Mia wrote her name

Mia wrote her name
Originally uploaded by ucitysoccer

The whole family was sitting in the living room, everyone kind of doing their own thing. Mia was sitting on the floor coloring and being rather quite when out of the blue she exclaims, "I wrote my name." As usual we had to ask her to repeat herself and she points to this page in her coloring book and repeats, "I wrote my name. Like daddy taught me."

Of course I am very proud and Jennifer wanted to take credit, so Mia rephrased it to "Like mommy and daddy taught me." But I had to explain to Jennifer that I helped her write her name a few days ago when I made a dotted version of "Mia" and then helped her trace it. (In this drawing I have grayed out everything except for her name to make it stand out better.)

For the Love of Children

UCCC-Betty Thompson-16
Originally uploaded by ucitysoccer

The Moonbeams room at UCCC was dedicated to Betty Thompson, a wonderful child advocate in University City and the entire state of Missouri. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the intimate ceremony and be able to photograph the happenings. To see a few more photos, look at photos tagged with "BettyThompson" on my flickr page.

apple festival

apple festival-1
Originally uploaded by ucitysoccer

I have added a few photos from the Apple Festival on my flickr page. This one was taken at the end of the fun evening with the girls (Linsey, Mia & Olivia) on the back of my truck posing with their colored hair, painted faces, tattoos and such. For the rest of the photos look at the photos tagged "applefestival" on my flickr page.

The Joust of 2007

When we went to the Apple Festival in September, Olivia brought her friend Linsey. They had a lot of fun running around on the different blow up amusements, but the "joust" was a great one to record on video.

Here it is:

O rides on 2 wheels!!!

O rides a bike-2
Originally uploaded by ucitysoccer

Today Olivia reached the wonderful milestone of learning to ride a bike, without training wheels. Unfortunately all I had with me to capture the moment was the camera on my phone.

There was only had one little mishap before the training wheels came off. Olivia forgot how to stop when she neared the end of the parking lot and ran smack into a curb, flipped over the handle bars and landed in a ditch. While she was a little shaken up, in just a few minutes she was back on the bike and working on her stopping skills.

It was not much longer before she was ready to have her training wheels removed and was riding around on her own. To see the rest of the photos of Olivia riding without training wheels, check out the bike tag on my flickr page.

Please know that the photo of Olivia face down in a ditch is only a reenactment.