The Millsers do Bolder Boulder 2013

It is our 6th year of Bolder Boulder since the kids have arrived. So, Tyler has done 6 and Cody has done 4. Since we've been busy, we haven't had any chance to practice but it turned out alright!!

Tyler finally managed to do the entire 10 K on his own feet without being carried while Cody, despite giving a good effort of a few miles last year was carried the entire way, just because we wanted to do it fast! He was finally let out at the entrance of the stadium just so that we can say he went past the finish line himself! :)

Tyler seemed to feel really proud of his achievement and did the whole thing without much complaints. Of course, he had to visit every sprinkler along the way which was a good distraction! You could tell the last 1-2 miles was starting to wear him out.

Given his good performance, he was allowed to choose what we were eating for lunch and his choice was Shrimp Tempura, Zuchinni(only because Cody hates it) and strawberries! We went to a Japanese restaurant to indulge him and he got everything apart from strawberries!!

Everybody in good spirits before the start

Tyler excited to get to the starting line

At the starting line

  

And he's off!!

First kilometer shot

Photo Op with Elvis

Getting a soak

2 miles!!

Trying hard to get soaked

Completely soaking wet

If the sprinkler didn't get him wet enough, he pours it over his head!!!

Focusing

Rare picture of Cody on his feet

We did it!! :)

Cody enjoying his "fishy eyes" (they are actually salmon roe)

Bolder Boulder 2013 - Run 1

Each year I run the Bolder Boulder twice, last year I was close to running my age, so this year as I had done much longer runs in training I was pretty confident of beating 47 minutes.  I had been working on a training schedule to complete the 10K in 45 minutes and the only bad news this year is that it was hotter than usual.  Luckily the first run starts for me at just after 7am.

Good news is that I finished in 45 minutes and 4 seconds, probably could have/should have tried to go under 45 minutes, but there is always next year. Overall I finished 1583 out of 43,256.

 Next year will have to work out how to get better pictures!!

Close to the finish

Onto the home straight

Finish line in sight

Tyler's First Kindergarten Graduation

Tyler graduated from his Kindergarten class and their teacher had hosted a little graduation ceremony for them which was rather cute.

They dressed them up in graduation gowns and presented them with their certificates and even had a lovely power point show.

Anyways, it was a heart warming ceremony.

Cody Graduates

Cody graduated from his JKE class today, and his teacher gave him and the rest of the class predictions for their future careers.  Cody was voted most likely to become a doctor, even though he claims he wants to be a zoo keeper.

Here is the class with the certificates..

Amazingly they nearly all got them around the right way

Boulder Badminton Tournament 2013

We held our 10th Badminton Tournament this year. Steffen and Damith were both away so Alan and Siew Gin managed to run everything without a hitch with help from Addy and a few others (in particular helping with setting up the courts on the Saturday).

There were a lot of good games and everyone enjoyed the competition.

Our 3 young helpers

Constitution Cake

Another friend of mine, Tom, graduated from Law School and had requested a cake for his graduation party. He even gave me a suggestion of having the Constitution be part of the cake since he was going to  specialize in constitution law.

It turns out, there aren't millions of other constitution cakes around for me to copy this time around!!! So, i had to keep it simple.

I decided to have a simple cake covered by the scroll. I prepared the scroll one night by rolling the fondant thinly and crinkling the sides and painted it with vanilla(smart huh.. not my idea) and some other brown color. Surprisingly easy. And the 2nd night, i put the cake together. My downfall was using both white cream cheese frosting and also ganache, so, it took longer than it should. Shall have to remember to not frost with 2 colors!!!! But i managed to go to sleep at 1 am!!

So, here's the cake. Lemon cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting. Sides are frosted with chocolate cream cheese and the tops with cream cheese frosting AND ganache!! Ganache was used so that the fondant could sit on top of the cake without sticking to it.

Oh the writing on the constitution was done using edible marker.

Quite please with the color scheme

The writing was nerve-wrecking!!!

Erie Balloon Fest 2013

We woke up bright and early again this year to go watch the Erie Balloon Fest. We even got a nice parking at one of Tyler's friend(Matthew)'s house which was a help.

As there was some slight wind that morning. It took quite a long time for the first balloon to take the skies. But once they took off, everybody soon followed suit.

Tyler completely enjoyed the experience was running around checking everything out while Cody was being grumpy pants!!

A few more cooking classes.

I took a couple more cooking classes in April and May. The first one i took was a tart class which was a little bit of disaster. First, the instructor forgot to turn on the oven and then when she had turned it on, she completely burnt our strawberry and rhubarb tart. Still, i did learn some interesting(though not proven useful tips) on making a nice flaky crust.

The 2nd class i took was a fish cooking class. I'm always afraid of over cooking fish and haven't tried too many fish recipes. The class though interesting wasn't too useful in the sense that they didn't concentrate too much of the fish cooking technique. But i was teamed up with the cutest father-son team and had a great time!!

Fun team mates makes a bad class fun!

And the last class was a grilling demo which demo'ed cooking using cedar planks as well as salt slates which i found intriguing but again, i felt the class was slightly lacking.

The Millsers boys at Kumon Awards

Every year Kumon holds an award service to reward the kids'(and parents') hard work. They are usually awarded by how many years they are ahead of their grade level.

Tyler was surprisingly awarded the highest award which was 3 years above his grade level and glowed with quite a bit of pride when they also announced he was top 50 in the US(we are still not sure what category that fell in as we didn't even know until it was announced at the award service).

Cody also received a medal(which we also didn't know) for starting Kumon, so, he looked  a little under dressed for the occasion.

Both kids seemed quite pleased with their trophies and medals.

On that note, we would like to also congratulate our friend in the Philippines, Theo Abara for being the youngest finisher of Kumon in the Philippines. He is only 6 yrs old!! That is quite the feat!! :)

Here are some pictures of the boys at the award service.

Waiting for the service to start

Pics with Mommy

Cody going for this surprise medal

Tyler getting his BIG trophy

Can't get both boys to smile at the camera at the same time!!!

Cody and his little medal

Tyler and his big trophies

Tyler Spring Party

Deja-vu for Daddy as we repeated the previous day party for Tyler that Cody did.  The kids spent much more time playing on the swings than the younger ones, and ate more food, but other than that pretty much the same thing.

Tyler with his snack

Bubbles anyone?

Class picture

Cody visits the Zoo with his class

Cody loves lions and spends most of his day pretending to be one.  So a trip to the zoo meant we spent a lot of time looking at lions, and a chance to see a few other animals as well.

Ready for the lions

Those lions are always sleeping

Okay Daddy, we can see the giraffes

Check out the stick we found

Check out my cool new ears