Tag Archives: Features

1st Annual Wykleville Book

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In an effort to continue documenting the life and times of the Wykles, I decided to take a stab at producing my own “blog book”. I wanted to take some of the more important post from the Wykleville site and document them in a book form. I also wanted this to be a surprise for the Shelley as a Christmas gift. After seeing some very neat samples online, I went and researched the different companies that provide book production. I settled on using Blurb after reading many positive reviews and a one week turn around. Blurb has their own free software that is required in order to upload the book. It also has simple production tools  and upload the book. I found the software a bit limiting and not allowing me to achieve the effects that I was after. So I expanded my search and found FotoFusion. It is a nice piece of software that met my needs. After a free trial, I found that it was quite powerful and easy to use. It allows you to easily crop, rotate, and re-size the photos. It also has many different photo frames allowing you to create different looks for each of the pictures that you drop in. Finally, the front and back cover was created with a Microsoft Autocollege product that takes a folder and creates a nice college of pictures. 

I created each page in FotoFusion and then drop them into the Blurb software in order to upload the finished product. 

You can check out the finished product here.

Legacy Gymnastics Winter Spectacular

This past Sunday (12/07/08) was the first competetive meet attended by the Level 3 team from 5-Star Gymnastics this season. The meet was held in Lexington, KY at the Legacy Gymnastic facility. Given the early start time for the level 3 team of 7:45, we needed to drive down on Saturday night and stay in a hotel close to the location. The girls had a great first showing and had a chance to see other teams in action.

Here is the scores of the 7 year old age group. 

You can find videos of each of Natalie’s events: Vault, Bars, Balance beam, and Floor exercise.

I took a few still shots, but it is clear that my point and shoot Canon is not going be the best tool for distance action shots. Will have to look into how to address this in the future. 

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Thanksgiving…A Time for Family.

This year was out of the norm for our family. Instead of heading to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia, the Wykles decided to hang out closer to home. Forty-five minutes away to be precise. For those who don’t know, we have quite a few relatives from my side (Kellison/Blankenship) in vicinity of NKY. My grandmother Pearl and Aunt Lisa live in Middletown, Ohio. My other Aunt Angie lives in West Chester, Ohio.

The plan was initially hatched far to the north (Ottawa, ON) by my uncle Ron. In a moment of sentimental weakness, he wanted to get all of his siblings (and families) together to break bread in West Chester Ohio. Ron and his wife Sue arrived on Monday (after a lengthy drive ~ 12 hours) and had plenty of time to help out with some routine maintenance around Pearl’s house. My mother Kelly and brother Corey (with fiance Jodi) arrived on Wednesday afternoon after driving up from West Virginia. The stayed with us in Burlington. 

Angie and her husband Mark decided to host the festivities at their house.  The potluck dinner commenced around 4:00 PM and was well attended with more than enough food and drink to satisfy everyone. 

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Level 3 – Gymnastics Mock Meet

This past weekend (11/22/08) was the first public display of all the sweat and hard work expended by the Level 3 team from 5-Star Gymnastics. They had their first “mock meet” at the 5-Star facility in order to give the girls a chance to perform in front of a crowd. Parents and family friends attended to cheer on the Level 3 and Level 4 teams in preparation of the upcoming competitions. 

I will have videos of each of Natalie’s routines posted separately. You can find each here: Vault, Bars, Balance beam, and Floor exercise.

Cardinal of the Month

Natalie was bestowed with an award called the Cardinal of the Month (November) at the PTA meeting on Tuesday night. This award is given to students that exhibit the following:

Being happy in your work helping others, keeping school clean, being polite, obeying school rules, doing work on time, having school spirit, being a good citizen and having respect for fellow students and adults. 

This award is given to one student from each class every month. She was quite anxious waiting to go up to the stage to received the award. So much so, that she quickly hustled past Principal Breitholle after getting her medal…I didn’t even get a shot of her getting the medal.

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Halloween

This year was much like any other. The kids both decided well in advance (with Shelley’s guidance) what they were going to be for Halloween. Of course Eli is still in the “Star Wars” state of mind. For the second year in a row, he went adorned as one of his favorite characters from the Phantom Menace…Anakin Skywalker. Natalie, on the other hand, chose to deviate from the initial design intent of the “evil princess” theme. She was not at all interested in wearing the make-up necessary to pull off the “evil” look. The negociations ensued and she decide to go with a “beautiful princess” instead. 

The day started off at Little Red School House with Eli’s annual Halloween party. Since Friday is an off day for me, I was able to attend the craziness that is many 4/5 year olds running amok dressed as their favorite fictional character. Now add chocolate, sugar, and a Capri Sun = a realization that the ladies at LRSH should be given Saint status. I would never (I repeat NEVER) be able to perform as an educator for small children. As you can see by the attached pictures, everyone did have fun. More photos can be found here.

Natalie also had a party to celebrate the Halloween season that was held in Mrs. Owen’s 2nd grade class room at Goodridge Elementary. She did not have a typical dress-up event. They instead went for the more craft oriented activities combined with snacks and sweets. Her afternoon was capped off by a surprise drop in visit from Nagi and Mom. 

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2008 Fireworks

This post is definitely a little late in coming but busy times are upon us.

The WEBN fireworks is an annual event hosted in Cincinnati every Labor Day weekend. The evening was capped off by a 30-40 minute fireworks display launched from barges stationed on the Ohio River. I can say that this is an annual event a that finds the Wykles making the trip to NCC to enjoy the show. The kids really enjoy the ability to stay up way past their bed time

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WOW! 2nd Grade?

