I think I have been avoiding the blog for a while. I keep
meaning to get started on a new post and it never happens. So, now I’m forcing
myself to get something down. Some of what has been going on the last three
weeks…Lincoln won the Caught Being Good award for his grade one week at school.
He was so excited to get to keep a trophy on his desk for the week and received
a coupon for a free cheese pizza from Pagliais. Ellie has spent a few days
staying after school to help her old teacher, Miss Hix, with labeling books for
the classroom. She loves it because Miss Hix gives her popcorn and koolaid and
she gets to play with all the animals, the gecko, a turtle and a hamster. I
have started helping in the twins’ and Lincoln’s classrooms on Monday mornings.
I start at 8:30, so I have decided I have time to get a run in before I go-a
quick 3 miles by the school. I usually try to change my shirt and put on some
more deodorant before I go in, but I know I look pretty rough. The kids don’t
mind though š. I have enjoyed seeing the boys in school
and getting to know the kids in their classes. Then we all got to get in on
loading up some calves that they all sold on a Friday that the kids didn’t have
school. Andrew went out before us and helped gather them and sort them and we
showed up a little before the big trucks did and the kids got to help drive the
calves into the trailers. They also had fun swinging on an old electric wire
that was hanging from a tree.
Fall sports continue, but are starting to wind down a bit.
Ellie is happy with all of her activities. Melody convinced her and her duet
partner to do Proud Mary for their jazz number. She is usually excited to go to
swim team practice and works hard. She participated in a kids’ triathlon a
couple weeks ago. It was kind of last-minute. I was proud of her for doing it
because she didn’t really know anyone else doing it. Luke had his birthday
party at the same time at the YMCA, so Andrew took the boys to that while I
took Ellie to Truman for the triathlon. There were around 20 kids there and
they started at in the Natatorium. Ellie’s age group started out swimming 75
yards, then biked 2 miles and ran 1 mile. The bike route was good for them
because it was just up and down Franklin by the school and they had it closed
off. Then they ran a loop on the sidewalks through campus for their mile.
Andrew and Jackson showed up during her bike to surprise her and they brought a
couple signs from the ones they made for me for the NEMO last year. Ellie did
awesome. She had the second fastest swim time out of all the kids and she was
proud to say she never stopped or walked during the run and finished the mile
in 8:27. She ended up 5th in her age group.
We’ve had a lot of soccer. The twins have had their
practices on Thursday evenings and games on Saturday. They are improving each
game and are fun to watch. They had their last game this past Saturday. We
weren’t sure if they were going to get it in because of rain, but it just
sprinkled a little bit while they were playing.
Lincoln and Ellie have continued with club soccer and got to
play in some games in Moberly one Saturday. They each played a couple games and
they were a little rough. The Moberly teams were definitely more experienced
than ours but we played hard (or Lincoln did after a little discussion after
not trying to hard the first part of the first game) and them and their friends
also “snacked” hard and cleared us out of all of our snacks.
While Lincoln had finished flag football a few weeks ago,
Jackson didn’t finish up until this past Thursday. After losing their first two
games, his team won the last four and had a great season. Jackson definitely
improved throughout the season and grew to appreciate the game more. He went
from second string to a starter on defense along with special teams. He also
got to go in on offense more and scored on a two point conversion one time. He
had a game in Warrenton, so Lissy, Sara and her kids all game to part of the
game and we all got to go out to eat afterwards. Then Amanda and her kids were
in town for his last game. He just keeps growing and has started downing large
glasses of milk. The teenage years are here.
And of course with football, comes Homecoming. Some of the
schools had Spirit Days and Ellie brought out her Mary Poppins costume for
Disney Day. Friday is always Tiger Pride day and the parade. Jackson rode on
the football trailer to the parade while I took the other kids to Dairy Queen
before heading downtown for the parade. I figured shakes would keep them
occupied while we waited. The twins and I walked Lincoln down to his spot and
then got ready at our spot with the Seedorfs to watch the parade. It was
actually a longer one for not being an election year. The fire department also
had a huge American flag hanging from one of their ladders over the parade route.
