...and MORE pictures...

Molly Baker had a tough time of it. She fell hard on her recently-damaged arm, and sat out for a while. She tuffed it out though and came back for a couple more falls on the ice.

Polar Ice has a play area, too, and Cate & Trevor got in a game or two.

Nice smile, Trevor!!! Smile like ya mean it!!! Thanks for the picture, Uncle Mike.

...and more pictures...

Caroline (Belle of the Ball) Ozer had a very nice time, never straying too far from the wall (I think she was just trying to stay near the small children that had never skated before so that she could help them if necessary).

Mike Haggerty was ever-present, watching over the proceedings to make sure that nobody got out of hand. No fights erupted on the ice the whole time Mike was there.

Blake Norton is probably going to be a pro hockey player. Not necessarily because he is a good skater, but because Blake is a very popular hockey name.

I am not sure, but I think Trevor Norton is asking us to look at his skates. Or maybe he is pointing down, as if to say, "I am going down".

...more pictures...

The Norton's (that made it down to the skate party)

Maggie pretty much dragged Cate around the whole time (in spite of Cate saying how fast she was going).

Judy and Meghan Baker performing a duet.

Sara wasn't holding on to the wall the WHOLE time.

Skate Day - More Pictures (4 at a time)

Michael "Gretzky" Norton tears up the ice.

Maggie and Sara hamming it up for the camera.

A couple of Bakers... Judy and McKenna.

Brett Norton about to get checked by Uncle Bruce. Again.

Favorite Picture of the Day

We did a skate day at Polar Ice with pretty much every Haggerty (Maggie's side of the family). This is MY favorite picture from the day. There 140 other pictures, but this one is MY favorite. And since I am the one that does the posting, I get to be selfish now and then. Photo credit: Maggie Penman

I will post a lot more pictures tomorrow or the next day, I am sure.

It was a lot of fun. Cate had her first skate experience, and she did about as expected. Maggie would carry Cate along the ice and Cate would say (over and over and over), "Look at me! I'm going fast!" She really liked it a lot. I am afraid that she will want to take ice skating lessons when she is a little older. (cash register sound)

For myself... I am getting older. I could still skate, but of course not like I used to, and when I first stepped on the ice I felt like I had NEVER skated before. It took a while to get my legs. Oh well... aging is inevitable.

Thank God for the children, without them there would be no reason to grow old.

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

I hope I got a little bit of everyone in this collage! My first attempt left out Jennifer and Cate. That's the version I emailed to EVERYONE. This one is only available on Blogger. I think I got everyone...

It's a shame the internet doesn't have a "scratch n' sniff" capability. Pictures just don't give this meal justice.

Halloween 2008

Sara, Cate and Caroline - Before the Trick-or-Treat

Awww... Grammy gives Cate a little good luck kiss before she starts to get ready for the trick-or-treating.

Jennifer looks very spooky in her dress. Those circle things are probably evil Halloween sorceress symbols!!!

Mom, Cate and Dad. SO MUCH FUN!!! WOO HOO!!!

Pumpkin Patch 2008

Jennifer treated everyone to a nice morning at the Pumpkin Patch near her home. Cate found a cute little pumpkin with warts all over it. The kid's got taste, what can I tell ya?

Winter Color

Maggie and Cate put in the winter color this past weekend.
As with everything, Cate had to get her hands dirty. Literally.

Cate Takes Time for Herself

Reminds me of my dad... It's even a book about golf!

The P-O Garden, Day One

We have a NEW PROJECT!

We have a small garden on the east side of our house. It measures 5' x 20'. Today we decided to ACT! We are doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint. I am not sure how this reduces it, but they say it reduces it. We made 3 trips to the store, rented a gas-powered tiller, added a bunch of chemicals to the groundwater and bought a big plastic wheelbarrow thing. By my calculation, we will need to produce enough vegetables to feed 1/3 of Phoenix for six months to offset the imprint we left preparing this garden.

And we still have to successfully grow edible plants.

Here is Maggie doing her part. Manual labor! She really (seriously, really) worked HARD all day. We had to remove about 2 metric tons of rocks from this little plot of land. Maggie had the hard part. She had to dig through the dirt and pick out the rocks. The girls helped at first... But then Cate needed babysitting or something, and that was over. But they did help. Really.

And here I am, doing MY part. I believe this is the part where we get a little behind in the carbon footprint calculations. I ran this thing for about two hours. You see, I had to did way down to get the rocks that Maggie and girls had to pick out of the dirt. It looks easy, but let me tell you... it was a lot of fun!!!

This is what it looked like before the final tilling. We used the tiller to mix all of this together. We added about 25 c.f. of soil amendment, plus some chemicals to counter the HIGHLY acidic soils we have in Arizona. The soil itself has a lot of clay in it, so the amendment is primarily for drainage purposes.

We look forward to showing you pictures of green things in about a month. We can't plant for a week.

We are taking orders for carrots, lettuce(s), turnips (Maggie says so), and other things I haven't been told about yet.

One 70.3 Ironman down...

This is a quick post to let everyone on the Penman list know that Maggie completed her very first 70.3 Ironman in flying colors. She made it look easy, as she usually does. At every point in the race where we could see her (the start, after the swim, in the middle of the bike portion, and at the very end of her race), she looked absolutely relaxed. She looked like she was just out for a fun-run.

Her time was right where she wanted it to be (a few minutes over 6 hours). The run course was a lot hillier than she expected, so that made it more challenging, but it only slowed her down a little - She still posted a great time!!!

I'll have pictures and more details on the next post (probably tomorrow or maybe after we get home).

We are staying up here until Tuesday morning. It's SOOOO great to get out of the heat! We couldn't... I mean, Maggie couldn't have picked a better place to compete in her first Ironman!!!