Diving Results

Elsa and Nora haven't started school yet, but that doesn't mean there haven't been dive meets already.  Brookfield East hosted Whitefish Bay for a swim/dive meet on Thursday for Elsa's first meet.  She went up against two teammates and one diver from Whitefish Bay.  She placed last, but got a good taste of competition. 

This morning Wauwatosa West hosted an early dive tournament.  Diving has two classes of dive events: the 6 dive event and an 11 dive event.  At this invite to be officially scored you had to have 11 dives, but Elsa and two other girls competed as exhibition with their 6 dives.  Elsa scored 2nd out of the 3 exhibition divers and beat her total score from the Thursday meet.  Her best dive is posted below:

She was very happy to have finally scored a 6 with that dive. 

Nice work Elsa!

Elsa's a diver

Since this spot on the internet still exists we should probably fill it. 

Elsa has been going to dive camp for the summer in preparation for the Brookfield East Dive team.  They held a mock dive meet at the end of camp this week and we've got some footage of it.  Here are her dives, the names of which I can't remember without looking them up, but enjoy anyways.

Farmhouse circa 1920's

Today we had some very unique visitors at the farmhouse. Four siblings (in their 60's) and their families stopped by and wanted to look around. Their grandmother grew up on the farm and their great grandfather built it. We talked with them a bit and showed them around and then they showed us a box of pictures they had from the 20's and 30's of the property. Melissa was able to add to their collection a bit when she gave them a card (addressed to their relatives) we found when we were renovating. Just a really awesome meeting and got some great history too.

Door County Triathlon

I figured this weekend would be a good reason to dust off the old blog and see if it still works.  If you can read this then it must be working so that's good.  I'll start off by posting the link to Jenna's photos in case you'd like to download them yourself.

https://www.focalflamestore.com/search/?n=focalflame&scope=node&scopeValue=VkBVMk&c=photos&q=114

And then of course a few more photos from the past week at the farmhouse:

Busy weekend

There was a lot of celebrating this weekend at our house.  Nora's dance team placed 1st in the hip hop category at a Nationals competition in Chicago. Their routines in lyrical, jazz and poms got them a 2nd place and two 3rd places. By far their best finish of the year.

Elsa and Jenna also had a gymnastics meet Sunday. Both Elsa and Jenna got their trampoline routines down nicely. It was a small meet so they didn't have any other girls to compete against in their age and level though. They both are trying hard to get ready for the state meet in a few weeks.

Because of the two events in different cities I only got pictures of Nora's jazz and lyrical dances.  So if you'd like to see the winning hip hop routine you'll have to ask Nora in person.

Picture Updates

We've got a few photos to get everyone caught up. 

There was Christmas of course...

Frank the bunny, the newest addition...

Feeding the birds at Peninsula State Park in Door County

Skiing and snowboarding at Sunburst Ski Hill...

And just today Jenna and Nora got to try rock climbing.  Elsa was out with a friend from gymnastics, but I've assured her that she'll get a chance as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving might be skipping a few things since our last post so....Happy Gregory Palooza, first day of school, Labor Day, Pumpkin fest, Halloween and end of the Farmhouse season.

This is pretty much just going to be a photo dump since I haven't looked at my camera in awhile, and things really escalated quickly there.  On top of the aforementioned events, we had a guest photographer come in and take some photos for the site.  Elsa Gregory wanted to expand her portfolio a bit and was kind enough to shoot some pics for free.  If you are interested in more of her prints they are available by contacting our sales department.

We'd like to put a big Nice Job! out there for Nora at her recent dance competition as well.  Her team placed 2nd in their Jazz routine at the Milwaukee Arena a few weeks back.  And now that she has contacts she will no longer need to hold back on her dance moves for fear that she launches a pair of glasses into the crowd and injures some spectators.  

And finally, now that Nora also has contacts they decided to see how close they could look for George and Amy who stopped by this week....

vote on the sidebar (top right) to see if you can tell them apart.

Projects update

So....all we've done lately is work on the Brookfield home and a few things up north.  Unfortunately that's all we have to talk about around here.  We're boring, I get it.  But, the basement rec room is finished, the well for the egress window is dug, the pole barn is cleaned up and the landscaping outside is almost finished.  We were trying to bring neighborhood values down for awhile around here, but then I decided to move the three piles of dirt along the property.  We turned the dirt piles into a berm, re-graded our back/side yard, and filled in along the new parking pad.  Once the grass takes hold we'll look like non-dirtbags again.

Here's the basement finished up,

and the bookcase/ping pong storage.

The pole barn all cleaned up, well mostly...

The new parking pad backfilled,

 the berm along Fieldstone Ct,

the backyard without Hydrangea roots all over

and the kid who logged four hours in the skid steer.

Also it was determined that Big Ugly really does know how to get things done, despite having a bad clutch for a bit.  With that little fix behind us it was time to put it to work.