Other October

October was a wild ride, but we survived.  Here’s my attempt to catch-up via crummy cell phone pictures…

October 6:  I’m pretty sure our house has been in a near constant state of disaster ever since school started.  There seems to be messes everywhere.  I’ve been so close to calling in professional help – no joke.  I feel like we’ve been drowning in disorganization.  I don’t put away laundry or clean up kid's rooms – that’s the kid’s responsibilities.  Which means things usually look like this…

This is several days after we returned from Utah and Abigail still hadn’t unpacked her suitcase.

October 7:  Drew was featured on the YMCA website for his awesome craft skills today.

Jason had a fun scout activity at the Cedar River Watershed in North Bend.  I was able to catch the end of it. 

It was neat to see Rattlesnake Ledge from the other side of the lake.  That’s quite a climb to get to the top, but the views never get old.

October 8:  Just getting a drink in his choo-choo undies.  Drew is still running around in just his big boy underwear most days.

Justin and I went out on a date tonight – a little shopping in Tukwila (with returns of course) and then we finally settled on dinner at Famous Dave’s.  I was excited because I knew I had a free dessert coupon on an old receipt – turns out I’d been carrying around that receipt since 2011!  We decided on Banana Pudding – a surprising variation for my chocolate-loving self – it was divine!  So worth the five years!

October 10:  Several months ago one of the T-Mobile Tuesday freebies was a free t-shirt.  The designs were a bit tacky since their purpose is of course to advertise for T-Mobile.  We got a couple for our family and then Justin sent a shirt to two friends – Benjamin and Tolman as a joke.  Benjamin finally got his t-shirt today and sent Justin this awesome text.

October 11:  Another Tuesday – another T-Mobile freebie.  This time it was two cookies per line at Subway.  Yum, yum!  Thanks T-Mobile!

October 17:  Justin’s official deadline was today and after working lots and lots of overtime the last several weeks he left work early so we could celebrate.  He brought home pizza for us gobble up before heading to the movies to see Stork.  We had a few free movie tickets and a free popcorn.  (Abigail was at volleyball practice and had to miss the fun).  The movie was really cute and it was so nice to do something fun together.

October 19:  Last month at pack meeting each boy was given a small brown bag filled with random knick-knacks and an additional list of supplies they were encouraged to use from around their house to complete the “Genius Project”.  Their assignment was to create something from those items.  The more items you use from the list the more points you get.  Jason’s “Genius Project” ended up being in the top three tonight and his reward was the RIP trophy pictured here – yippee!  Jason was pretty stoked to have won.  We definitely didn’t put together the most creative display, but we used every possible item on the list.  Way to go, buddy!

October 20:  The older seminary classes started a “Feast Friday” tradition a few years ago and Abigail took it upon herself to start the same tradition in the freshman class.  We sent out a signup for the families to pick a week (or two) to bring in food for class on Friday mornings.  This was our week and Abigail requested homemade cinnamon rolls – I sent her this picture today before I’d frosted them, telling her it was killing me to make such deliciousness and not get to enjoy them all myself.  The sacrifices we make for our kids!

October 21:  Megan’s Mom sent me this picture of the girls playing at the football game tonight. 

This was their last game of the season that the band had to play at – hooray!!  Despite the smile on Abigail’s face she hasn’t enjoyed pep band at all this year.  Her schedule has already been so packed that having to give up five Friday nights and a handful of additional rehearsals after school hasn’t been fun for her.  Not sure if she’ll play band next year as it also conflicted on several occasions with volleyball.

October 22:  Tonight was homecoming.  Abigail was originally thinking she would go to the dance with friends, but thankfully we were able to come up with a fun alternative and avoid the whole whoopla of a formal school dance.  She’s too young for all that in my opinion anyhow.

The original plan was for the girls to go bowling in Bellevue.  The girls did some shopping at the mall while we waited for a lane to open.  Turns out the prices for bowling go way up on a Saturday night so the girls decided in the end to skip the expense of bowling a game and eat and shop instead.  Since I was just the chauffeur, I waited in line at Cheesecake Factory for an hour while the girls had fun walking around the mall.

After dinner we came back to our house for a movie and an ice-cream sundae bar.  Fun times for a great group of girls!

October 25:  Enjoying a quick snuggle with my babes

Justin and I watched a few “classics” from my youth this week (thanks, T-Mobile Tuesdays!).  The first, “Little Shop of Horrors” which was much more bizarre and disturbing than I remember.  But as we watched it I knew there was a point in my life I’d seen it so many times that I had much of it memorized.

