my wish list

here is what i want for Christmas this year:

1. Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles set (3 books)

Trick or treat

I was a caveman this year, Halloween was awsome! We got so much
candy. It was fun!

My 2 day swim meet

Today and yesterday I compete in the Joliet Jets Ghostly Gathering
swim meet. I swam 100 Free, 50 Fly, 50 back, 50 breast, and two relays.

"Up": book sharing project

house floats in the sky
Paradise Falls here we come
adventure awaits


(The book I chose for my book sharing project was "Up," a novel version of the movie.)

ice cream

My mom took us all to Scooter's after school today. I had the Smores
flavor. It was very good.

swimming rocks

I'm getting better and better at diving off the block:

and my favorite stroke is the butterfly:

slide!

Finny likes to slide! First he likes to go up the stairs and then down the slide. He is finally old enough to get on the slide by himself and slide down without falling. He also likes to swing on the baby swings at the park.

getting better

Today I had my regular swim practice and afterward my coach said that she wants me to try swimming with the higher-level team. That's really good news because it means that I have gotten better at swimming in the first 2 weeks of practices. :-)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Over the summer I have read the first three books of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series: "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," "Rodrick Rules," and "The Last Straw." I also have the "Wimpy Kid: Do-It-Yourself Book," where you can fill in all kids of stuff about yourself. My brother Jake filled in some pages. The 5th book of the series, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" will come out on October 25th and I hope to get it. The series is about the life of a middle-school kid, Greg, who keeps a diary about stuff that happens to him during the school year. He has an older brother, Rodrick, and a younger brother, Manny, and they all have funny things happen to them in school and at home.

swim practice

Today I had swimming like I always do on Wednesdays and Fridays at 4:00 p.m. and on Saturdays at 7:45 a.m. We have practiced two swimming strokes so far, Freestyle and Backstroke. I think that I am the best out of all six of the swimmers on the Pack Prep team.

My Munny

Today my mom entered me into a contest where you enter your munny design to KidRobot to see if you win. If I were to win I would got an 18 inch munny for free! Here are the pictures of my munny:

first day of school!!

Today was my first day of school! I am now in fourth grade. It is a Tuesday so I got out of school at 2:30.

new skate park

This weekend we went on an adventure and we found a new skatepark. It is in Northbrook and it has become our favorite park ever. At the park there is also a batting cage, 2 baseball fields, a golfing range, and a lacrosse field. We will be going there again in the afternoon, there's a lacrosse tournament my dad wants to see and we get to do more skating! :-) We have lots of pictures, like always:

• playing lacrosse
• at the skate park

4th grade playdate

Today I went to North Ave. beach for my 4th grade playdate. It was fun, I got to see a lot of my friends. My favorite part was digging a big hole with my friends and playing in the water with Griff's Skim Board.

After the beach I had my first swim practice at the UIC. We had a couple swim races and I won two of them. My next practice is on Wednesday.

another trip to Scooter's

We had an awesome afternoon today - first we went to Scooter's for custard and then we stopped by Rotofugi, a cool designer toy shop. Scooter's flavor of the day was cake batter and I LOVE cake batter - I had a large size of custard with Reeses and Heath. It was delicious! :-) Rotofugi is awesome, just like Kidrobot but even cooler.

swim team

I made the swim team at the CWAC (Chicago Wolfpack Aquatic Club)! :-) I'm very exited. I have team orientation on Thursday, 9/3, in the evening. My team is called Pack Prep. My mom said she will buy me a new swimsuit.

Oriental Institute

Today we walked all the way down to the UofC campus with our neighbors/ best friends to see the Oriental Institute and its mummies. We've been there many times before when we were little, but not recently. It was a fun afternoon and I saw lots of cool Egyptian exhibits.

biking with Finny

I can ride my mom's bike with the baby seat with Finn. It's a little harder because there is extra weight and the seat takes up a lot of room in the front. But I like it! :-)

swimming tryouts

We just got back from my swimming tryouts at the UIC P.E. building. I was the first one to start the tryouts, I swam Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, and Butterfly. I also had to dive in the pool head first. I find out the results on saturday. I would like to make the swim team, it would be fun.

Cirque Shanghai

Today I went to the circus with Aidan. It was at Navy Pier and it was called Cirque Shanghai. It wasn't like a regular circus - with animals and clowns and stuff - but instead there were a lot of acrobats. Here is a picture of one of the cool things they did. I liked the performance a lot. Thanks to Aidan for taking me!

bikeride to Buckingham Fountain

We went on another long bike ride - we ended up at Buckingham Fountain this time.

stung!

