Zachary's Grade 8 Grad

We celebrated Zachary's Grade 8 Graduation on June 20th, 2014. There were 9  Grade 8 homeschool grads and 1 Grade 12 grad.  It seems hard to believe that we have been homeschooling for 9 years already.
The graduation was held at Rice Road Community Church with a dessert reception afterwards.  All the grads looked splendid.  Zachary was cheered on by Jacob and Grandma and Grandpa Hoffele

The Fonthill Airborne Regiment

So I quit the Royal Westminster Regiment back in the 1980s before I got to jump out of an airplane. To make up for that, the boys and I are forming our own airborne glider unit out on the slopes. We've got passes to Holiday Valley in Ellicotville, NY (about 1:40h drive away) this season and we've decided that this is the season we learn to do jumps and tackle (sometimes literally) the terrain park. Rather than just riding the black diamond runs, we're now seeking out every little bit of small terrain and dip in the green and blue runs as an excuse to get airborne.

The shadows underneath the boys' boards prove their jumping abilities, and these were taken pretty much from a near-standstill! The past two times, we learned how to ride on the flat box, and the boys have now taken things further by riding a stack of boxes and also riding/jumping an "A-frame" box!

The great thing with homeschooling is that we go during the weekdays when there's minimal traffic on the roads or the slopes. And the "group" lessons we get with our passes generally end up as private ones. Here the boys are with David (L) and Dom (2nd from R), who have both taught us. Dom is especially awesome and fun to ride with, and we help him out by saving him from teaching beginners...

Snowboarding is just a fabulous day out and a way for us to bond as three boys, plus the bonus is that Debbie gets the day off from having to take care / put up with us!

Syracuse Wildfire Gymnastics Meet

Jacob had a pretty awesome pommel routine

The second gymnastics competition of the year was in Syracuse Jan 25/26 weekend. We'd never been there before so it was a nice road trip with the other boys' parents (Isaac and Ben) despite the sketchy winter weather. I don't think they really believe in plowing the roads around Buffalo. The boys generally improved their performance from 2 weeks prior in Niagara Falls, so there's an upward trend.

The parallel bars are always impressive to watch.

Artsy shot with all the medals to play for on the left, and the boys lining up for the pommel judge.

 Way up high on the high bars.

Zach on the pommels.

Jacob's bronze on the pommel and Zach's bronze all-around. 

Next stop Rochester NY Feb 15/16!

Paddleboarding

From way back in September, but check out Jacob's talent in his first ever attempt at paddleboarding!

The Coolest Mexican Restaurant in Syracuse

OK, I've been offline with the blog for a long while, so let's renew with a blog about FOOD! We spent this weekend in Syracuse at the Wildfire Invitation gymnastics meet for the boys. Debbie searched out "The Mission" restaurant for us to try, and we went with the Siemens (Isaac competes with the boys).
What a totally cool place. First and most important, the food was fabulous (seafood enchilada for Tim and me, fish taco for Debbie, tacos and others all around). The decor as you can see is really neat too, with the kitchen right there in the shrine/altar area. Yes it was an actual Wesleyan Methodist church (2nd one in the USA) from 1847, and it was also a part of the Underground Railroad during the slavery era. There were lots of archeology from the basement areas, and our waiter Doug was a wealth of info and passion about the history. The church was also a meeting place in the early suffragette movement. The stained glass is all from the 19th century too.
Super fun night out. Thanks to the Siemens for the fun company too!

Dr. Freeze and the Freezies!

"Freezies" work for Freezies, apparently...Jacob works on the shoot's storyboard...

A video of what happens inside the lab of a mad scientist!

Last fall we shot an episode of "Science Scoops" for Virtual Researchers on Call, a group producing news and videos for grade school kids about the fun and importance of science. Debbie had the great idea of "if it's meant for grade schoolers, then why not have the boys interview you?" Here's the result that went live on YouTube today!

A GREAT Day!

May 6 2013 has been an amazing day for the Cheung clan, one that will certainly be marked on the calendar with big red letters and celebrated. I got the amazing news that I got not one but two scientific papers accepted - never had such a bumper crop of a day before! To top it off, I got another paper accepted two days later, for a total of 5 over the past three weeks!

But MUCH more importantly, we received the greatest email ever. Our Afghan friends Ali and Basyah, along with their children Abufasal and Sadaf, after 4+ years of uncertainty and a sword literally hanging over their heads, received refugee asylum from the Netherlands! Ali converted to Christianity and had a death sentence placed on him by his former mullah, but managed to escape Afghanistan and was smuggled to the Netherlands. We became friends in Amersfoort, where they were at the very end refugee camp prior to deportation with every avenue of claim and appeal pretty much exhausted. Their story is quite incredible and moving, and certainly has been a constant reminder of how fortunate we are to be Canadians.

Singletrack Mind!

Had one of my dreams fulfilled this past week. Being the nutbar cyclist that I am, as a dad you can only dream of the day you get to share your passion for the bike with your kids. Last Monday, 4 of us dads on Team905 decided to take our kids out for a trail ride. While the boys and I have been on the bike lots together, from the early days of hauling them behind me on the trailer, this was our first real offroad adventure. Well, the boys were AWESOME! We went through the trails around Brock and, much to my pleasant surprise, the boys did great and loved it.


And especially so since I just set up Zach on his new "big" mountain bike and this was his very first time on it, and Jacob's very first time on Zach's bike! They cleaned most of the trails we threw at them with a big smile on their faces, and with an even bigger smile on my face! Here we all are at Decew House, where Laura Secord completed her famous trek during the War of 1812 to warn the British about American attack plans.

