Ok, they are just stock photos from the hotel web sites, but still…..it’s hard not to drool.
We’re staying here on Maui
We’re staying here on Oahu
We may never come back!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Spring Orchestra Concert
Made the decision to not concentrate so much on capturing video this time (…Kevin is in the front, but, usually buried behind the conductor or violins depending on the angle) and instead, just used the camcorder as an audio recorder and captured the sounds.
In some ways, this was a mistake. I can’t upload music files to One True Media; I can’t upload them directly to the blog….it’s been a pain in the ass. I had to find another sharing site and post them there; we’ll see how well it works out. You can find the music here. Input on how the site works is appreciated.
More Kevin Pictures
This time, it’s from the 3200m run at one of the track meets earlier this year. It’s hard for me to figure out who the meet was against in these photos….you can never see a person from the other team!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Get those running photos out of here
Photos from the Chieftain Challenge and OCE Triathlon have ended up online; here they are.
Don’t think I talked too much about this; every year the middle school has a mile race and you have to run a certain time to qualify; for the boys, it’s 6:20. Kevin, this year, has run a 6 minute mile, and easily qualified. At the race though, he finished towards the back of the pack in 6:19 (the winning time?….4:59!)
Didn’t realize they were getting pictures of the OCE triathlon. Matthew and Christopher are conspicuously absent; but, there were more than a few pictures of Kevin
A little baseball
Baseball last night. Only was able to watch an inning and a half before I moved over to the orchestra concert (we’ll post that later). We won, 11-7. Boys had a lot of success hitting, and, Suzanne reports, fielding. Matthew was catcher again and Christopher was shortstop and 2nd base and did a good job.
Christopher legging out a single in the first inning. The coach came over to first after he made it (and the coach had done this for a few other boys too) and made it clear that the run to first is a sprint, not a stroll.
Matthew had two hits that I was able to catch; the first is a double that he would have made easily if he would have been sprinting, but, made it even though he had to dive and crawl over the 2nd basemen.
His second at bat was a single where he could have advanced to second on an overthrow…but, the, guy on 2nd didn’t go, so Matthew couldn’t. Matthew points this out to his teammate…..he’s never been shy about that kind of thing.
Hawk-I-Tri Photos and Recap
Maybe, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have had Kevin do the Michigan Mile AND the OCE triathlon on the same weekend that he wanted to do the Hawk Island Triathlon. Oh well. Just shows what kind of shape that kid is in…….
Sunday rolls around and we have to be up early to get to the park to register. It’s cold outside, 42 degrees is the low, and Kevin is not happy. He’s shivering, inside, under a blanket and the concept of going out and swimming in a lake has no appeal.
But, a bowl of Fruity Pebbles and encouragement get him moving, and, at 6:40 am, we’re off. Get there and register, get Kevin marked up (with a sharpie, his number on his arms and his age and sex on his leg…that was already there from the OCE festivities). Get his bike settled in the rack, get his transition stuff laid out, and, all there is to do is wait. Part of waiting is having Kevin wade out into the water to get used to it. I have no video of this; I wish I did. Imagine Kevin, hands crossed, slowly, slowly, walking out into the depths. I don’t think he ever got more than up to his waist.
Anyway, race starts at 8 am, and I guess Kevin could have waited to start individually but, he chooses to go off with the under 29 crowd. Tell Kevin to be near the back of the crowd as they hit the water; he’ll certainly fall behind as they get started. Air horn sounds, and off they go. It’s easy to pick Kevin out from the distance; he’s the one in the back with the funky stroke (he basically kept his head above water the whole way). Kevin’s rounding the first of two turns and the air horn blows again, the 40 and unders are off, and the leaders in that group are passing Kevin by the middle of the 2nd leg.
I’d say most of that 40 group had passed Kevin before he reached the finish of the swim. Looked, as he left the water to be in pretty good shape, and I’m sure, was completely relieved to be out of the water and onto the parts of the race that he was comfortable with.
Coming out of the depths….bought the body suit on Ebay…Kevin wore it all the way through the race and we wonder if maybe he should do it differently next time. Swim caps required, and provided by the sponsors.
Kevin transitions pretty quickly, and leaves the park for the 10 mile road course. He does well; again, wave after wave of adults pass him (unlike the OCE triathlon, where he was just buzzing by kid after kid) and, again, maybe next time we’ll purchase new tires so that he has racing tires, not mountain bike tires…..I guess we’ll see if he keeps doing this or not.
Kevin out on the bike course; this picture is near the 1/2 way mark on the Michigan State farm property not far from our house.
