The Richards Family

Senior, Sophomore and 7th grader

Sharon — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:43:07 +0000

So, as is obvious from the last date on our family site, we haven’t posted anything in a really, really, really long time Time travels on and our family continues in its many adventures: Bethany is a senior and in her last quarter of high school life, Becca is a sophomore and Nate is a 7th grader. Wow! What to share about the three Richards kids? They are fun, full of life, enthusiastic learners, and for the most part a wonderful pack of 3. Bethany has been enjoying her senior year and is anticipating leaving home this fall to head off to college – still undecided but currently accepted to UW, Seattle U and San Diego State. She’s had a full year of academics, involvement with the school year book and has played varsity volleyball and basketball. It has been so much fun to watch her play sports and to be supportive cheering fans. She’s currently in her final season of track and is hoping to make it to state again this year in shot put and disc – man that girl can throw and as she says ‘look at these guns’ – guns being her arms She continues to have a wonderful sense of humor for which I am very thankful. Becca is doing great at school as well and played soccer in the fall, took continuing guitar lessons in the winter and loves drama. She landed the role of Huck Finn in her fall high school production of Tom Sawyer and I think she is amazingly talented She is currently part of a smaller drama at school and they learned how to do improv and a month ago lead a dessert theater improv night where once again I was humbled and delighted in seeing her perform – she is a gifted entertainer. She just returned from a trip to Fresno with the drama group – they helped lead a drama camp for elementary age children who live in a lower income housing complex in Fresno. They helped them learn how to act and helped to feed them all dinner, along with their families, each evening. She had a wonderful time, loved working with the kids (although she did find them exhausting) and after being picked up early this morning from the airport has headed to bed. Nate, what can I say about Nate? He turned 13 this February -wow. He is enjoying 7th grade and after getting off to a bit of a rough start with homework etc has managed to get on track and is working hard and doing well. He played soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and is now running with track. He loves to run long distance and wants to run the mile in all of the track meets this spring He’s a fun teen to have around. For his 13th bday we celebrated by having a mass nerf gun war with 11 of his buddies. Dave and Jeremy Febus also came along and participated in the battle – so fun to watch the dads play along That’s enough of a post for now. I’ll get up pics from our Christmas adventure to Maui some time soon and maybe some other photos from this past year. Dave is currently in Myanmar meeting up with the folks who work there for ‘Nargis Library Recovery’. Dave is a board member for the organization. Oh, we also both traveled to India this past fall – at separate times (logistics) with Unitus. Will post some stuff from that as well at a future date.

Single horn rhinos in Assam

Dave — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:56:00 +0000

We rode on these elephants in Assam in a national nature reserve…

…to see the world’s only wild single horn rhinos

Junior, Freshman and 6th grader

Dave — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Bethany and Nate headed off to Shoreline Christian School this morning. Bethany is in 11th grade, a junior, and Nate is in 6th grade. Wow! Bethany drove herself, which is still kind of amazing to me, and I took Nate so that I could help him get settled in, not that he actually needed any help. I wanted to take my youngest to the first day, of his last year, in elementary school. Becca starts school tomorrow, 9th grade, freshman, at King’s High School. I was just starting to put in their schedules for practices and games, and it’s going to be difficult to get to all of their matches. Bethany is playing volleyball, Becca is playing soccer, and Nate is playing soccer. Some of their home games for all three are on the same days and very similar in times and in three different locations Becca will be playing home games at King’s field, Nate will be playing home games over by Shoreline pool, and Bethany plays home games at Shoreline Christians’ gym. Hmm. We’ll just see how this all goes. I am very proud of all of them and excited for them and their year ahead. I wonder what adventures and new experiences lay ahead?

