Recently in Grace Category

Grace's friends have been contributing to a fund to help others. A good discussion about what to do with it. Here were some suggestions:

• Northwest Harvest. Even a country as rich as the US has folks who don't have enough food. It's also easy to donate. Either drop it off at Cherry Street which is 711 between 7th and 8th Avenues or most UPS stores like 227 Bellevue Way NE at 2nd and Bellevue Way.
• The Treehouse this is a shelter for homeless kids. They have a store there that folks can contribute to and that you can buy things for "scrip" if you are disadvantaged. Girls seem to love the concept and contributing an afternoon there.
• Kiva. This organization lets you contribute small sums for microfinance. You can actually see where your $10 is going to and the idea is that it is really a loan so you'll get dollars back.

A Musical Journey. A great gift that Grace got for Christmas, this is a illustrated book that takes you to the various areas in China and let's you hear the music. Beautiful and the original folks songs are great.

By the way the author has some great recommendations for learning what I'd call practical Chinese. The 2-3,000 words that folks use everyday. His two recommendations are:

• Rosetta Stone Chinese. You have probably seen them in airports. It is expensive, but sure is fun to do. THey are interactive computer programs mainly. It is $195 for the first course
• Learn Chinese Now! by Transparent Language is a simpler version that is an immersion course.

Thickness of Saturn's Rings. Grace asked how much does Dad know and one question was, how big are Saturns rings, so google helped him...

The rings are very wide, about 170,000 miles across, but only about a mile thick."

TheSims2.com - Home. finally a modern game that Grace can love. This lets you basically play "dress up" on the computer. You can give clothes to a family, plan a picnic, etc. The neatest thing is that The Sims plugs into Sim City, so that they can live in a town.

As Connie says soon, you could synthesize a whole animated movie from choices like this. A great point about the future on entertainment.

Here's Grace's T-ball schedule for Montlake:

Date	Time	Opponent	Field
June 17th	5:15pm	Stingers Jorrit Van der Meulen	5
June 24th	5:15pm	South Park Carmen Martinez	6
July 1st	5:15pm	Mighty Mice John McHale	4
July 8th	5:15pm	South Park Carmen Martinez	6
July 15th	5:15pm	Cougars Sean Walsh	1
July 22nd	5:15pm	Blue Sox Dragons Richard Furman	1
July 29th	5:15pm	Bobcats Bob Fox	3
August 5th	5:15pm	Mark Doran	2

Field #1 is by the Parking Lot
Field #2-4 are by the baseball field and Tudor building
Field #5-6 are on the football field

Practices are on Thursday at 4:30 pm at Montlake (prior to the game).
Rainout decisions will be made the day of the game at 3pm.

Grace is another one of the Tong's who is far older than her chronological age. I'd guess she's about 35. Recent evidence are what she told me over the last week: * Refrigerator in the Bathroom: "Dad, the water isn't cold enough in the bathroom, when I grow up, I'm going to have a refrigerator in my bathroom to keep things cool." * Adopting a Baby Sister: "Dad, there are people who don't have parents. We should adopt a baby, she can live in my room and I'll take care of her."

Here is Grace's home page. As Connie says, she is the digital baby, so here is what is going on.,

Here are some early pictures of her.

Backpacking at the Grandparents

Back at home she's in the living room

Here is a great sequence as she looks a Daddy. She's about 8 months in these photos going down to San Diego...

Here she is with Mom!

  Hugging away

Playing with her new friend, Elana's daughter

Here she is rocking the boat!

Our newest addition, Grace came to us in June 1999.

Grace as a six month old. She has learned to sit up and she's always curious as she looks at Dad and the camera in our family room:

Grace as a newborn in the first month or so. Many folks came to visit here and the boys just think she is great...

Here is Calvin and you can see how much he loves his new baby sister...

Heather with Alex and Grace. These are rare shots of Heather. Typically she is hiding behind a door, but the kids trapped her!

Finally, Connie with Aunt Eve and Helen showing off the baby...

Here is Grace moments after birth. Seems like she didn't like the delivery too much, although Connie looks very happy

She weighed in at 8 lb 4 oz which is pretty impressive I think...

Here are famous people holding the baby the day she was born. That includes Jennie, her new Aunts Judy and Elizabeth too...

Connie bonded right away and so did Grace...