Our long gone traveling kids are back -- Jenny and Joey have returned home from their summer abroad!!

We will be sharing pictures and some trip highlights including World Youth Day in Australia soon...

Our Boyscout Troop went to Summer Camp at Quiviria Scout Ranch near Sedan Kansas. Great Program. Did have a bunch of high wind and storms but the boys still had fun and learned lots!

Jenny won many awards here lately. Including (but not pictured) is 3rd Place at an International Competition in Vancouver Canada.

Jenny Graduated with honors, the top of her class, Magna Cum Laude on May 17 From Wichita State University College of Engineering with a degree in Industrial Engineering.

She starts work full time in late August at Hawker BeechCraft in their 2 Year Management Developement Program. We are all so proud of her.  This slide show shows some of her awards from WSU 2008 and her graduation.

Mark and (I) Susie were so blessed to get to go to Italy in May. (Mark must have taken a couple thousand pictures which is why it is so overwhelming to narrow them down to post to this blog. Here is a small sample. I will update it later.) We started in Rome and visted the Vatican for Mass with the Pope! Then we drove around central Italy to many wonderful and awesome pilgrimage sites. Mark had a client to visit in Italy so we added some vacation to the trip and saw such 'awesome' sites as Incorrupt bodies and Eucharistic Miracles!  We got to be like the doubting apostle Thomas who said he needed to see to believe... well we did see these awesome miraculous sites... we want to share them with you!

Well, look at this nice trophy! Jenny won 1st place for Oral Presentation at the WSU Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Forum!! She gave a 10 minute version of her American Red Cross Industrial Engineering Project. Here is her picture with her trophy!

Jenny's friend Anna has a 'new' style Herbie and for a treat the girs took Jessy for a ride!  (Jessy didn't get to go on the upcoming campout so this was a special time for her) What a treat! To get to ride in HERBIE!!! Dad took some great pictures of the excited Jessy and Jamey with Herbie. Thanks Anna!

Click on the words below to follow the link to the article:

WSU Engineering launches senior toward her future

This is a picture of her winning first place in the IE paper contest.

We are so proud of Johnny for all his 5 years of Cub Scouting!  He really tries to be a super scout- living the scout promise as he strived for earning many achievements and electives.  He certainly lived up up to the Cub Motto of 'Do Your Best'!

Cub Scout Promise

I promise
to DO MY BEST
To do my DUTY to GOD
And my Country
To HELP other people, and
To OBEY the LAW of the Pack

Here he is pictured with Akela who presented him with a custom painted arrow with symbols representing his Cub Scout Achievements! He is now an official Boyscout!

We are so proud of him!

What an exciting day! WHW NXT Team Wins First Place!

Jeremy and Johnny were on one of the Homeschool Teams for this 2008 Lego Mindstorms Challenge. This is a 6 week competition and this year's theme was Natural Disasters: Rescue Robots. Their Professional level team competed in all areas: Table Display, Technical Notebook, Oral & Powerpoint presentation, Spirit and Sportsmanship and 5 senerios. Their team was made up of 13 students ages 9-12. The team split up into 5 subgroups and each worked on a different senerio or playing field. Our team used the Lego NXT Education Kit to compete. J3 and J4 worked on the Tornado senerio. They scored 700 on their first official run and then a complete 1000 points on their next run. They could keep the highest of the 2 runs... naturally 1000 points was terrific!!!  Then they went on to help their teammates with other senerios until time ran out. Happily, they won First Place in Notebook and Table Display! Also the Big First Place Throphy for the most points overall!!!

And to make the day even sweeter, the WHW RCX Team won 2nd place overall. Another Homeschool Team won 3rd place!   They learned a lot about programming, testing, building, teamwork... including Jeremy stepping in to do the oral presentation when a fellow team mate became ill.  And helping other subgroups progress in their senerios! They worked great together and had a great day with a surprising.... and exciting ending!  Perserverance is alive in these kids as they want to continue meeting to solve more of the other senerios!

Congrats WHW NXT TEAM!!!

This amaryllis flower was given to us by Grandma --

It was the cooolest plant to watch grow... we literally could see it grow... 3 inches in a day, etc

We were fascinated!

I found this on the amaryllis.com website.  -

After-Bloom Care
After-Flowering. After the amaryllis has stopped flowering, it can be made to flower again. Cut the old flowers from the stem after flowering, and when the stem starts to sag, cut it back to the top of the bulb.
Leaf Growth and Development. Continue to water and fertilize as normal all summer, or for at least 5-6 months, allowing the leaves to fully develop and grow. When the leaves begin to yellow, which normally occurs in the early fall, cut the leaves back to about 2 inches from the top of the bulb and remove the bulb from the soil.
Bulb Storage. Clean the bulb and place it in a cool (40-50 deg. F), dark place such as the crisper of your refrigerator for a minimum of 6 weeks. Caution: Do not store amaryllis bulbs in a refrigerator that contains apples, this will sterilize the bulbs. Store the bulbs for a minimum of 6 weeks.
Plant Again. After 6 weeks you may remove bulbs whenever you would like to plant them. Plant bulbs 8 weeks before you would like them to bloom.

Toot Toot! Right in our own home... a Train Show!  Wow... look at the detail... spot lights (flashlight) and all the CARS movie characters too... sorry you missed the show but you can enjoy these pictures!

Todays word to look up

Boisterous

=To be rough and noisy

This sounds like my family!

Very Exciting Day!

Johnny won Best of Show for his Pack Pinewood Derby - voted by scouts

Johnny also won 2nd Place for Fastest Car

Johnny won the Judge's award for Best of Show for Den #2

Johnny was so excited - he made a Star Wars XWing fighter plane (with Dad's help)  He really likes everything Star Wars and he was thrilled with his design and very thrilled with the results of the Race!

Here is Johnny's this year's Pinewood Derby entry:

Star Wars X Wing Fighter

Check out our family's other 5 cars for this year:

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