Grandpa Comes to Visit

So the end of October was a very busy time around our house, but it was busy in a great way.  First and for most, my dad came to visit for two weeks.  It was so fun to have him stay with us.  He also happens to be an awesome house guest.  He is very low maintenance.  Basically, he spends the whole day working and cooking in the kitchen and then loves to watch action movies in the evening.  How great is that?!

I am not exaggerating when I say that within the first day of being here, he had gone through my fridge and cut and cleaned all my veggies, helped me with the final harvest and cleaning up of my garden, made salsa and I'm sure a soup as well.  Pretty much all I did was take him to the grocery store to buy food and he was cooking up a storm and cleaning up the rest of the time.  My dad is so cute and loves to cook so much.  What a great blessing he is to share his culinary talents with us.

Here he is teaching Paige how to make pot stickers.  He even brought her a little plastic mold to help her shape her pot stickers.

 

Cooking is just one of my dad's great talents another one is soccer.  It rained almost every day he was here so we had to go "indoor" for some soccer skills training.

 

He also to go to an awards breakfast at Ashley's school.  She won an award for good character.

 

The Pumpkin Patch

I know my girls are getting a little old for this, but since they had Colombus Day off from school and it was the right time of year, we decided to go to a pumpkin patch.  Actually we went to Blackberry Farm, it is a cute little place and they just added a huge outdoor play structure to so we went to check it out.

Of course, since it was "Pumpkin Weekend" at the farm, we started with painting our own little pumpkins.

Then we went over to check out the new area and the zip line.

Next up, were carousel rides, we did this about 5 times in a row.

Then the train and wagon hay rides!

What a cute little place to spend a Fall day at.  Of course, our day may or may not have ended with ice cream!

Backyard Hobbies

So our family is taking backyard hobbies to a new level.  First off, the birding.  I know I have talked about this before.  This has completely turned into Dave's thing.  They are his birds or should I say "friends."  A real, human friend of ours teases that one day the birds are going to come and claim Dave as their own.

He has really got quite the system out there, with multiple bird feeders, a squirrel baffle and now...A HEATED BIRD BATH!   Yep, you read that right.  It's a regular day spa out there for the birds.  He has also successfully deterred all the annoying black birds and grackels so we pretty regularly have gold finches, purple finches, house finches, cardinals, chickadees, woodpeckers, robins and red-breasted nut hatches.  In addition to these regular visitors we also have chipmunks and two big fat gray squirrels. 

I hate to say it but as annoying as those squirrels are, I personally get a kick out of watching them try to figure out how to get at the bird food.  You can just see them looking up at the feeders, thinking, judging how far they can jump, testing out if they can jump from the picnic table onto the feeder stand and all kinds of crazy stuff.  Do you know how funny it is to watch a squirrel over and over try to climb up a pole, hit the baffle and slide down.  Hilarious, especially if your threshold for hilarity is low.

We also have another "pet" that we are currently caring for.  A Venus Flytrap.  A friend gave one to Paige and right along with the birds she and Dave have started caring for it.  Dave did a bunch of research to teach Paige how to care for it and viola it is thriving.  It started off with two heads and now has like seven or eight.  The best part about this pet is that you can set it outside during the day and it catches it's own food.  Not sure what we will do in the winter, there aren't usually a lot of flies around, that's probably when this fun little plant will start getting on my nerves.  I'll be worried about feeding it, but definitely not interested in catching flies and other bugs for it.

Finally, there is my little backyard hobby--the garden.  Dry conditions made it a tough year for some of my veggies, but the tomatoes went gangbusters.  Too bad I'm too busy and unmotivated to do some canning. 

As you may have noticed, Ashley doesn't seem to have a backyard hobby.  I guess it's just really not her thing, which is okay because she often gets recruited to help with everyone else's projects and she is a pretty good sport about it.

