Beswick Wins Blue Ribbon

MJ ( alias Aunt Josie) won a Blue Ribbon at the Rappahannock Art League Annual Labor Day Exhibit with her latest non-objective painting (Left) entitled "Cocktail Time". There were 174 entrants in this popular exhibit which was judged by Stephen Griffin, Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Ten ribbons in all were awarded.

MJ will be teaching a four day workshop this week at the RAL Academy entitled "Free your Imagination, Caution: Inner Child at Play" The first two images (above) are examples of small works (6 x6") made from one exercise she has developed for this workshop.

A visit to Roden Crater

Approach to Roden Crater, somewhere outside Flagstaff...........

Inside the Crater's telescope designed to project astrolical events

Crater Sky Space

I'm the dot to the right in a meditative state of heightend visual perception....................

Can you tell? :)

Sky vaulting from the crater's eye......

Traversing the edge.

Hello All!

My sister has been using her subtle, yet powerful, means of persuasion to get me to add to the blog. Uncle Karl's mastery at uploading images was the final insentive. I have to say its taken many attempts to get them in the proper order...........

Often accused (and guilty) of not documenting my adventures.........I'm sharing my visit to Roden Crater this past July. It's the master work of the artist James Turrell. After 25 years, it's unfinished, and not open to the public. It's the hot ticket in the art world- so it was really an unexpected surprise to get an invitation! The artist will be having two of his pieces installed on the roof terrace of the museum I'm currently working on.

Here are 2 links if anyone is interested in learning more about the Crater.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/highlights/001102_turrell.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/arts/design/25fink.html

Enjoy seeing and hearing what everyone is up to! (Great job Aunt Josie!) Hope all are well!

love,

Sandra

The Weiler Family Mystery Trip to NYC

Here are some pics of the trip that our kids treated us to.

Ann in Raleigh

Success re the pics

The Young Man and the Sea

Zach Railey has won the Silver medal in the Finn class at the Olympics. Max Weiler has completed his first sailing camp in an Optimist dingy. When asked about his Olympic experience, Zach said "Absolutely Amazing". When asked about sailing camp, Max said "uh...I guess it was OK".

There you have it folks, the enthusiasm and intensity of a future Olympic medalist!

Tahoe Sailing

Well, we uploaded the pictures for the Tahoe Sailing but there was not a place to comment. Oh well, maybe this will link with the pictures? We had a great time sailing (Sher's first time!) with another couple from Genoa. We had won the sail in a Genoa get together in April. It was a picture perfect day and lunch was provided by our captain, Randy. Chris, you will have to get the sailing cousins together to sail up in Tahoe. It is so beautiful!

Uncle Dick and Sher

Tahoe sailing

Oh, Canada!

Max's first fish! our humble abode..

A nice quite moment... one of the few!

(Annie on the left, George on the right)

OK Karen, if there is one thing my upbringing has taught me…it’s to respond to guilt.
So, a quick update on our summer activities. In addition to all types of camps, one of the major events this summer was camping at Lake Opinicon in Ontario Canada with our good friends the Zahms. So let me try to paint a picture for you…six kids, five adults all nestled (read: crammed) in a 500sqft cabin. Rain, black flies the size of my fist, late (really late) bed times and early (very early) mornings were the norm for the week. The Four Season’s be dammed…how I love camping!
All kidding aside, we had a super time. The lake was pristine, teeming with fish, and all other types of flora and fauna. One of our favorite sounds was the loons calling during the night…just fantastic. Being away from the television, and spending time bonding as a family and with our friends was a real treat.

Now, next week Jen and the kids are headed to Rochester to visit with her family and Max will attend a week long sailing camp at the Rochester Yacht Club. I have my fingers crosses that Max will take to sailing and sail boat racing! Jen’s father is all ready to purchase an Optimist dingy for him so one day he can bring the America’s cup back to the US!