Notes on traveling and being home

Dave — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:49:00 +0000

A few of my friends have commented that my posts about our month long travel adventure were all ‘very happy’. Just a few notes on that: overall, we did have a wonderful time traveling together. If any of you reading get the opportunity and ability to travel like we did, with our kids the ages they are, 16,13 and 11, I would recommend it. Now, was it without tension, conflict, anger, outbursts, tears and silent glares? Absolutely not. Did we manage as a family to navigate that, not all the time, but for the most part, we weathered it, talked and laughed through things, sat in silence, and traveled on. I just started reading a book called, ‘The art of pilgrimage’, by Phil Cousineau and these thoughts strike me: “Never doubt for a moment that there will be darkness and disappointment on your travels. The question is, How much courage can we muster to deal with it and move on? Can we transform painful moments into instructive ones? ” I like this. Now, I’m reading this after the fact of this recent traveling adventure, but somewhere, somehow we navigated some darkness and disappointment on our journeying. I love to travel primarily because I continue, during and after each adventure, to learn new things about myself, and those I travel with. There is something very powerful about traveling with family, for me, primarily our children, and see them experience, explore, wonder and ponder different cultures, language, food, people and ways of travel. I would do it again, even though occasionally (you can ask Dave) I fantasized about ‘not traveling’ with teenagers I also intentionally chose to not write some things on this family blog, as they just weren’t meant to be shared. Some of my friends know me well enough that they know I tend to have a difficult time ‘re-entering’ life at home once I’ve been traveling. This is true, and is still true, even though I was ready to come home. I came across another quote that I like about coming home in the book I mentioned previously: “It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be.” I need time at home to remember where I’ve been, so looking at photos, sharing funny trip memories with friends, hanging up any artwork I’ve purchased, etc helps me adjust to re-entering my life here, in Lake Forest Park. Now I’m just babble writing so I’ll end. It’s good to be home, it’s been wonderful to have experienced the trip that I did with the kids and Dave, and I look forward to many more travel adventures ahead.

Life lessons, Port Aventura and Sitges

Dave — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:09:00 +0000

Part of our family time together would be categorized as ‘life lessons from dad’. Dave has been engaging the kids in all kinds of topics: PDA’s, relationships, lifestyle, money, culture, etc. We have had a fun time with most of our conversations and now the kids joke about Dave and his ‘life lessons’ Feel free to ask them about it when you see them next.

On Wednesday we ventured out to Port Aventura with is Universal Studios theme park one hour plus, south of Barcelona. I went on the scariest ride ever, at least in my lifetime as to date, with Nate, it was called ‘the furious bocu’. It is this ride that launches you from zero to 135 km/hr in 3.5 seconds. Let’s just say that it was screamin’ fun. Bethany and Becca were in line after us, and after a slight technical delay due to a misfunction in the ride, they were able to enjoy the experience as well. To get to the park you take an hour plus train ride from Barcelona. We spent 12 hours playing at the park and a couple in travel. We wandered about, went on rides, did lots of walking and more rides. There were a couple of really good ‘wet slide rides’ so those helped us to get completely soaked, and cooled off. All of us went on this roller coaster called ‘the dragon kahn’ which had 8 corkscrews, and it’s the only roller-coaster that I can say I felt sick after riding (must be my age). Ah well, it was fun and later in the day Nate and I went on it again and I had a blast. The girls wandered about on their own for most of the day and tons of fun going on lots of rides. It was a fun day.

Thursday we headed via train south of Barcelona to a town called Sitges (seejus). It is a beach resort town on the mediterranean sea and it was great. We ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the beach and sea and then headed on in to the water. We rented some beach chairs and an umbrella and planted ourselves for the afternoon and early evening. We headed back to Barcelona about 8 pm and then headed or for dinner around 9:30. We found this really fun tapas restaurant called ‘Taller de Tapas’ in the Barri Gottic neighborhood of the city and we managed to eat: patates bravas, langoustines, lamb, fillet of beef, chicken kebab and a bunch of other yummy tapas. The fun thing about the culture in Spain is that you eat dinner very late. Most people aren’t out until 10pm, so we were considered early After dinner we wandered about and there are tons of people still out eating, walking and just milling about at midnight. One night the five of us were walking along, all holding hands and we decided to stretch out and Nate and I would lift our hands and tell people to duck as we walked through them – it was fun to watch people participate and they would just go right under our arms.