It was really neat.
We’ve had family in town a lot, which was good for my
parents since the baby flew the nest. Molly moved to St. Louis a couple of
weekends ago and we were all sad to see her go. I really wish at least one of
my siblings could live in town too. But while the cousins were in town, the
kids got to have sleepovers. Owen and Lola got to join us at Family Fun Night
at the boys’ school. I made the game punch cards for it and they said they only
had about 30 left out of the 600 I made. They had a very successful event and I’m
glad we were in and out of there in around an hour. It was kind of hard to keep
track of 6 kids in all of the chaos.
When Amanda and her kids were in town, we had hoped to go to
the pumpkin patch and the Truman homecoming parade, but we got rained out. We
did go see the Ninjago movie though. And we also got to give Preston and
Grayson their birthday present a little early. They were pretty excited about
it.
And the big event of the last few weeks was De Ronde Van Farwell
Land-Andrew little dream of a bike race for the kids. It actually happened and
we had a pretty successful first race. We feel like everyone had fun with it
and we will try to plan it again next year. It was pretty much a team effort
getting ready for it. Starting with Andrew and Jackson scrounging up bike parts
to make the unique trophies, to making signs for the course, painting a big
banner for hang on the school house, getting all the supplies, food and drinks,
collecting a few donations along with buying prizes, and convincing a few
people to help us out on race day. We ended up getting donations from Cyclex
and the Aquatic Center and then I bought some bike lights and gift cards. We
decided it would be nice to just do a trophy for 1st place for each category
and then we did a drawing for the rest of the prizes. We had rain a few days
before the race, but thankfully it cleared up with sun and wind the day before
to help dry stuff out a little bit. Race day was great weather. Andrew went out
after church to start putting out the signs to mark the course and take out all
the other supplies. I brought the kids out later and we set up the tables for
registration and to hold the signs and prizes. We also ended up ordering some
cool t-shirts that we all wore and we had some available to buy. Everyone
started making their way out to us about 20 minutes before start time. Some
people got lost, but everyone eventually made it. We ended up with around 25
kids which we were pretty pleased with. Andrew gave some instructions and thank
yous before the race started and sent some volunteers out onto the course. We
had the older kids start first, which was just 3 girls and 4 boys, and the
younger ones followed after. They hadn’t been going for about 30 seconds when
the first wreck happened. Lincoln was in that one and he didn’t get back into
the race that quickly and ended up not doing the whole course. There were a few
more accidents, which is expected. Ty was our first male finisher for the
younger group and Kate was our first female finisher. Then it was Patrick, one
of the volunteer’s son, and Kiersten for the older kids. The bigger course was
a challenge for the older ones, which we thought was good. Between the siblings
of the racers and the racers, we went through a lot of our snacks and drinks we
had provided and when all the racers were done, we handed out the trophies and
did the drawing. We ended up giving every participant some sort of prize,
except we ended up not having enough for our own kids. So we promised them La
Fuente and then some Dairy Queen, which we followed through on over the next
week.
The next weekend we had another event as we hosted the
K-Life leaders at a dinner at our house. I spent all day Sunday cooking,
cleaning and preparing. Since I have done the same meal for the last several
years, I have the numbers and prep down, but it still takes a lot of time. Andrew
took the kids for lunch and entertained them a bit. When it got down to crunch
time, they pitched in to help out. We had two big tables set up and also had
people sit at the island and outside. I had decided last week, that I wanted to
try to do something to make the service a little nicer since I just do all of
the food in the large aluminum pans. So, I ended up making wooden boxes to put
the pans in. I bought wood and had it cut at Home Depot and then I ended up
buying a pin nailer and used that and wood glue to put the boxes together. Next
up was the staining, sanding and several coats of polyurethane. They worked
pretty well and will definitely be used again-for serving and other things. We
ended up with close to 40 college students and they said they really enjoyed
the food and were very grateful. We are definitely thankful for them. One of
the leaders knew one of Ellie’s counselors, so they Facetimed her and Ellie was
really excited. They all left by 7:30 and the clean-up wasn’t too bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment