The first thing we did was go on a tour of the dig site and looked at the museum of all the stuff they found (guns, armor, shoes, iron tools, ect.) THAT was cool. Then shortly after eating lunch we went to see the reenactment village and the fort (the dig site was the real one!).Then we caught a tour that led us from the reenactment village to the reenactment fort and finally to see life like sea worthy ships that were just like the ones they came here in! Then we went back and saw in detail the stuff we wanted to see all of them. My 2 favorite parts were the boats and watching the Indian shoot her bow and arrows traditionally. Overall we have been having a wonderful week.

Whooo we made it to VB!!! The first thing we did was go in the water. We tried to body surf on

the waves but failed a fair percentage of the time. After that we came inside and watched "Nacho Libre" it was really funny. The second day Bob, Jill and Tomas came to our house. On the beach we boogie boarded (better than body surfing) and turned Ben into a mermaid. Today I hope to go stand up paddling with my dad.

me fixing Ben's tail

ben all finished!

Going to Virginia Beach

Hello Blog readers (Dad is typing this because I’m really tired). Today I woke up in a hotel in New Jersey. As you may have guessed I’m on my way to Virginia Beach (VB-that’s the abbreviation I like to use).

It feels weird to be on vacation because I just got over a “vacation” with my cousins Nic, Devin, and Cole. Staying with the cousins was really cool. We went to Lupa zoo again (Cole liked that). We swam almost everyday, and slept at Grammie and Papa’s house for one day. We also raided Grammie and Papa’s attic for my Dad’s old comic book collection which he had put there for safe keeping (little did he know it wasn’t safe enough.) Hee-hee-hee. My Dad easily has over 1000 comic books that are over 20 years old. We foolishly tried to sort them all alphabetically. We failed miserably. We made it to the “F’s”. And all the others we put into categories (all the x-men in one pile, etc.) We piled the rest on the coffee table. We spent over 2 hours starting to sort them out.

Our vacations weren’t over for long because the Muellers came to our house last night and we started the drive to Virginia Beach. We ate at El Sombrero, like usual. Ben had the la cucaracha feast and drank from the el Baño special drinks.

When we got to the hotel, we went straight to bed (it was midnight). When we woke up

passing time (IT'S HHHHHHOOOOOOTTTTT!!!!!!)

Hello blog readers, It's hot. Hotel Oscar tango, hot. Today it reached 103, and felt like 110! The one advantage I can see is that I've caught up on my summer reading, finishing "Before We Were Free" by Julia Alvarez. It was O.K and only took me two days to finish. It was very violent. It was about the fall of dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. They have to go into hiding and then flee to the U.S.A. It was sad and moving. Today I saw the Harry Potter movie one more time. It was just as good this time(maybe even better). I can't wait for my cousins Nic and Devin and Cole to come soon (tomorrow).

Connor

passing my time without acting camp

Hello blog readers, as you probably guessed from my title my acting camp for this week has been canceled. That means I have no formal plans for this week so I've had to do stuff with my family. Today we went to the movie theater to see Cars 2. It wasn't good. The plot wasn't very good but I did laugh. The only real reason I saw it was because the first one was really good. Another way I passed the time is I'm directing and acting in a family mystery film. It's about murder and revenge... It kind of took the place of my acting camp.

I'm also trying to learn nautical radio code. India tango-india sierra-hotel alfa romeo delta (it is hard). Basically there is a set of spoken words for every letter, like A is alpha. Every space is just a pause. The problem is there's 26 words to have to know and that's hard.

I've also been shooting my bow which I got for my birthday. I'm getting more accurate (and so is my Dad who often shoots with me). I'm having a nice relaxing week before my cousins get here. India-charlie alfa november ' tango- whiskey alpha india tango-(I can't wait).

post more soon!

Charlie oscar november november oscar romeo (connor)

demo and trumpet

This is probably the first or second post of mine that you are reading this year ( I'll tell my dad to send the reminder email earlier next year). So for those of you who don't know I just got back from Maine where I visited Acadia National Park. The other thing that most people don't know is that my Dad bought me a new (technically used but new to me and in fantastic condition) 1983 Bach Stradivarius model 37 silver plated trumpet with a rare first valve trigger and a very weird but cool case. Most of you are probably wondering what half of that stuff means so I'll tell you. A first valve trigger is a little lever I can push on that makes my first valve come out (picture below) to lower the pitch a quarter step. Silver plated just means it's silver and looks really cool.

first valve trigger OH YEAH!

heres the trumpet plus the case

the case has a cool storing area

the case when it's closed. There's a trick to unlock and re-lock it
the other thing that happened was the karate demo. It was great but REALLY HOT. My two best things I did were "the edge" ( a sword kata) and the arnis sticks both in my last video post

Aidans flying side kick

my three directional kick

universal 3 face to face

Aidans split kick

the bow form

a fight that I led

my flying side kick

I will continue posting on my blog and I hope that you will read this. So far it's been a summer to remember. Looking forward to my cousins coming to visit next week.

Connor