This past Saturday, I took them on some different trails around Brock for 90 min, including some really twisty and tight trails that I myself had only just discovered. Zachary even started hopping some logs and they both cleaned most of the trails except for the big log series, dips, and rock humps. So much fun! On the left is our start at Morningstar Mills, and on the right we're on the levy around the lake.

R2 D2

When we went to visit our Grandparents out in BC, our Uncle also came to visit them. When he came he brought the Lego R2 D2 for us to build together, so here are some pictures while we go along.

 This is when we are starting to set up, on the left you can see I am holding the THREE instruction books! This set has 2127 pieces. It has several moving parts including a retractable third leg, and a buzz saw. 

Here is us starting on the first few steps, in the first part it does is his body.

 This is at the end of the first booklet, in that we only do the body.

 on the left we have finished the retractable leg, and on the right we finished book 2 which was just the legs.

Here is a picture from when we are all finished.

Packing, packing, packing!!

Today (July 30) we have really started our going home packing!! Dad spent a lot of the day, fitting everything into our 1 bag, 2 suitcases, and one bike box. We have to fit everything we needed for a year (but got rid of our runners, and some clothes that weighed about 6 kilograms in total) into those four pieces of luggage, and 1 bag that we shipped (plus the backpacks which we are taking with us, which will have our computers and things like that.

Still more blogs from our trip to come, but we're heading to Schiphol and flying home today!

Clothes - Everything Must Go!

On Saturday we went to the recycling place to drop of all of our running shoes and some of our old clothes that we are tired of after a year or else that are fairly worn out. All in all, we got rid of about 6 kilograms!! At the recycling place there are different sections, like the paper goes in a dolphin, and also the clothes go in a dolphin (a different dolphin), then the shoes go in a frog. Those animals got very full after we were done!

Holy Twelve!

It's July 26 today, which means you might hear my screaming even across an ocean because it's Zachary's 12th birthday! That is, if your hearing's recovered from my screaming when Jacob turned 10 a few weeks back! What can we say except that we're so happy and proud of our big guy! It really does seem like only yesterday that our family was turned upside down with his arrival, and we couldn't be more blessed.
Zachary, you're one of the two coolest boys we know. You and Jacob have made these 15 months of travel the most terrific experience we could ever have imagined, and getting to share the adventure with you has been an amazing gift to us. Keep on being so awesome!

No Delft Blues Here!

We spent today (July 17) touring the western town of Delft. Like Brugge, it's just an incredibly beautiful small town/city, perfect for walking and wandering. Delft is the hometown of the famous painter Johannes Vermeer, of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" fame. It's also home to the famous Delft Blue earthenware. And of course, what would a Dutch city be without a series of beautiful canals?

Two kerks dominate the town centre - the Oude Kerk behind the boys (1240 AD) and the Nieuw Kerk (1380s). Again, Pisa's not the only town with a leaning tower, just the one with the best PR firm. The Oude Kerk's tower leans rather scarily over the canal! Inside the Oude Kerk is the gravestone and mausoleum of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, one of the pioneers of microscopes and seeing the incredible world previously unseen.
Another very famous person buried in Delft, with a mausoleum in the Nieuw Kerk, is Prince William of Orange, who led the rebellion against the Spaniards ruling the Netherlands. This was part of the 80 years war, and we saw a good bit of it detailed at the Prinsenhof Museum. At the Prinsehof itself was St. Agatha's Convent, where William was murdered by a Catholic. Those are the bullet holes from the assassin's (Balthazar Gerrard) pistols there from July 10, 1584.

At least the Dutch are more original with their souvenirs than some other places we've been to on this trip. Looks like they've raided the town's attics to collect old strap-on ice skates on the left, and the giant clog on the right can double as a bobsled!
Also found this rather cool cheese shop on the main Markt. All sorts of pretty exotic cheeses, including green pesto and red pesto cheese, smoked cheese with chili, and all sorts of goat and sheep cheese. The boys tried some samples, then tried the old "dine and dash" routine with a cartload of cheese!

300 Sights on a Bike!

Wow, it's our 300th blog post - let's go biking!

By now, you know that we adore the cycling scene and scenery around this part of the Netherlands. Except for the constant strong SW wind and the regular but random rain of course! Riding by the big local park in Hoogland, we came across a big equestrian tournament one weekend. By now we've shown you lots of sheep, horses, ponies, etc. Here are some other sights in our part of the world seen while out on the bike.

You'll certainly find birds of all sorts around, due to multitude of canals and marshes in the area. It's rather bird-heaven in that way, so lots of herons about too. With all the fields too and hence small mammals, there are lots of predator birds flying about too. Oh yeah our street "Kraailand" means "Crowland."

Also a few more exotic birds roaming about. On the right some folks have built a big platform for storks, and they were feeding their babies while we watched. On the right is a big emu - don't think they're native here!
You'll certainly see rail tracks and have to stop for trains quite often riding around the Netherlands. The trains here are really efficient and extremely frequent. We've seen very few freight trains but lots and lots of passenger trains. Definitely do NOT even remotely consider running the lights or barriers, for these things FLY!

And even though you're in a country where bike paths and directions are supremely well-marked, if you're riding with Eric, sooner or later you're going to see him riding in loops very quizzically. After leading you on for about 30 km more than you've bargained for, he'll eventually admit that he's not completely sure where the heck we are. As a redeeming feature, though, that will usually be followed up by coffee, apple pie, and good laughs!