Kevin finally makes it back to the park (without wrecking…a big worry of Mom!) and transitions to the run. I’m sure he was completely relieved by this time to be back to just a 5k.
leaving the transition area for the run
about midway through the run
finishing. No. 469 out of 700, but, 1st in his age group. 2nd in his age group is a kid we know, a really good football player, one of the best in that age group. Kevin beat him by 5 minutes. What does 1/4 mile swimming and 10 miles running do to you? It slowed Kevin down by about 2 minutes a mile on the run.
Kevin after receiving his award. The small medal everyone received for finishing the race; the big one, that’s for finishing first.
Kevin describes the whole experience as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”. Remarkably, to me, he’s not gulping down water and drinks at the end, about 5 minutes after he finished he was pretty much ‘normal’. He had a water bottle on the bike ride, and, he did drink it all, but said that was enough and didn’t need more. He did avail himself of all the drink stations on the run.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Weather Video
Finally spent the time pulling this off of Tivo and onto somewhere where I could do something with it. The local TV station sends out the mobile weather lab to schools in the area; in Nov. 2007 they visited Christopher 1st grade class with Mrs. Dudley. Big guy, as always, is easily found.
And in Nov 2008, it was Matthew's 1st grade class with Mrs. Dudley. Matthew’s not so easily found, but, gets the last ‘word’ in.
Christopher Art 2009
Again, comments in quotes below are from the artist.
“We had to make an insect. I made it like a butterfly. We made the leafs by using erasers”
“We had to do daffodils. We had tissue paper, we had markers, we had to put the marker on the tissue paper and crunch it together.”
“I made a treehouse. I used some tongue depressors, cardboard, and I made a rainbow”
“i made a spider web. We had to do different patterns; it was cool!” Dad: where’s the spider? “I didn’t draw one”. Why not? “It’s not a spider web.” Okayyyy.
“The snowman is holding ice cream. (Dad: Why is the snowman holding ice cream?). I don’t know.”
“The frog is in the swamp. I had to do the cattails with paint and I made the frog with paper, oil, and pastels. I tore up paper to make the stems.”
“Here are some sunflowers. I just made a circle and then I made half ovals to make the sunflower. I used oil pastels.” Dad swears it’s chalk…but Christopher says no, oil pastels!”
“I made an insect. I named it…..um……um…..I’m thinking….um..I”m thinking…um….I named it…Butterscotch”
“I made a bird eating a worm; I made a pattern around the bird and the worm. I called it a dot-bird.”
Expanding the squirrel empire
Figured out how to (easily) get Shutterfly content over here tonight. Shutterfly is the domain of Suzanne’s camera….if I’m taking pictures or video it’s going to end up here first, Suzanne’s goes over there.
Here’s Suzanne’s photos of New York, Michigan Mile, and OCE Triathlon
Click here to view these pictures larger
Here’s Suzanne’s photos of Easter and my birthday.
Click here to view these pictures larger
Here's the book Suzanne created after our Europe trip last year.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
OCE Triathlon Video
Quick note: Kevin was first in his age group at the Hawk-I-Tri mini-triathlon this morning. 1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run. He finished in 1 hour, 27 minutes and some change, and I’ll post more about that later.
BOYS AGE GROUP: 1 - 14
Place O'All No. Name Age Rank Swim Tran1 Rank Bike Rank Tran2 Rank Run Time
===== ===== ===== ====================== === ==== ======= ======= ==== ======= ==== ======= ==== ======= =======
1 469 274 Kevin Hutsell 13 3 12:13 3:09 3 41:34 1 1:10 1 29:19 1:27:23
The first video has 2 minutes of the boys swimming, and then a lot of Matthew bike and running video (with a brief snippet of Christopher starting to bike and finishing the race). Of note is Matthew’s reaction to starting to run when Christopher is finishing…..
Kevin is in the 2nd lane from the left in this video for the swimming. The bike is new; he’s in a full adult bike now and we’ve moved Christopher away from the run-over-by-car bike that he was using (which never made it back to a decent condition) and up into Kevin’s old one.
OCE Triathlon
Boys certainly got their exercise yesterday. Let’s review:
1) Michigan Mile - 1 Mile Running
2) Bike Ride to Triathlon – 1.5 miles
3) Triathlon – for Matthew and Christopher, that's 75 yards swimming, 2.25 miles of biking, .6 miles of running. for Kevin, that’s 150 yards swim, 3.75 miles of biking, and 1.2 miles of running.