Here we are again…school is in session for the 2008 school year. Natalie has just completed her first full week in Ms. Owen’s second grade class at Goodridge Elementary. Needless to say she was very excited to get back to school and hang with many of the same students that she befriended in Ms. Clark’s first grade class. Natalie already has taken to her new teacher Ms. Owen and is look forward to learning science (a new class) and continuing her reading skills development.

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Fun For All in Punta Cana

All I can say – “Who is up for the same thing next year?”

Shelley and I just returned from a 7 day all inclusive (adults only) trip to The Grand Palladium Punta Cana Resort and Spa in the Dominican Republic. Under the auspice of our 10th wedding anniversary, Shelley and I decided to treat ourselves to some rest, relaxation, and of course libations!

Back in May we started talking about what we should do this year considering it was our 10th year married (13 years together). Last year for our 9th we had a great time in Chicago over a long weekend. We decided that we needed to step it up a notch. A cruise? Europe? Nope…Punta Cana it will be! We also concluded that it would definitely be more fun if we could get some other couples to join in on the excursion. We floated the idea to a number of friends and two other couples were up for the sun and fun. The Robertson’s (Tina and John) and the Noltings (Andy and Stacy) were both quick to agree to joining in on the adult vacation coup.

This was our first trip to Punta Cana and it came highly recommended by Stacy and Andy that had visited twice previously. The trip we picked was a full inclusive package (flight, hotel, food and adult beverages included) purchased through Apple Vacations – departing from Cincinnati with a direct flight to Punta Cana. It ran July 26th through August 2nd. The picture shown here was our first picture as we set foot into the Punta Cana airport. Look how nice everyone looked. :)

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Property – The resort was quite large once we got a chance to explore the whole property. It was made up of three different hotels – Grand Palladium Palace, Grand Palladium Punta Cana, and Grand Palladium Bavaro. All restaurants, shops, pools, and amenities where shared and included in the package. You had your pick of 4 pools, 10 bars, and 9 restaurants within the walls of this resort. Here is a picture of some of the grounds as we walked around. The grounds were nicely kept and included tremendous amounts of tropical vegetation.

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Rooms –  The rooms in the Punta Cana were nice and clean and included all of the needed essentials. Our hotel was the smallest of the three, but was the most convenient to the beach. Shelley and I decided to opt for the Junior Suite (see below)…best view in the building (end view and next to beach), but turned out to be a mixed blessing. It was a larger room and had three exterior walls – that made for a warmer room in general. This would be our only complaint regarding the whole experience. Note to self ~ “interior rooms are cooler and darker”.

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Food – The food was plentiful and spectacular. We ate at a mixture of buffets and À la carte restaurants. The consensus for the group favorite had to be the Italian restaurant (Mare Nostrum), but all of them had something that everyone could enjoy. I included this shot of one of the buffets because Andy fell in the love with the turkey carving station on the last night’s meal.

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Bars – As described above, you had a wide selection of water holes throughout the complex. Given our location and desire not to unnecessarily walk to far to get our “drunk on”, we mostly gravitated to the Macao Bar. It was located right off the our hotel lobby. It was only 30 yards away from our building 4000. That also meant we could exert the least amount of effort after consuming some of the local beverages. I would have to say the most popular drink consumed by the guys was the only beer available throughout the property – El Presidente. The ladies gravitated more towards the rum or vodka infused juices or “slushies”. During one of our early drinking sessions, we befriended a server by the name of Margarita. She had the nicest personality and was always smiling. From that point on, we went out of our way to end each day drinking, laughing, and communicating (any way we could) with Maragrita.

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Excursions – We booked two different “off property” excursions. One half day trip to Marinarium (snorkeling) and the other full day adventure to Saona Island (boat cruise and dancing). Marinarium was a pretty standard snorkeling trip with the highlight occurring at the end when we got the opportunity to swim with sting rays and nurse sharks. It was quite eerie at first considering these animals are quite large and intimidating, but after a while it was clear that you had nothing to worry about. The Saona Island trip was significantly more enjoyable. The trip does require travel by bus from Punta Cana to the small fishing town where you have to board power boat to reach the island. Once on land, it is clear why this island was discovered by Christopher Columbus, in May 1494 on his way to the Americas. It is simply beautiful and relaxing. We ate, danced, and swam in the ocean until it was time to leave. The remainder of the trip was a leisurely cruise aboard a “party” catamaran. We danced some more while consuming much of the local beverages. I have attached some pictures from the Saona Island trip given that we haven’t developed the underwater camera pictures yet from Marinarium.

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Entertainment – The resort had two different outdoor theaters with nightly shows. The shows would rotate between each of the venues such that each side of the resort would have the opportunity to see every show. Saturday and Sunday were both crowd participation activities that were centered around slap-stick comedy at the guest’s expense. The other nights were mostly musical impersonation shows. One night was all Michael Jackson and was well done. Another night was a mixture of famous acts like Queen, MC Hammer, Madonna, etc… We enjoyed them all.

Conclusions – The first sentence should paint a clear impression of our trip to Punta Cana. Everyone agreed that we would return to the same resort without hesitation. Not withstanding some minor issues (as discussed), the fun and enjoyment was quite abundant. Most importantly, the ability to reconnect with our spouses and friends was an excellent byproduct of the trip. After 10 years of marriage and kids, it is easy to loose ourselves in the day to day grind and forget about what made us who we are. Love, fun, and sun for us all!!!