It's Broken

One day while I was having lunch with a friend, I got a call from the nurse at Ashley's school.  She told me that Ashley hurt her finger in gym, it was pretty swollen, and might be broken.  The nurse also said that Ashley said she wasn't in much pain, so, it was up to me whether or not I wanted to come get her.

OKAY here it is: the classic parent dilemma: whatever decision you make is probably going to be the wrong one.

I decided since there was only about 2 hours left of school to just wait and take a look when Ashley got home from school.  Well, one hour later, I get another call from the nurse who says she looked at it again and it is still really swollen and I should come get her.  Dave and I take Ashley to an urgent care for an x-ray and yep, it's broken.  She tried to catch a football during PE and it bent her middle finger on her left hand back and cracked the bone on both sides of her middle knuckle.  Pretty mild, but she does have to wear a splint for about a month, sit out of PE and take a break from piano lessons.  More an incovenience than anything else.  Although the orthopedist did tell me that once you break a finger the swelling never really goes completely away.  So now she will always have a fat finger.

Ironically, I signed her up to play basketball for the first time ever this winter, but she should be healed in time to play.

On another note, when Dave made a joke to Ashley about breaking her middle finger and flipping the bird, she had no idea what he was talking about.  What a good and innocent child.  Love her.

Audition Day

Both my girls had auditions this weekend.  Paige has started taking dance classes.  She just loves to perform so much and wants to be in a recital so I decided to sign her up for dance classes.  She is currently taking a hip hop class.  The main reason for hip hop is because it was the only class offered at a time that worked with our schedule.  It is actually really fun to watch her learn all these moves.  She's a pretty cute little dancer gettin' her funk on.  I think she will keep taking classes and probably do Jazz next.

To Paige's delight, the studio she takes from does a huge Nutcracker show every year.  There are something like 200 cast members.  They hold auditions in September, rehearsals throught October and November and the 2 performances of the final show are in December.  It is a massive undertaking.  Paige really wanted to be on a stage and be in a show, so I let her audition.  Of course, nothing is free but if you are willing to pay, everyone who auditions gets a part.  Paige auditioned with her friend Riley and fortunately they were both cast together.  Paige has two parts: one is a mouse in the battle scene with the Mouse King and the other is rose petal with the Sugar Plum Fairy.  Her costumes are so adorable and she was the mouse selected to be shot during the battle - so she also gets a death scene, how awesome.

She has loved preparing for the show, and we are looking forward to seeing the final product.  I will say the only downside has been joining the "danceworld."  There is nothing wrong with this particular studio, in fact I am pretty happy with them.  It's the general "danceworld, dance mom" thing---It's not MY thing.  I just can't imagine devoting the time and money that some people do.  Plus all the costumes, dance gear, shoes, etc. that you need starts to add up quick.  I know a lot of this stuff is pretty standard dance experience, but I thought it was "crazy" when I got the information sheet for the costume and make-up requirements for photo day.  Besides needing different colored dance shoes for everything, I also had to purchase a list of very specific make-up and hair supplies.  As I stood in the drugstore buying make-up for my 9 year-old, I just had to shake off the bewilderment as I searched for "Loreal lipstick, coral #604".  Even sillier, I had to buy foundation and because Paige is so fair, she can't use what I use.  I had to buy her a shade called "Vanilla".  Vanilla-colored foundation? I just thought that was hilarious.  Anyway, I'll survive and keep doing it because Paige seems to really like it.

Ashley had a big audition day as well.  In Illinois every year schools hold these huge music education festivals, called Illinois Music Education Association or IMEA.  The state is divided into a bunch of different districts and kids can audition for band, orchestra, or choir.  It is very competitive and each festival district includes multiple school districts.  Ashley's choir teacher encouraged her to audition.  In preparation she had to attend a bunch of early morning practices and learn a few pieces of music.  She auditioned as a Soprano.  She sang a skills piece and then a Soprano selection.  You have to sing unaccompanied in front of judges.