4) Bike ride home – 1.5 miles
Matthew and Christopher: Seven through Ten year olds all go at the same time….Matthew and Christopher go in the same heat. You can tell the kids who are on the swim team; they’re the ones just motoring away from the others in the pool. The boys? Well, I am committed to making sure they clean up their form this summer…they made it, but it was ugly. Christopher held the lead for almost all of it but Matthew pulled ahead at the end.
They run out to their bikes and take off. Both seem to be doing well, Matthew comes around the 1st time and I lose track of Christopher. The event was a little disorganized, and even though we had told and told the boys 3 laps (swim), 3 laps (bike), and 1 running, Christopher was told by about 10 adults to pull in and well, after 1 lap he’s off running. They announce his name on the loudspeaker that’s he’s off and running and Suzanne and I look at each other and start laughing. Oh well, the big guy will pick up the DQ for the event.
Matthew is just flying along on the bike…he’s catching all of those flip-turn swim team guys and starting to make some serious headway on the kids in the heat in front of him as he heads off to run. One of Christopher’s classmates is in the heat in front of them; by the end of the run Matthew had caught her; granted, she had a small small bike but she was the first out of the pool (nice flip turns!) and Matthew powered his way through.
Matthew ended up finishing first in his age group.
Kevin: Kevin’s swimming stroke isn’t quite as bad as Fric and Frac’s….but, he also has earned some remedial stroke work from Dad this summer. He finished fourth in his heat, which, is pretty respectable.
Of course, the rest of the race is Kevin’s bread and butter. He’s flying along on his bike; he’s passing kids left and right. Misses the transition area to park his bike (wave Christopher in early, but, don’t remind Kevin that he’s finished 5 laps and to turn in…again, could have been a little better on the organization). He remembers though, and pulls in late, and probably loses 10-15 seconds in that. Whatever he lost he more than made up in the run; he says he’s the only kid he sees that didn’t stop to walk…he’s flying along.
He ended up finishing 2nd in his age group….and I have to wonder about that. The kids in the 11 year old age group one and we know for sure that he only biked 3, not 5 laps. Kevin was 2nd by 3 minutes…..I find it hard to believe he was behind by that much. The other guy that was right ahead of Kevin (in the older age group) and flying along only beat him by about a minute.
Oh well…doesn’t matter….boys all had fun.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Kevin Recital
Asked to be first at the recital today so that Kevin (and I) could get out of there and get moving towards the OCE triathlon that starts at 4 pm.
This is the last of Telemann; the 4th movement of the Concerto in G Major that he’s been working through for the better part of a year. We’ll have a post about the next major piece soon.
Kevin nailed the parts he was worried about and, except for one very obvious missed note, was almost perfect.
Michigan Mile 2009
A somewhat sad day….this is the last time Kevin will be running as a ‘participant’. We’ve been doing this for a long time.
Boys Pre-Race
Kevin: We’ve always believed that the Michigan Mile is really the Michigan Nine Tenths of a mile and figured this year would be the surest test of that; if Kevin runs anywhere in the 5 minute range we know for sure it’s short.
He finished in 5:31. Tape below shows him briefly at the start and as he finishes.
Kevin, pre-start, from the race photog
ditto
Christopher: Same old same old. Wakes up..."I don't want to go" "I'm not going to do it" "Why do we have to do the Michigan Mile?" But, he decides to come with us and finishes in 7:42, which is completely awesome and we think, but aren't completely sure, better than Kevin at that age. Video below....much more of Christopher at the start (I'm really zoomed to get that view, and of all the kids, he was the only one I could pick out from that distance before the race started....) and at the finish. The big guy decided to wear his gray light jacket as he ran, which makes him even easier to pick out.
Matthew: The anti-Christopher....woke him up this morning and hopped out of bed "Let's go, it's the Michigan Mile. And I can go really fast today because I don't have to wait for my friends!". Ask Kevin to help Matthew navigate through the staging area so that Matthew can be near the front (he helped Christopher as well, but, it didn't matter to Christopher, and it made A REALLY BIG DEAL to Matthew). Mom and Dad both cautioned Matthew that he may not finish first again this year, and that was ok. And, he didn't finish first, he finished 2nd in 6:34, and was really really disappointed about it. Video below, not very much at the start because they blew the horn to start unexpectedly. At the end you'll see Matthew run by his kindergarten teacher who is bending over near the finish line shouting encouragement. Matthew obliges with a burst of speed.
Matthew, being right up front, made it into a lot of pre-start photos.
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