The other movie was this past weekend – one of my favorites, “Some Kind of Wonderful”.  I loved that movie so much that I even bought the soundtrack.  Can’t believe this was the first time Justin had seen it.  I still think it’s pretty great.

High School Volleyball

Abigail had a tough decision to make this year as both soccer and volleyball are the same season at the high school level.  It actually wasn’t that hard of a decision for her – volleyball has become her sport of choice, but it was hard to see all those years playing soccer come to an end, especially with as good as she is.

Tryouts for volleyball were held at the end of August and were a major pain in the butt as they conflicted with several of our end of the summer plans.  She was thrilled to make the JV team.  Many of her peers have been playing club and Abigail’s only experience has been playing the short season through the middle school in 7th and 8th grade so the fact that she can still play at the same level as the clubbers really is impressive.  There weren’t any freshman on the varsity team this year.

 Abigail is the tallest on her team, except that 6’ 7’ freshman in the middle (yikes!)

The Saturday after teams were selected all the high school players had team building activities at a ropes course in Bellevue. Abigail knew several girls her age from Chief Kanim, but there were many girls from Twin Fall Middle School and all the sophomores, juniors, and seniors to get to know.  She was thrilled to have her bestie Megan on the JV team with her.

Practices were every day from 3:30-6:30pm (including Fridays!)  She had a great season, improved a lot, and started in most games – by the end of the season she was often on the top of her team practice board – apparently the girls get points during practices for each kill, ace, dig, etc… 

Her games were always at 5:30pm so I wasn’t able to make as many of her games as I would have liked due the other kids schedules.  I was disappointed to find out that you have to pay for each person you take to the games – including little kids.  So for me to take the kids with me I’d be forking out $35 each time.  For one game I dropped the kids off at a nearby park with Carly and went in on my own to save the money.  I’d sure love to have the whole family be able to support her without having to pay hundreds of dollars – on top of the $200 participation fee, game day shirts, practice jerseys, etc…  Ok, rant over.

I love how supportive the team is of each other.  They seem to always be giving high fives after each play, even if that person totally messes up.  You can’t really get too hard on yourself when your teammates are encouraging you along.

Megan and Abigail are often mistaken for each other.  They’ve been close friends since third grade and are so alike in many, many ways. I often say Megan is the twin I always wanted.  They play very similar positions on the court so it’s not very often they are both on the court playing side by side.  That’s Megan and Abigail up at the net together.

Justin was able to catch a few of Abigail’s games after his busy season wrapped up on Oct 15.  He got this video of her serving the winning point in the three game set against Woodinville.

I don’t have many pictures of the season – a reminder that I need to get me a good zoom lens for sports.

Abigail’s last game of the season was October 26.  Season record: 4-3 league, 9-5 overall – Not the best record, but the majority of our JV team are freshman so matched up against other schools upperclassman that actually isn’t too shabby.  It was so nice to have her come straight home from school on the 27th – a first since school started two months ago.

So now the big question is whether Abigail should tryout for a club team next month.  (She’s sadly decided not to play basketball in high school – a major bummer cause once again the girl’s got skills!)  Club volleyball is a major time commitment and an even more major expense.  We’ve haven’t played any sports on Sunday up to this point and plan to keep it that way.  Many tryouts are on Sundays, some practices are on Sunday, and tournaments often include Sunday play. Hard stuff all the way around.  Lots of pressure from coaches to play off season as well – which totally makes sense.  The more practice the girls get the better they will become.  We’d love to give our kids the opportunities to excel and grow in their interests, but there are certainly factors that make that difficult to do.  Regardless of what comes next for this girl we are sure proud of all she is able to accomplish.  She continues to amaze us!

Spartan Beast – Trifecta Glory

Saturday, October 22nd was the Spartan Beast – Justin’s final race to earn his Spartan Trifecta (which is earned by finishing each of the Spartan distances in a calendar year – sprint, super and beast).

They had a great group of guys running the race – though most ran it as an individual race.  

These three run together every week and stayed together most of the race.

Pre-Race

Post-Race with all their bling

According to Justin via Facebook, “Crazy, but this 12+ miler seemed easier than the 4 mile sprint back in August.  Maybe IHOP is the secret to success.”

And a couple fun pictures courtesy of the Spartan peeps:

Way to go Justin!

