Swim Meet 23 Jan 2010

23 January 2010 was another Age Group Swim Meet for Kyle and Zoe. This time it was at Rockford, Michigan. Kyle and Zoe both swam. The YouTube videos are below.

Zoe 50 Yards Backstroke. Zoe, 3rd from bottom in Lane 4 (the gap in the video is Uncle Roger pressing the wrong button on the camera at the wrong time). Zoe wins her Heat in 47.09 seconds.

Kyle 50 Yards Butterfly. Kyle is in Lane 4, diving in over the orange cap of the swimmer from the previous race. Kyle wins this heat in 30.94 seconds – not quite up to his 30.18 from 2 weeks ago – a better turn would have helped.

Zoe 50 Yards Breaststroke. Zoe is in Lane 2 at the bottom of the picture. She won this heat, but less time looking across the pool would have given her a bit faster time . 1:01.82 – hey it’s still waaaaaay better than I could even think of doing!!!!

Kyle 50 Yards Backstroke. Kyle is at the bottom in Lane 2 – a great start and then an easy swim sees Kyle winning this Heat in a good time of 35.11 seconds- more than 5 seconds ahead of anyone else.

Great Job Kids!!!!!!!!! See you next weekend

Swim Meet 9 Jan

Saturday 9 January was the Quad Swim Meet for Byron Center, Zeeland, Rockford and a team called “Heat”, although I don’t remember what school they were. This is part of the West Michigan Swim League.

Zoe wasn’t swimming today – she was a Church Camp, but Kyle competed in a Relay and 2 Individual events.

50 Yards Butterfly…

Kyle finished a close second in this one.

100 Yards Freestyle

Kyle won this race very easily, but his time was second overall – the winner of the first race was 7 seconds faster.

A couple of other shots here, including an “action” diving shot.

 

First Lego League Michigan Finals

One part of the Michigan State finals of First Lego League was held at Carman-Ainsworth Middle School in Flint, Michigan on 12 December 2009.

The team from Byron Center – Team <Default> – made it to the State Finals for the first time ever thanks to their performance at the Regionals at Grandville on 20 November 2009.

Overall as a Team they finished in the lower half of the 48 teams present, but they learned a lot from seeing and competing against the other teams. They did however win the “Alliance Challenge” – a time limited challenge whereby 4 teams had to work together on a plan to have their robots each drive down the course and for all of them to end up parked in the smallest possible space.

Alliance Challenge Winners

Kyle’s idea of having the Team <Default> robot run up a ramp that was on one of the other robots, thereby effectively parking 4 robots in the space occupied by 3 robots proved to be the winning idea. A photogallery of images from this is available when viewing the whole post. (click link below if it’s not showing.)

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Chihuly Toledo

On 25th November Lisa and I took her Mum down to the Toledo Museum of Art to see the exhibit of Dale Chihuly glass works “Chihuly Toledo!”

We had been to the Toledo Museum of Art during the Summer to spend a day there looking at displays, including a fascinating glass blowing exhibition in The Glass Pavillion and learned of their upcoming Chihuly display. So the day before Thanksgiving we headed off there to take a look.

In the Chihuly exhibit room I didn’t see any signs saying “No Photography” as I walked in, so took a couple of pictures before I got scolded. Turns out the only sign was in such a place that you’d see it only as you exited the room. So here they are…

 

Lego Robotics Regionals

Saturday 20 November was the “Smart Move Regional LEGO League Qualifying Tournament” of “FIRST Lego® League” at Grandville Middle School, Grandville, Michigan.

The Team from Byron Center is Team <default>. The ended up finishing 6th at this tournament, including 1st place in Research, so are off to the State Finals in Flint on 12 December. Congratulations Guys and Girls!!!

Here are a few photos taken by Uncle Roger.

 

2009 Making Strides for Cancer – Grand Rapids

Saturday 17 October was the 2009 Edition of “Making Strides for Breast Cancer” – a 5 km walk in downtown Grand Rapids, starting in Calder Plaza, along side the Grand River, through Ah Nab Awen Park, past the burial place of President Gerald R Ford, past the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum, the Amway Grand Hotel, the Civil War Veterans Monument, Veterans Memorial Park, down Jefferson Ave to “Hope Lodge”, up onto “Heritage Hill”, then back down past Grand Rapids Community College to the Calder Plaza – whew!!

Thankfullly it was a sunny day, even if not so warm at least initially.

Pictures below.

 

Gilmore Car Museum Elvis Memorial Car Show

Last Saturday we went with Don and Mindy to see the Del Shannon Memorial Car Show in Coopersville. While there Don mentioned that this weekend there was a car show at the Gilmore Car Museum – a place I’ve long had a desire to go. So Saturday mid-day Don and I headed off down there to take a look at some more cars.

So the car show was in 2 parts – the permanent exhibits at the Gilmore Car Museum housed in a number of large old farm barns. And then the hundreds of privately owned cars that had been driven in for the day’s Elvis Memorial Car Show.

The permanent displays particularly were jaw-dropping – an amazing array of immaculate old cars – many of them very rare and valuable, with names like Auburn, Duesenberg, Rolls Royce, Packard…

Here’s a photo gallery of some of the the pictures I took.

 

Del Shannon Car Show in Coopersville

8 August was Dinner Club in Grand Haven, and the Del Shannon Car Show in Coopersville (which is on the way to Grand Haven). It was also a day of some not insignificant rain, so we headed out  as it looked like the rain was nearly finished, meeting up with Don and Mindy in Coopersville not long after the rain had stopped. But alas the rain had caused a lot of the expected 800 cars to not show up (or to show up and then have left already). So it was a pretty sparse, and wet line-up, but there were some interesting cars still there. In the farm exhibit this old gas powered engine was chuffing away….

Below is a photo gallery of some of the cars we saw.

 

Grand Haven Coast Guard Fireworks 2009

Saturday night Lisa and I headed out to Grand Haven to Bob and Bobbi’s place. Following a delightful tour through an amazing garden that they keep we ate dinner, then headed off to join the tens of thousands of other people down on the waterfront for the Musical Fountain and Fireworks display.

It was a very windy night, and a shower of rain had passed over as we waited too, but eventually shortly before 10:30 the Musical Fountain started up playing its traditional theme from “2001 – A Space Odyssey”, and then when that was done we were into the fireworks.

I started out taking photos, but this wasn’t so easy given how close to the action we were, so I was never quite sure just where the next “shot” would be, so I switched to movie mode on my Canon S2 IS camera and captured about 10 minutes of it on video.

A few of the pictures I took appear here, followed by a nearly 3 minute video of the final song – Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”.

Because of the strong winds, many of the fireworks drifted left to right even during the 2 seconds exposure the camera gave on “Fireworks” setting.

A photo gallery with more photos appears here.

Enjoy!!!!!

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Grand Haven Fireworks 2009 Photo Gallery

This post is a photo gallery of some of the pictures from the 2009 Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival Fireworks from the evening of 1 August 2009.

Enjoy.