We took Spanair to Madrid on Friday afternoon and spent our last two nights in Madrid. The temperature was up in the low 100′s, high 90′s so it was cookin We went to the Prado museum, which was wonderfully air conditioned, took siestas in the afternoon, wandered about in the early evening and went for a late night dinner. We were up at 4 am Spain time on Sunday morning to catch our flight home: Madrid – Frankfurt-Seattle.

Home

Dave — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:20:00 +0000

The Richards fam arrived safely home today around 1:30 pm. Thanks to Lisa and Becca for picking us up at the airport We left Madrid in European time zone at 4 am this morning. Lovely start to a somewhat long travel day, but all went well. I’ve written a post about our last few days in Spain and have it saved in word so will get that over to this post soon. Just wanted to share that we are home. Becca has fallen asleep, Nate is playing on the Wii, I’m catching up on email etc and Dave just helped figure out something that was being funky with our dryer. That’s all, need to go to bed soon. I’m very sleepy.

Barcelona

Dave — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Hola. We are having a good time in Barcelona. We hung out at the beach yesterday afternoon for a few hours and enjoyed lounging about, playing in the sea, people watching and reading. It was probably the most crowded beach that we have spent time at so far on our adventure and the dirtiest, in terms of the water,but we had fun anyways. Afterward we walked back to our apartment, along past the boat harbor and the columbus monument, and along part of Las Ramblas to our home. For dinner we headed out to one of Rick Steve’s recommended restaurants, fairly close to our place. It was called, ‘La Fonda’ (yes, you can have a chuckle if you are a Napoleon Dynamite fan) and it was really good food. The restaurant opens at 8:30 pm and they don’t take reservations, so you line up and enter when you can. Because we went early, (yes 8:30 is early here for dinner) we were able to get in right away. Oh, I forgot to mention that smoking is still legal everywhere in Spain, including restaurants, which can be kind of a drag. Fortunately, La Fonda, had a no smoking option and the smokers were downstairs so the smoke didn’t travel throughout the entire restaurant. After dinner Nate and I headed back to our place and Dave and the girls went walking along Las Ramblas all the way to Placa de Catalunya. Today we walked through parts of the old town and then back across las Ramblas to an open market area called, ‘La Boqueria Market’. It was a very fun market with all kinds of fruit, vegetables, seafood, meats (including tongue, bulls testacles and lamb heads, kind of gross, oh and tripe and other intestinal organs). We had lunch at a restaurant right by the market and enjoyed olives, bread, seafood soup, prawns with garlic, cod, ice cream and watermelon. Nate loves shellfish and is really enjoying clams, mussels, prawns, and has discovered that he loves seafood soup We hung out there for a while and then came back to our place where I have just woken from an afternoon siesta Tomorrow we are heading out early to Portaventura for the day, which is a Universal studios themepark – the kids are very, very excited.

