Anna's latest hobby

Anna recently moved up to "big girl" bike with training wheels. She spent some time with Dayton who very patiently helped her get used to the new bike and then felt quite comfortable on her, much bigger, new ride.

Karen's Birthday Pictures

Our new ride...

This is a Honda Fit. We pick up our hog later this week.

We've grown weary of our current gas guzzling Volvo. We love the car, but it's ten years old, and starting to become a black hole of maintenance. We probably could have avoided some of this stuff coming due all at once, but we neglected the GD OLBOY while I was in grad school. We gambled and lost on the last round of replacements and tune-ups and now we're just going to get out of the car to break even.

The Fit is surprisingly big, for a go-cart. It actually is quite comfortable, with a shockingly large trunk. The real sweetness is the gas mileage in the manual transmission model - an average of 36mpg in Consumer Reports road tests. That gives this Cheetah about a 400 mile range on a 10.5 gal. tank. In our household that translates to $30 less per fill-up, plus 50 extra miles. Cha. Ching. This is our first new car, as well, so we're pretty excited.

Anna wanted a red one, but the sensible "storm silver" in the picture won out.

Death Defying Squirrels

We have the bravest squirrels in our neighborhood. Or the craziest. We have recently seen them upside down, feeding off of our new bird feeder. It causes quite a commotion when they see us and try to run away.

Actually, we have yet to see an actual bird at this feeder. Maybe it's just a squirrel feeder. Hmmm. Gotta take that thing down.

Disneyland Trip

We just spent a week in SoCal with Karen's folks (Grammy and Grampy), uncle Dennis (Karen's brother), great aunt and uncle Dave and Patty (thanks for housing us!), and first cousins once removed Tyler and Ashley. Very Fun.

After a few days at the beaches (Newport, Laguna and Huntington), we did two days at Disneyland. It was my first time at Disneyland, being a Disney World kid growing up. Lot's of relaxing fun for everyone!

Our New Hog

Here's a picture of our new tandem bike and trailer combo. We have enjoyed two excursions so far: one to a dance performance in Oak Park, and one to the Oak Park Farmer's Market. The bike is a low-end tandem cruiser, but I've used my bike shop experience to get it running pretty well. Anna loves riding in her trailer and brings books along to read. It's a good life.

The Reason for the Silence

Ok, so I know the Castleman's blog has been pretty quiet, save the two great videos that Dayton recently posted. I thought I'd offer this explanation in the two minutes before we take off for California and Disneyland!!!!

Dayton has been finishing up grad school (which he graduated from on Sat., May 17th!!) and applying for a great job (which he got!!!!) as a sculpture teacher at Trinity Christian College just south of Chicago. (No moving involved!)

I have been in the process of auditioning for and waiting for feedback from my all time favorite dance company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Just two weeks ago the director told me that he wants to have me in the company!!!! Only downside is that they don't have an opening right now. He speculated that they may be able to take me on by the end of November which is great and gives us some time to figure out what needs to happen to move ourselves into these new working situations.

Anna is still her sweet, happy, wonderful self and is looking forward to meeting Mickey and all the Princesses so we've gotta run!!!!