SLHS to State

As most of you know, Steph and I (as well as Jeff and Stacey) both attended SLHS. During our 4 years there, the boys bball team was luck enough to go to state twice for basketball. Unfortunately, the boys have only been 1 other time in the last 18 years. Well, this weekend that changed when the boys took 5th at Tri-Districts and qualified for state. Even better, the girls also made it to state....the first time since 1987 that both teams have made it to state.

After learning about their accomplishment, I pinged Jack Menashe and offered to talk to the team about the "State Experience". He took me up on that and I talked with them today for a few minutes. From playing in the 10,000 seat arena, to the quality of the teams you play, to rooter bus...It was fun to encourage them in their next challenge. Of course my biggest highlight was from my Sophomore year where we placed 8th. It was the game that either gave us a shot for 5th or sent us home, and we went into double overtime. I came in for someone that fouled out and ended up making 2 free throws with 20 seconds left to "put the game out of reach." Dad actually put together a DVD for me with the radio audio, so I watched that tonight. If I can get the actual AVI, I might post a clip...although the uniforms from 19 years ago are not pretty :-)

We pinged our favorite West Seattle website and they added a posting to their Blog about the accomplishment.

That posting has links to the Boys and Girls brackets so you can all track how they do.

Go Saints!

Happy Birthday to me...

A little singing for you...

LEST 2008

This past Wed-Sat we were in Portland for the 2008 LEST. This is a gathering of 15-18 Lutheran Schools from the west coast to compete in vairous areas of music, drama, spelling, math and basketball. For us (HOPE), it means the end of our long season. We took two teams, 1 comprised of mainly 7th graders as the blue team, and another all 8th graders as the Gold team. The blue team unfortunately lost two in a row and was out of the tournament. The gold team however, won 2 in a row, and made it to the championship game. It was the first time in about 15 years since a Hope boys team has made it to the championship. The last time a Hope boys team won the championship was my 8th grade year back in 1987! Anyway, the guys did great. We surprise a lot of people and did our very best. As you can see from Maddie's top 4 below we "Won" 2nd place...they played super hard and we were very proud of the team.

Maddie's Top 4 from LEST

1) Drama Performance
2) Boy's Basketball winning 2nd place
3) Cheerleading Night
4) Connecting Hotel Rooms with the Doerrs'

Here are is a slideshow from the weekend.

Birthday Girl

Happy Birthday to Kenzie!!!

Here is a picture from this morning. Big day planned with swimming,
presents, party, etc. We will post updates later.

90th Birthday Party

On Saturday we celebrated Grandpa Jensen's 90th Birthday!




The three kids (and spouses) helped plan a party with about "90" people. It was a great opportunity to see a number of people and to celebrate his 90th birthday. My brother made the trip up for the party, as did my cousins from Louisiana. We dont get a chance to see the complete family a lot, so it was fun to get together. Here is a collection of pictures from the event.

First sleep over

The bag is packed, and pillow is ready...Yep, Maddie is off for her first ever sleep over with a friend. Yes, she is only 6 and in First grade...they start early now-adays. We will report on how it goes!!!