On the day before the audition, Ashley stayed home from school sick.  She had a slight fever and overall just felt sick and achey.  Dave had felt the same way a few days before and his turned into a stuffy head cold and cough.  Our hope was that Ashley wouldn't have a cough and be unable to sing.  Fortunately, she was okay the morning of the audition but nerves had her pretty anxious and even a little teary.  Thank goodness seeing some friends once we got to the audition helped distract and calm her.  She walked out of her audition, saying, "I think I made it."  She was right.  Now she has a month to learn the music for the upcoming festival.

And one final audition note.  Ashley also auditioned for her school play and made it.  It's a comic book superhero play and Ashley was cast as one of the superheros.  She is "Blossom" who uses her magical flowers to put her enemies to sleep.  My favorite line (and I'm not kidding about this) is: "Hello there, want a whiff of my magical flowers?"  Should be a good show!

Fall Soccer

Well, it wouldn't be Fall without some soccer.  Ashley and Paige both played recreationally.  Ashley's team was really small and inexperienced.  She scored most of the goals for her team, but the ability level of her team was so bad that I don't really think it is worth playing again.  She didn't really learn anything and often the games were pretty frustrating to watch.  Hopefully, she will make her school team again this Fall and then she is in high school and who knows if she will keep playing.

As for Paige, I'm not exactly sure about the stats but Paige was probably the high scorer on her team too.  She scored in almost every game and in one game had a hat trick.  She sort of perfected the long range shot.  She realized that goalkeeping is not really good at this age and hard shot from far out can usually get by the goalie.  Paige has a lot potential in soccer, she is one of the best on her team, but again we face the same dilemma we did with Ashley.  Advancing to better leagues with training, requires playing on Sundays so we are just going to have let it go and do the best we can with the recreational leagues. 

Yep, I don't have any pictures.  Sorry haven't really been on my A-game this season.

Backyard Birthday Campout

So the first of September was pretty much a blur.  We were still adjusting to the new school schedule, had PTA activities at school, lots of church stuff going on and political conventions to watch.  I had asked Ashley to hold of on having a party on her birthday because it was the first week of school and it is just too hectic of a time for everyone.  We figured that sometime in the first part of September would be good, especially because she wanted an outdoor party and needed the weather to still be warm.

Of course, I'm not sure that September was any less busy than August, but we just decided to go for it.  Ashley wanted to have a sleepover campout in the backyard.  This was the first time we had ever allowed her to have a slumber party...and we made them sleep outside, but it was still exciting for them. 

She had about 8 nine friends over, but not all could spend the night which was fine because that left plenty of room in the tent.  It was a pretty simple party, we made home macaroni and cheese, put it into pie tins, added favorite toppings and then warmed them on the grill.  Then the girls played some outdoor games which included a bunch of "minute-to-win-it" type challenges.  After it got dark they played "ghost in the graveyard" and a bunch of other games with glow sticks, etc.  It's pretty nice that they entertain themselves.  The best part was that when it got late instead of having them run around the house all night, we sent them outside to hangout in the tent.  I slept downstairs so I could be nearby if needed.  I also figured that if I could hear them from inside my house then so could my neighbors.  If I couldn't hear them then there shouldn't be a problem.  The night went by pretty uneventfully, I never heard a sound and we didn't get any complaints from the neighbors, although we have such good neighbors they'd be pretty understanding.

In fact, the noise actually came from our neighbors when they let their dog out early in the morning.  He came running out right up to the fence near the tent and just went on a barking frenzy trying to figure out who was in that big tent in our yard.  Needless to say, the crew was up early and ready for breakfast.  You might think I made pancakes or some other hot cooked breakfast, but you'd be wrong.  We had a cereal buffett.  I bought a huge variety of sugar cereals and let the girls have whatever they wanted.  I think they thought it was pretty fun to be able to open a bunch of different boxes and eat cereals their responsible mothers don't buy!