I finally got my first call from DD last night around 5pm my time, 10pm her time. She was very happy and apologetic for not calling sooner but she said it's been really fun and hectic. (Luckily the other parents of kids in the delegation have been sending out emails to everyone with updates whenever they here from their own children so at ( Read more... )

     We left the house around 10am Tuesday morning to take DD to the airport. Her Peope to People delegation was supposed to meet at Dulles Airport at 11am near the Delta check-in lines. Their flight to NY was scheduled to leave at 1:30pm. It only takes about 20 minutes to get to the airport from our house but we needed to hit the Foreign Currency ( Read more... )

     My in-laws arrived on Friday afternoon, and we kept them going pretty much the whole weekend. We took them to DD's swim meet Saturday morning. They had never seen her swim competitively before so this was a new experience for them. DD did really well - 1st in the 50m Butterfly; 2nd in the 50m Freestyle, 100m IM, and 200m Freestyle Relay; and ( Read more... )

     DD had a great swim meet on Wednesday night. She placed 1st in the 100m IM, 2nd in the 50m Butterfly (her favorite stroke), and 4th in the 50m Freestyle (out of 28 11-12yr old girls.) I don't care about the relays so I normally don't report her places for them but in case you're interested: 2nd in the 200m Freestyle Relay and 3rd in the 100m ( Read more... )

      Busy but profitable weekend for DD - She babysat for 3 kids Friday night (they were only up for 30 minutes!) and made $7/hour and then babysat on Saturday afternoon for 2 kids and made $8/hr. To a 12-year old, this was pretty good money. DD came home feeling like she was over paid and felt bad for taking so much money from the parents because ( Read more... )

     Saturday was DD's last People to People meeting before the group leaves on July 1st for Europe. This meeting was for their community service project and Bon Voyage party. We met at 9am in a warehouse for SERRV International (www.agreatergift.org) in New Windsor, MD. We paired off in groups (parents were encouraged to participate as well) to ( Read more... )

      Last Saturday was DD's synchro Exhibition and end-of-year party. The whole team created a new routine just for this event. It was cool to see all the girls doing a routine together. DD was even part of the grand finale with a special lift - she and another girl made a platform under water for 2 other girls to be lifted/thrown into the air, ( Read more... )

      We had a pretty low-key weekend. DD and I went to a Mother/Daughter Tea and Fashion show on Saturday afternoon. It was sponsored by our church. Just as we arrived at the hotel where they were having it, the bottom dropped out and it started raining cats and dogs. We had to make a run for it, and we ran though several large puddles. We were ( Read more... )

     We were invited to three BBQ's on Sunday to celebrate Memorial Day. We only made it to two of them. The first one was at my sister's house in MD at 2pm. My niece had just returned from her semester in Spain, and we wanted a chance to hear all about her adventures and check out her pictures. She is majoring in Linguistics and Spanish so this ( Read more... )

 DD's Science class all sent their names to the moon - you can, too! Pretty cool... http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php