Soccer Dreams

Okay - more Olivero news - er bragging - trying to guilt some of the rest of my cousins to chime in and start adding to this blog :)
It's Olympics Week - which in our house will kick off early Wed am when we watch the US Women take on their old nemesis Norway. For those of you not yet following womens soccer, we can help you get started by keeping it right here in the family ... last week Caroline's team - MVLA Lightning - won the prestigious Nike Surf Cup soccer tournament in San Diego -- in many regards placing them among the top under-13 girls soccer teams in the nation. Their age group drew state cup champs and top teams from Washington, Southern Cal, Northern Cal, Vancouver, Hawaii, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Japan. By one soccer ranking system the win was big enough to move them from 17th in the nation to #2! Caroline and her teammates played their hearts out against girls much larger and more physical - but their skill, speed and finesse won out in the end. And they went home with a huge trophy and coveted "champions" Nike jackets.
Not to rest on her laurels though, Caroline came home to compelete her ODP (olympic development program) tryout Friday night. (It's a process that started in May with more than 100 of the top players in our area competing for one of 20 spots) In the end, she made the final cut and will spend her fall on our district ODP team competing against similar "all-star" teams from Northern California to earn individual spots on the state team, and so on and so on (it becomes an 18 month series of tryouts if you keep progressing to the regional or national levels each year) Caroline's keeping it all in perspective though -- this was the first year she was eligible to tryout -- and she's reached the goal she'd set for herself to make it this far. Pretty cool. (Now she's directing her attention to starting junior high - stay tuned)
In other soccer news, the kids got to meet several major league soccer players from our local San Jose Earthquakes -- including star Goalie Joe Cannon - who grew up playing for the same MVLA league they play in now. Xander attended his first sleepaway camp at the University of Santa Clara's mens soccer program last month -- and this week is following his heart by attending a goalie day camp. He's still a munchkin inside the huge full-size soccer goal he needs to defend -- but what he lacks in size he makes up for in agility and heart :)
I guess we've become pretty soccer obsessed out here. Enough about us ... We're all anxious to here what's new with the rest of the cousins and second cousins!

Oliveros complete "The Grand Tour"

Lots of Olivero news to catch up on ... we'll start with the Chevy Chase style road trip we took a few weeks ago. Yes, we chose the summer gas was almost $5/gallon to spend 10 days driving almost 2000 miles for our summer vacation --- but it was totally worth it! We packed the family truckster (aka Mom's red minivan) to the gils ... plugged in the GPS, the ipods, the DVD player (gone are the days of lying in the back of a station wagon playing the license plate game - of course, for the most part so is the endless whining and poking I recall as a kid!) ... and set off for our first stop, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Awesome. Hard to begin to describe the scale, the awe, the utter beauty. We met up with friends (a brave pal wrangled five families with kids from 4-12 to do this "grand tour" adventure together) We enjoyed a wonderful 3 days of hiking ... the highlight a half-day mule ride that took us about half way down the canyon. Steep, narrow trail on a beast of burden - but the views and landscape/geological changes as you staggered down were phenomenal.
Next stop was Zion National Park in Utah. Again, amazing landscapes - beautiful sheared rock formations. We spent one day hiking several miles through a river in "the Narrows" between massive canyon walls -- the kids loved sinking in the mud, floating through current, and navigating there way through the slippery rocks ... but hind sight being what it is, we were most thankful for getting out an hour before a flash flood hit!
Final stop of the "grand tour" was Bryce National Park in Escalante, UT ... here the Hoodoos cast their spell on us. A much smaller park, we were able to hike all the way down and through the canyon of amazing rock formations that have eroded over thousands (millions?) of years to form fascinating pink and orange pillars the Paiute Indians thought were evil "legend people" the Coyote had turned to stone. Here too we did a bunch of hiking and took a half-day mule ride to get to a few of the more remote areas. Another highlight though was the astronomy - Bryce is one of the darkest places on earth - a great opportunity to join the park rangers for some late night observation of the craters on the moon, the rings of Saturn and the red spot and moons of Jupiter. Super cool!
Marty took almost 1000 pictures (no joke) - we're working on building into a magnifcent video and book we can share. If any of you haven't had the chance to visit these national parks - we wholeheartedly recommend a trip. (especially once the young ones are about 7) Xander says it was as cool as Australia last year!

Incredible Fish Story

We have finally cracked the code on fishing in the Chesapeake. Went out this morning around 6:00am, came back 2 hours later with about 30 fish - striped bass, croakers & spot. It was unbelievable!!! MJ & I were just floating around with our poles in the water, when suddenly it happened.

An old fisherman (as in his 80's) came by, and asked if we had caught anything. We replied, "Not even a nibble." Then he said, "I'll give you some of my catch." Not being completely stupid, we said, "Absolutely". He bent down in his boat & proceeded to pass over a 5 gallon pail filled to the top with fish. In less than 2 minutes, we had a catch of 30 fish. Now that's the way to go fishing!