First Volleyball Season for Carly Ann

This year was Carly’s first opportunity to play on a volleyball team.  She attended a clinic this summer at the high school with Abigail and has bumped the ball around enough with Abigail over the years to earn herself a spot on the varsity team for her grade.  She spent most of the season playing setter and did fantastic.  Her team concluded their season on October 12 undefeated!

What a fun coincidence that Carly was assigned Abigail’s old jersey - #19   

I was glad to be able to attend most of Carly’s games.  It was a fun season to watch and she had several close friends on her team with her.

Sometimes being a fan is exhausting    

Carly has serious skills on the court and off. She’ll be wrapping up her soccer season in the next couple weeks and has already started basketball season through the school.  Carly is such a fun talented girl – we’re so lucky to have her.  I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this one!

Drew’s Big Boy Bed

Drew has been ready to move out of his crib and into a bed for quite a while now, but we dragged our feet for a few reasons.

First, we’d have to buy a new bed and mattress and because the boys share a room I’d want the boys beds to match – so that would mean buying TWO new beds.

Second, I actually like having Drew contained.  We haven’t had any of our kids attempt to climb out of their cribs so the crib is a safe place.  Meaning I can be in the shower and know Drew won’t be walking out of the house on his own.  Trapped in a crib isn’t however, the best situation for a potty-trained child.

Third, I feared that moving Drew into a bed would somehow affect his awesome sleeping schedule.  Drew was still napping most days, usually 3-4 hours each day.  Who would want to mess up that good of a thing?

Despite my hesitation it was time.  I ordered some new beds (that can be bunks if we so desire), sold Jason’s bed frame and matching dresser (for a pretty penny – oh, how I love craigs list) and ordered a new mattress from Tuck & Needle – at the recommendation of Laura who swears by her Tuck & Needle mattress.  I figured it was cheaper than what we could get at Sam’s and/or Costco and with a 100 day, 100% refund policy there really wasn’t any risk in giving a mattress through the mail a try.

While we waited for Drew’s mattress to arrive he wanted to take his naps in Jason’s bed.  He did great staying in bed and still slept nice and long.

Drew’s mattress arrived on 10/15 and he was so excited to open up the big box and watch his big boy bed magically grow.

Drew was thrilled to sleep in his new bed that night.  We’d mentioned several days or weeks before that big boys don’t use binkies, but I wasn’t about to throw another unknown into this equation by mentioning that on his first night.  However, as Drew was getting ready for bed that night he declared that big boys don’t use binkies and that’s the last thing we’ve heard about binkies.  For real.  Not a SINGLE word about binkies since that night he got his new bed.  Could that possibly have been easier?  Nope.

I snuck in that night to check on him and he looked so adorable.

Unfortunately, naptime has suffered since moving Drew into a bed but I think that’s because he no longer has his binkie to sooth himself to sleep.  We suddenly went from nearly daily naps, to maybe one or two naps a week.  He’ll still lay down and rest (not always happily) but naps are quickly becoming a thing of the past.  He does fine without it’s just taking some getting used to having up and running around all day long.  I wish my little buddy would stop growing up so fast!

Katie Soccer Wrap-Up

Katie’s soccer season was our first fall sports season to wrap-up with her last game being played on October 13th – it may have been the most miserable game to watch weather wise.  It was raining so hard and the wind was killer – flipping umbrellas inside out every few minutes.  I didn’t bring any chairs to sit on for some reason so I stood there with Jason and Drew doing our best to angle the small umbrella we had to keep us dry.  We were so grateful when the final whistle was blown that we didn’t take any pictures, just grabbed a celebratory end of the season cupcake and hurried to the van to warm up.  I have a few pictures from earlier in the season, but honestly I missed half of her games because I had to run other kids to/from their various activities.  Once again, Carly stepped up as substitute soccer mom – often watching Drew at Katie’s games as well.

Katie loves playing soccer and is always excited to attend practice and games.  At her age they hold practices twice a week in August and then it’s only games twice a week for the rest of the season.

Katie continues to run around the field with a huge smile on her face and occasionally kicking the ball.  She’s not an aggressive player, which is a bit hard for this uber-competitive mom to watch sometimes.  She did manage to score a few goals during the season so that’s always really exciting for her.

Katie wore these old soccer socks of Carly’s for every single game – makes it easy to spot her.

The only team picture I have of the season – mom fail!

Maybe basketball will be more Katie’s thing, pass to me, pass to me!

The after game tunnel is always fun for the kiddos