France to Spain

Dave — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:49:00 +0000

On Friday morning we headed into Nice and Nate’s comment later was, ‘ Nice (niece) is Nice ’ We drove into the city in the morning along the Boulevard des Anglais, found a parking spot in a garage, and then wandered about the old town, had lunch in an italian restaurant (the kids had a need for pizza and pasta), looked at the beaches and then headed back to our villa. It was a fun morning and we lounged about the pool for the afternoon as it was pretty toasty out. We spent our last night at the villa cooking by the barbeque, hanging around the pool, and watching the resident toad hop past us to the pond. In the morning we packed up and then began the drive from the Riviera, along the coast to the southwest corner of France. What was suppose to take 5 hours, turned into 7 plus, as it was the French holiday long weekend (bastille day is celebrated today), kind of like traveling on fourth of July. There were many ‘bouchons’ (traffic jams) and just a lot of traffic on the road. We managed to laugh alot, listen to ‘BBC Riviera radio’ and overall have not too bad a time . We arrived at Perpignan in the early evening, returned the car to Europcar and then hopped on a train to the town of Collioure. Oh, at this point there were these huge thundershowers, lightning and it was pouring down rain. When we got off the train in Collioure we had a 10 minute walk downhill to our hotel. It was pouring and I wish now that I had taken a video of us running down the bumpy roadside with puddles everywhere and us laughing as we rolled our suitcases as fast as we could down to the hotel. We passed by people in cafes and restaurants who just smiled at us and we eventually arrived, dripping, at our hotel. I fell in love with the town of Collioure The next morning dawned overcast, but not raining and Dave and I wandered through town to the bay and had coffee and croissants by the sea and read the paper. The kids slept in and we woke them later, bringing them back croissants, beignets and a baguette. The weekly market was happening right outside of our hotel so Nate and Becca picked up some cheese and munched on that with their baguette as we wandered about through the town. There are alot of artists in Collioure and we found one that we particularly liked and bought a painting We had some lunch by the sea and then walked up to the train station where we boarded the train for Spain. We had a short ride, then a stop in Portbou, waited for a bit and then hopped on the train to Barcelona. We arrived in Barcelona at the main train station last night, got on the metro to Las Ramblas, then carried our suitcases up to the street where we met up with the fellow who let us into our apartment. We have a two bedrooom apartment on Las Ramblas, with a Burger King just across the street It was about 8:30 by the time we got settled in and the the kids were kind of tuckered out and hungry so I picked them up burgers and fries and they ate in the apartment. Dinner time in Barcelona is about 10 pm, so Dave and I went out later for dinner and a date. We wandered down from our place, into the old town and found a restaurant that we went to four years ago when we were in Barcelona. It was delicious. We had a great dinner. Today we are going to wander about, go and look at some shops, wander about some more…..

Europe in Pictures

Dave — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:18:00 +0000

Here are some photo highlights so far from our trip: View Photos

Monaco and Antibes

Dave — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:49:00 +0000

Yesterday morning we woke the kids up early to head off to Monaco and Monte
Carlo. We were attempting to drive into a town called Cagnes-sur-Mer, where it was recommended we hop on a train and go into Monaco that way. Well, the 20 minute drive to the station ended up taking an hour, and then, they were doing all this construction around the train station so there was no parking at all, so we decided to drive on the A-8 into Monaco. That actually worked out fine and there was plenty of parking available in the parking lot right by the famous casino, Monte Carlo. We arrived there by 11 am (after having left the house at 9), parked, took some photos by the casino, wandered down past the harbor where all the very luxurious yachts were parked (my dad would have enjoyed wandering about here) and then followed our Rick Steve’s guidebook to a wonderful little restaurant called, ‘Huit et Demi’ and sat down to a very tasty lunch. We sat outside underneath some big white umbrellas and ate pizza, pasta and I had this very deilicious white fish called Lieu that was roasted with courgettes (zucchini) potatoes and an incredible light/creamy sauce. After lunch we wandered about in Monaco and then drove to the beach in Antibes. We’d brought beach stuff with us in the car so did a quick change and then sat ourselves down on the sand. The beach was fairly crowded, but not too bad and we had fun playing in the water, swimming about, reading and Nate and I bought a paddle ball set at a shop nearby and we all took turns playing. At about 6:30 we packed up and hopped in the car. There must have been some really bad accident, or something, on the A – 8 which was our primary route home, so we headed off of that on to some side roads and eventually arrived home quite a bit later. We laughed alot in the car while we were stuck in traffic about all kinds of things. Dave had gone out shopping in the morning so once we got home we cooked up some dinner and sat outside at the leisurely european dining time of 9:45 pm. Monaco was fun to see with the kids and they all enjoyed being at the beach in the late afternoon. The kids enjoy listening to and hearing the variety of languages being spoken around them when they are at the beach, and people watching. I ordered some really great french fries from the food stand at the beach; I’m not sure that they were all that delicious or if it was because we were munching on them, while on the beach, in France, that made them more yummy anyway, it was a good snack to have as dinner was a little later that evening. Today we are hanging out at the house and Dave and I may go in to the Renoir museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer. It’s a beautiful sunny morning with temperatures supposedly heading in to the low 80′s.