Chugging Along

The start of the new school year has brought a flurry of activities that have kept us pretty busy over the last few weeks. Andrew continues to recover from his accident but has started adding in more activity including actually driving through the pasture to check his cows and hopping on the bike for a ride down the street...although it still hurts. Along with the office and his cows, he stays busy coaching flag football two nights a week and also coached Lincoln's teams for the K-Life flag football tournament. And maybe in an attempt to avoid another bike accident in our family, I have not been on many rides and have instead been running more. I even ran to Sweet Espressions one morning to meet up with Annie and Kristin and then ran back to my car at the school. I've been cleaning out more stuff and collected some of our puzzles and games that were still in good condition and dropped them off at Faith Lutheran for Mrs. Hoshaw, the kids' pre-k teacher. Andrew has been wanting to get things going with the De Ronde race, so I've spent time getting stuff ready to go for that. I also started helping in Lincoln's classroom, but not actually with the class yet. They are implementing a new math program and I've been helping his teacher out by making copies of worksheets and putting together the work place stations. Once we get that under control, then I'll start helping with the kids and also hopefully do the same in the twins' classroom.

We started back to K-Life with a board meeting followed by the K-Life Kickoff the next night. Andrew stayed home with the younger boys and I took Ellie with me. Jackson walked to the K-Life house after football. A few of us on the board helped set up and serve the food we brought and they had some slip-n-slide activities for the kids. Jackson ended up having Andrew bring him is drone and he got some footage for them to use in future promotional videos.

The twins and Lincoln had their first flag football games the second week of school. Andrew helped coach Lincoln's team. Our youth pastor was in charge of the 1st graders and he had to have great patience as it looked like he was "herding cats". It was hard to watch all three of them because they were on caddy corner fields, but they said they had fun.

The next day brought more football with the K-Life Show-Me Showdown. It was the first time doing this for the younger kids and the turnout was lower than what we had hoped. Lincoln's team still had fun playing though. There were only three teams, so they only played two games and lost both of them. It didn't seem to bother them too much though. Then they were on to the second part of the event and that was the Punt, Pass, Kick and Catch competition. The twins joined in on this one too. We didn't win anything, but they had fun trying.

After the game, we ran by my parents' house to do some stuff with the pool since my parents had to quickly leave town the day before because Caroline was in labor. And they made it to the hospital in Tampa just as she had Mr. Sullivan. We kept getting updates throughout the evening since Lissy was able to get there too and document the birth. What a cutie.

Saturday afternoon/evening, we did dinner and a movie. Actually, I was too lazy to cook and we decided to go see Christopher Robin and count our concessions as dinner :-). It was a really sweet movie. Even Andrew liked it.

Our next week was more of the same. Jackson got to start out the week early with K-Equip, a more devoted bible study group with K-Life that meets every other Monday morning at 6:30. He was looking forward to it, even with the earlier wake-up. I did end getting to babysit Savannah that Tuesday. She wasn't feeling well and ended up with a fever, so Annie asked if I could watch her while she went to work. She still had decent energy, so she played out on the ninja course a few times and down in the playroom. But she also rested for a while and watched her show of choice, America's Got Talent. I met Annie at Ray Miller while I waited in line to pick up Lincoln and she was able to pick up Savannah. The next day, Andrew and I celebrated our anniversary early by going to Columbia. We aren't the most exciting because after we ran our errands of picking up a Sam's order, doing returns at Kohls and stopping by Cyclex to get their donation for the bike race, we didn't know what else to do before lunch. We went by Old Navy, but I'm not much of a shopper and didn't stick around too long. Then Andrew decided to run by Play It Again Sports before we went to Andrew's choice for lunch, Olive Garden. We were back in time to pick up the kids from school.

On Thursday, the twins got to experience their busy day and they handled it well. After school they got to go to their first Little K and they loved it. I picked them up from that, with pizza slices for all of them to eat and then dropped the twins off at football practice. Next up was taking Ellie to swim team practice. Then we picked up Jackson from football and dropped Lincoln off at soccer. And Andrew brought the twins straight from football practice to soccer practice where I had their cleats and shin guards to change into. I left the boys to practice, Andrew took Jackson home so he could eat and do homework and I went to pick up Ellie from swim team. She had me pick her up a little later so she could shower off and get ready for her first K-Life Middle School Klub. I dropped her off a little before 7 and got back to soccer practice just in time to pick up Lincoln and the twins. We got to go home for a little bit before it was time for me to pick Ellie up from K-Life at 8:15. I was happy to hear that she loved Klub as Jackson wasn't a big fan of it.

On Friday, I prepped for the weekend by making cookies, rice kripie treats and salsa to take over to my parents since family was coming into town. That evening was all about football. Just as the twins and Lincoln started their game, it started raining and eventually quit, but stayed overcast and threatened to storm/rain again throughout the game. They had them continue to play until there were several strikes of lightning. We had planned to stay until the varsity game, but it was only around 5:40 and the varsity game had been pushed off until 7:15. Andrew, Jackson and Lincoln went home, while the twins, Ellie and I stayed and met up with my parents. After keeping people off of the bleachers because of lightning, they finally let us back in and we grabbed dinner from the concession stand. Andrew and the boys came back and Andy, Autumn and their kids came too. Sara and her family were supposed to come, but ended up not making it to the game and just waiting for us at my parents' house. We stayed through halftime and they all had a good time. The weather got nicer and it ended up being a nice night for some football. The team did well and the band was good. Kirksville actually ended up winning by quite a bit, which was fun. My dad had to leave partway through the game, so my mom rode home with us. We ran by the house so the kids could pick up their stuff for a sleepover and I got all of our snacks.

We had a great Labor Day weekend. The kids got to play with their cousins, swim, go to the park, eat a lot, and we celebrated a couple birthdays. First off was Sadie's first birthday party out by the pool Saturday evening.

Andrew and I's 17th anniversary was on Saturday, but since we had already celebrated we didn't do anything...except give each other cards and got a picture in our wedding spot.

And we celebrated my mom's birthday a few days early. We all went in on a robotic vacuum for her that Amanda ordered and had delivered to my house. Instead of wrapping it, I put a party hat on it and Ellie made a Happy Birthday sign to put on it. I got one of our birthday banners and picked up a Dairy Queen cake. They were all in the kitchen and dining room when I got there, so I nonchalantly put up the banner and told my mom we were celebrating her birthday. Jackson brought the vacuum in and we set it up and got it going. My mom eventually noticed it and was surprised. We finished up by singing Happy Birthday and demolishing the Dairy Queen cake. And we continued celebrating that evening by having dinner out at Fort Chariton. The kids had fun playing washers and corn hole out back. And we also got to enjoy a bit of the live music before we headed out. It was a fun evening.

Ellie didn't go with us to Fort Chariton because she got to have a sleepover with the girl cousins at Granny and Papa's. They made pizzas, braided one of the horse's mane, played with makeup and watched a movie.

And I just had to add a couple pictures of the twins being twins and when the kids all decided to wear their Higher Point shirts to school one day.