Famille Du Pentium

Earlier this week, we attended the MNASR (Maine Niles Association of Special Recreation) awards ceremony, where Ethan, Aaron and Justin were recognized with the MNASR Youth Participant(s) of the Year Award.

Erin Pool, while announcing the award, noted that Aaron is an honor student, band Trombonist, and team player.  She noted Ethan’s love of mathmatics and Justin’s improvement in swimming.  All three were recognized for their participation and athletic abilities in the MNASR program.

During the dinner, the MNASR program gave away three Cubs tickets to a randomly selected participant / awardee, and Aaron won the tickets!

Pictures of the boys accepting their award, and Aaron accepting his Cubs tickets are HERE.

How it’s pronounced:

Eyjafjallajökull

Justin’s sixth birthday was on April 3rd, and today was his birthday party.  He had a shared party with his classmate / neighbor Noah, at Emily Oaks Nature Center.  First, a guide showed them around the nature center and had them play games, like chase (fox chasing rabbits) and other such outdoors games.  After the fun outdoors, we went inside to eat fruit, cupcakes, and beverages, and sang happy birthday to both of them.

Pictures here.

Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, inventor of the Altair 8800 – considered by some to be the first “personal computer” – died yesterday at the age of 68.

The Altair 8800 was a switch-based computer, and it caught the attention of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who moved from suburban Seattle to Albuquerque, NM (where Roberts lived at the time) to found Micro-Soft and write an  the BASIC language – to help people program it.

The man who Edward James Olmos played in the movie “Stand and Deliver”, who transformed an inner-city Los Angeles math program into the highest achieving math program in the state between the mid 1970’s and 1980’s, has died in Reno, Nevada.

Jaime refused to accept the status quo, and drove his students to perform at much higher levels than the school system expected them to.  At its peak, the Garfield High School Advanced Placement Calculus program hosted 570 students, the highest percentage of overall student body in the country.

Many math teachers in the ’80s were inspired by Jaime, and those teachers went on to inspire yet another generation of formerly underperforming math students to become math geeks.  One such teacher was my ninth grade Algebra-Trig teacher.  Today, I’m an Engineer, thanks in part to Jaime Escalante.

Aaron had a concert last week, here are some quick pictures from my mobile phone:

Aaron is waiting to play

Above, Aaron is waiting with his Concert Band colleagues while the Intermediate Band plays.

The Leaders of the Band

Above, band leaders Chip De Stefano and David Morrison look on while a student from Northwestern leads the band in a song.

Where's Aaron?

Can you find Aaron performing in this picture?

FAMILLE.ORG is now a ranked website.  Alexa ranks famille.org at number 2,245,864 worldwide.  That means that there are only 2,245,863 other websites that get more visitors than us!

http://www.trafficestimate.com/famille.org

Over, Oveur.

I started a new job this week,  so not so much time to post lately.  However, I have some kids (and dog) pics for you to enjoy, while I toil away at work ;-).

First, I forgot to post that Aaron achieved IGSMA Division I, for the second year in a row, playing in a band competition.  This was a solo competition, and Division I is the highest rating that a competitor can receive.

Here’s some cute pics of Justin hugging Eeyore: http://gallery.famille.org/main.php?g2_itemId=2998

Purim:

I didn’t do my usual Purim Megilla Post, but here’s one from a few years ago.  We went to the Purim Megilla reading, party, and carnival at the Jewish Reconstruction Congregation, where Marla works as a pre-school teacher.   Pictures are of the two younger ones at the carnival, making arts and crafts.

Kids Swim:

This Tuesday was the last class, for a few weeks, of the Kids Swim program that all three are in.  Aaron can now swim freestyle and backstroke by himself, Ethan can freestyle alone, and Justin is doing freestyle and backstroke assisted.  A few pictures to give you an idea of what the class looks like.

That’s it for now, tonight I’m speaking at the Liponi Foundation Fundraising Dinner, which provides funds and buses for the M-NASR program, which provides the swimming class (as well as Young Athletes and a few others that the kids participate in.)

That’s right, it was time once again to make our annual pilgrimage to Rosemont, Illinois to take in our yearly allotment of complex hydrocarbons, and watch Grave Digger, Taz, Escalade, and others race, jump, and try to wreck their trucks.

This year, Grave Digger won the race competition, and Escalade (with a driver from Chicago) won the freestyle, by rolling his truck (the crowd always likes that.)

I tried some new settings on my camera phone to see if I could get better action shots. I don’t think it worked well, but check them out anyway: http://gallery.famille.org/main.php?g2_itemId=2976.