I just got stung by a yellow jacket - on the knuckle of my right middle finger. I was looking for a ball inside a bush and there was a yellow jacket on one of the branches. I reached my hand inside the bush and it got on my hand and stung me. Now I have an ice pack on my hand and I took some Benadryl, just in case I may be allergic. It stings and hurts a lot.

munnys

I collect these soft vinyl designer toys called MUNNY and DUNNY. I buy them from my favorite store - Kidrobot in New York City. The MUNNYs I get are the do-it-yourself kind, which means they are white and you get to decorate them however you like. I have done one already and I am now working on my second one. The DUNNYs I have are smaller and they are already decorated in different wacky and weird designs by famous artists. Here are some MUNNYs I found online that other people made and I really like:

dunnys

I collect DUNNYs. Here is my collection:

long bike ride

This afternoon we went on a bike ride. We only planned on going to our beach but instead we just kept biking. We biked all the way downtown, to Millennium Park to visit our favorite sculpture - the Bean. After we got there, it started to sprinkle a little, so we only spent a little time there and then headed back. It is about 8 miles from downtown to our house on the lake shore bike path, so we had a long way home. And the rain got worse and worse. We kept biking but then there was a lot of lightning and we had to stop. We stopped at the 39th street beach house, hid from the rain under their roof, with the lifeguards. We saw lightning hit the pier - it was very bright and very loud! Then my dad rescued us in the car. It was fun biking in the rain! Our photos on flickr.

Friday in the City

My mom took me and Jake to New York City for the day. We had a lot of fun. We went to my favorite store - KIDROBOT, in SoHo - and we went to the Empire State Building. We had lunch in Little Italy and lots of sweet treats all over the City. We discovered the best ice cream in the world - Spoon City, on 5th Avenue and 33rd Street. It is frozen custard and you can get flavors and mix-ins and it is delicious. This is a picture of another treat we had that day - Pinkberry. I had the coconut flavor frozen yogurt with white and milk chocolate shavings. We got home very late - it was a great day!

road trip to NY

We took a road trip to New York, to visit my grandparents. We drove through 4 states to get there: Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. It was a long drive, but we stopped a lot along the way and we also slept in a hotel overnight. The hotel had a nice pool and I got to swim in the morning. That was fun. In Pennsylvania we were stuck in traffic in the middle of the road and there were no exits for many miles. We were stuck for almost 2 hours in one spot! And then there was a tornado warning and my dad drove very fast to escape the storm. We made it, we left the tornado behind.

two dead fish

Yesterday Bob and Boomer died. Sad. They only lived for less than 2 weeks. Too bad.

our rocky beach

We live really close to the lake, like 4 blocks away. So we go to the beach very often in the summer. We have a favorite beach - it has lots of rocks, so we call it the Rocky Beach. I like it there because I like to build tall rock castles out of large stones. And we sometimes snorkel and swim. See photos on flickr.

Monopoly

Today I had four friends over and we played some board games. I have Monopoly World edition and we had fun playing that all together. It's always more fun with more players.

Race to Witch Mountain

I watched a cool movie - "The Race to Witch Mountain." My favorite part was when the kids were captured by the government agents inside the Witch Mountain. It was a good movie, with lots of action.

The Last Invisible Boy

I just finished a good book - "The Last Invisible Boy," by Evan Kuhlman. It's about a boy named Finn Garrett who is becoming invisible and he has to deal with a lot of issues, like his dad dying.

Hyde Park Infernos

After the regular baseball season, I joined a travel league. My team was called the Hyde Park Infernos and we won our series against the West Side. It was fun playing in different parks and driving to games.

drawing with chalk

We do a lot of chalk drawing in front of our house in the summer. More photos on flickr.

Washington Park pool

I like it when we go to the pool. It is very cool because it has a huge water slide!

the 39 clues

This summer I started reading the 39 Clues (books 1-3). They are called: "The Maze of Bones" by Rick Riordan, "One False Note" by Peter Lerangris, and "The Sword Thief" by Gordon Korman. They are about

two teenage kids, brother and sister Amy and Dan Cahill whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a scavenger hunt for the family. Amy and Dan go on a treasure hunt to find clues to the ultimate treasure - the winning team will become the most powerful, influential people on the planet. I really like this series.

There is a lot of mystery and action and cool characters.

The 39 Clues also has a website where you can become a member and play games and find more clues for the scavenger hunt. It kind of makes you a part of the story. When you register it asks you a bunch of questions and it determines which branch of the Cahill family you belong to. I am in the Ekaterina clan, my brother Jake is a Lucien, and my mom is a Janus.

we got fish!

Today we got FOUR goldfish. We named them Bob (he is my dad's), Boomer (mine), Larry (Jake's), and Skittles (Finn's). I wonder how long they'll live... We had a large goldfish a couple of years ago who lived 3 years.

47th street mosaic

One morning I went for a walk with my mom to see some artists work on a mosaic under an overpass in our neighborhood. After we looked at it my mom asked an artist if we could come back later and put on some tiles, and he said that we could! So today we came back here with our best friends (they are also our neighbors) so we could put down some tiles. At first we were afraid to ask an artist if we could, so insted my mom asked. The artist said yes, got us the supplies, and we got started. I was working on a red turtle, with my friend Dominic. We worked for over 2 hours and put on many tiles. It was a lot of fun. And the artists said that they will put our names on a plaque that they will put up when they're done.

we won!

I play baseball on the Hyde Park Kenwood Legends League. I've been playing since I was 6. This year I was on the REDS team, with Jake. It was my first year on the Minors. We won the championship! :-) We beat the White Sox and it was a close game. I added another TALL trophy to my collection!

my rock tower

Today I made an awesome rock tower out of these big rocks at the lake. I really like our rocky beach, it's always a lot of fun.