March 2024

The first weekend in March was dominated by the Emerald City Comiccon.

Say hello to Tanjiro Kamado (green checkers) and Sakonji Urokodaki (clouds) from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

And to Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town.

Along with Ash's friend, Brock, from Pokémon fame.

We had a good time wandering through the booths and enjoying all the creative cosplayers.

We stopped to play some Klask and rest our feet for a bit. 

 

We also enjoyed a late afternoon snack and performance at the Dreamland Maid Cafe.

They had kawaii drinks and maid karaoke.

We headed up to get seats for the annual cosplay competition.

There were many amazing costumes, and we had a good time geeking out.

After the contest, we headed out to get some dinner.

When we got home that night, we remembered that we had not taken a group photo.

Whoops.
Here it is.

A sampling of desserts in March.....

A gluten free, dairy free s'more made with Grandma cookies for Mikey.

And, delicious macarons from a local shop for Katie.

Katie was taking a Biomedical Innovations class at school.

Her and her team created an antivenom kit to carry on hikes.
They had to come up with schematics and then actually build a replica of the kit.

Here's a syringe....

And this is an epinephrine pen.

Sadly, I don't think I have a picture of the physical mockup of the Antivenom kit.
It was pretty impressive.

I'm not sure what's going on here.

Maybe homework?
There's a little too much laughing for homework.

Prep work and painting for Cinderella was happening on weekends.

Around this time, we saw "Something's Afoot" a mystery musical, and Katie voted in her first Presidential Primary. 

In our state, kids aged 17 can vote in a primary if they will be 18 when the actual vote happens.

Mikey went to the state thespian festival and came back knowing how to sew.

Decision Day for college applicants was fast approaching.

Katie had to choose between her top two schools - University of British Colombia and Oregon State University.

We decided to squeeze in a visit to both of them to try to aid her with her decision.

Canada was up first.

She took a tour of the campus to refresh her memory.

In true Pac Northwest fashion, it was raining.

The first bunny of the year was spotted in our yard.

The following weekend, we headed to Corvallis to reconnect with Oregon State.

Say HI to Big Benny!

They have a very big tree on campus.

With the college campus refreshers out of the way, Katie had a little more info to help with her decision.

In the meantime, she and her Climate Action Clubmates planned a "March for Climate" event.

The event started with a march to the center of town.

At the end of the march, they had invited local groups to host tables with information on how to mitigate climate change on a local, national and global level.

After the march, we dropped Mikey off to help with some Cinderella scenery prep.

And then, wouldn't you know it, the end of March was here and brought with it, EASTER.

It was a beautiful sunny day for an egg hunt.

At first, the eggs are easy to find.

Watching out for Ralph laid "eggs".

Mikey is ALWAYS last finding his eggs.

Ralph enjoyed a little sunbathing.
This year he did not "find" (aka sniff out and crunch) any eggs.
Must be getting old.

Egg hunt success!

Ralph may not have found any eggs, but he did catch the scent of Mr. Rabbit and proceeded to sniff at the deck for 15 minutes.

As you all know, the egg hunt is only the first part of our Easter Eggstravaganza.

The next is the Easter Basket Search (TM).

This year's clues were created with the help of ChatGPT.

Some of the clues were easy and others....well, they were very obscure.

Eventually, they found the haul.

And then proceeded to rifle through their rewards eating quite a bit of sugar as they went.

February 2024

With The Hobbit done, it was time to move on to the spring musical - 

Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

The first weekend of February the cast headed off to their annual musical retreat for bonding, rehearsing and the beginning of dancing.

They also did some hiking as well, I guess?

Katie didn't get a part in the musical but was able to join the behind-the-scenes Tech crew.

So, she got to stay home.

While Mikey was away, Katie and I hit up our favorite ice cream spot.

They were having an "Ice Cream for Breakfast" event.

 

It was a rough IV start for Katie's February infusion.

Looks like at least three pokes.

Oough.

The kids high school held their 2nd annual Mystery Masquerade event.

The event is an interactive "solve the mystery" event.
Characters wander and guests can ask questions and interact with them.
As the evening progresses, more clues are unveiled and at the end guests can vote for who they think did the deed.

This year, Katie was a part of the planning team.
Mikey auditioned and was one of the characters named "Scott".

I chaperoned this event, so I was there to observe and make sure no shenanigans took place.

I mean, there were shenanigans, but I had to make sure they were "school appropriate" shenanigans.

Here's "Scott" with his nemesis in red, "Frankie" and his idol in the medical coat, "Dr. Eerl".

All three of them were close in the number of votes with "Frankie" being outed as the correct villain by one vote.
Disqualified were the votes for President Biden, Barack Obama and some kid named Joel who graduated last year.

Shenanigans.

We went to a friend's house to watch the Superbowl.

The adults and kids 17+ watched the Superbowl.

The others played a game on a laptop, watched the halftime show and ate snacks.

Valentine's came and went.

We gifted Katie a cute Valentine's macaron.

Time for Mid-Winter Break - no school for a week!

Mikey whipped up some pumpkin banana bread.

Katie spent the week dog-sitting Champ.
She stayed at the family's house to take care of him.

Besides Champ being A LOT hyper, she learned a lot and missed him when it was over.

While she was staying at their house, she discovered the cartoon show Bluey.

We found some time during the break for an excursion to the zoo.

There were lots of laughs.

February is a short month already and this one felt exceptionally short.

Phew.