Catching up in 2007

7-4-07 Happy 4th all! I've been remiss in keeping our Medina blog up-to-date, so here's an attempt to update this past year so far. A lot of our other happenings are in other blogs, so these are just some highlights. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Summer's last Adventurer Investiture (held last May) as a Helping Hand-Advanced. Pastors Carmen and Brunt congraluate her. The whole pastoral staff and church staff of Azure Hills Church are so supportive of our Children's Ministry. They were awesome to work with during our tenure.

Wow, we're retired! After 5 years as Directors, we're ready to pass the "bullhorn" on to Leo and his crew of assistant directors. What will we do with all this extra time now? I'm sure we'll find something to keep us busy. ;-)

We've been doing swim meets almost every Sunday in June. This is one of my favorite shots of Summer doing her best (though not most favorite--that would be the breast stroke) stroke, the butterfly. In Aug., when we get back from our MI trip, we head off to the Junior Olympics where she qualified to enter the 50m fly and the 100m fly. She'll also be doing the fly leg of her team's IM relay team. Providentially, all her events land on Thur., Fri., and Sun., and not Sabbath!

Amid all this swimming, she did have a ballet and dance show on the one free weekend. These shots are from her Sat. night show where she played a "boy" in this particular dance number.





Bravo!

In the Sunday show, one of her performances had her being the Assistant to the Pre-ballet class. They were so cute in their multi-colored tutu's. It was the first time to be on stage for all of these little 4 and 5 year old girls as they followed "Ms. Summer", as they called her. Summer LOVED teaching and helping these girls. Here she is leading them through some basic ballet moves.











She gets some solo sections...

Click on the picture to make it larger and you'll see her swim suit lines on her back!

This is a little closer...





Her jazz number...





And here are a couple of shots from her tap number...


At the end, we had to take various post-performance pictures....With Ms. Candace, her tap teacher.

With Victoria (blonde) and Ms. Alicia, her jazz teacher. Alicia is also one of our best employees at the XRtainment Zone.

With friends Katie (left, also an accomplished ice skater) and Victoria, who is an excellent dancer and also on the Redlands Swim Team with Summer.

This is with Mei, who was in her first performance--she just started ballet a few weeks before this recital! She is also on the swim team with Summer.

The Kuniyoshi clan came out from Upland to see her perform. Auntie Diane and Uncle Ivan, along with Grandpa and Grandma Kuniyoshi. (My dad was in AZ visiting his newest grandchild--Leng & Robbie's baby girl, Sydney.)

Lots of b-day parties! Cousin Javan also had his b-day recently, on May 19 (what a great day). Here they are as we're leaving ChuckECheese.

Another b-day we were all involved in was the 70th b-day celebration of "Grandma Gracie", from our church. She's like our adopted grandma to many of us young families. She and her husband, Dick, are the MOST hospitable folks you'll ever meet! And they cook the best foods, too! We're here at the Whitley residence for a lua theme party in her honor. Kim made one of the cakes.

I had the privilege of documenting it with video.

Summer and "sister" Natalie after the lua b-day party for Grandma Gracie.

This was was for Mia, one of her swim buds. Most of the girls here are from the swim team as well. Oh no, look what we've created--shopping monsters!!! LOL!







Here are some of her buds from swim team. She enjoys the relay teams she swims on!

This recent relay team came in 1st, and even beat one of the boy's teams as well! (Our boy's team came in first among the boys, so it was a double-first place for our team!) Coach Vicky is their coach, and she's also one of our top staffers at the XRtainment Zone. ;-)

A shot of how crazy warm-ups can be! They swim farther in a warm-up than I can swim in my workout!

They have a lot of downtime in between their events, so they spend it doing puzzles, reading, playing games--here, they're playing hangman on some electronic toy that Summer brought.

While my dad was here from MI for most of June, he came to one of Summer's swim meets way out in Ventura. Here they are playing hangman as they wait. We also made him walk laps around the area!

Stay tuned for more shots from today's July 4 festivities!!! Hope you had a safe and fun celebration.