Our Weekend

Friday evening
We did end up getting to see Gus again before he left. Lauren and I only briefly since I was taking her to a football game but the rest of the family stayed longer. The kids went outside and played and had a great time.
Saturday
I had signed Zach and Megan up to build a firetruck at Lowe's, another one of their Build and Grow workshops. We arrived early for that one expecting it to be crowded since that was a cool project, the fire truck even made sounds. Well it did end up getting crowded but we never got to build the firetruck. Apparently there was a recall with the sound button and they sent out puppet shows to build instead. Since they didn't even hand those out until 20 minutes late we just took ours and left figuring we would just build them at home sometime. We still haven't built them but then again a puppet show just isn't that exciting.

As we were leaving Lowe's they had a real firetruck that the kids could check out. So we did at least do that.
Our next event that day was Kristin's volleyball game. Zach was getting antsy waiting for the game before hers to finish so we went for a little stroll around the church. Zach has such a cheesy smile.Game time. It was so hot in that gym that Zach couldn't get comfortable. He's always been a very sweaty little guy, here he is taking a rest on Paul.

Kristin actually started! She had a couple of really good hits and then kind of fizzled out. Her coach took her out to talk to her and then put her right back in. She did a little better after that. I have seen great improvement with her this year. I still think she needs to get a little more aggressive and go after the ball though.

Sunday

We went to church and then afterwards stayed for a Mystery Lunch. Each table has to solve clues as to what is being served and then put them in one of 3 different courses. For example: one thing on the list might be "Bugs' favorite shavings" which would be carrots. You also had to make sure you figured out any utensils such as this easy one, "2+2+3+8-11+K" which would be a fork. You end up being served what you guess for each course. For instance you might end up getting ice cream with tomatoes and shredded cheese for your appetizer and chicken with sprinkles and bananas for your dessert if you don't guess right. It's pretty comical to see what each table gets. Our table did fairly well today. We only got a few things mixed up. I don't want to tell you what we had since Paul wasn't there and he hasn't tried to figure out the clues for himself yet. Who knows? Maybe the kids and I will actually do the mystery lunch at home and he can have the same wacky experience as us.

Then next was Alex's birthday party. Since I've already blogged about it I won't repeat it but what a great way to end a weekend.

Happy 1st Birthday Alex!

Alex's birthday was today and so was his party. No more babies in the family since he's now a big boy.
Paul and Lauren went a little early since they were going to miss most of the party due to Lauren having an away soccer game. By the time the rest of us got there they were getting ready to leave. Lauren got a really nice hug from Ryan.
The kids went downstairs and played with the toys and the wii. I don't know about the rest of them but Zach sure seemed to have a great time while he was there.

Lehlan was full of smiles (as usual)!

Paul picked this present out especially for Alex. Paul couldn't believe that he actually bought something that had Yankees on it :)

On to cake and ice cream...Lehlan really enjoyed his.

The birthday boy didn't!

Hope you had a happy birthday Alex, we all enjoyed helping you celebrate!

Grandpa Gus

Another visit from Gus! He came all the way from Kansas so we just had to make the time in our busy schedules to go say hi to him.
I wish we could have gotten to see him more but these darn kids keep our evenings so busy. Usually we have at least Friday's to ourselves but this week we don't even have that. Have a safe trip home and we'll see you next time!

My 1st day

I don't know why but just spending a couple of hours with eight 2-yr-olds is exhausting! We're supposed to have 9 kids but one is on vacation this week. We can have up to 10 so we're lucky. Of course that spot can be filled at anytime.

Overall it was a pretty decent day. There were a couple of criers but they didn't cry non-stop, just sporadically, mostly at transition times. We did have one child take off running in the opposite direction when we were getting ready to go outside. He ran into the music room and went under a table. Silly kid, who doesn't want to go outside? Then there was also the incident of biting. And we have one that likes to hit and two others that love saying the word "no." Did I really just say that we had a decent day? For a first day that was pretty good but hopefully it gets better!

My kids (other than Zach) didn't have school today. Megan and her friend Martina came into work with me and wow, they were a huge help. We also get a third person (just happened to be the music teacher) for the first few weeks of school so we had 3 adults and 2 10-yr-olds to watch 8 kids. Megan and Martina helped entertain and distract them by playing with playdough, reading books to them and just generally playing with all the different toys in the room.

Two of the boys really liked them too! It was cute. I have no idea what Thursday is going to bring, Megan and Martina have to go to school! Can 3 adults handle 8 kids? :)

Zach's first day of Pre-K

He had his open house last Thursday where he got to go in and meet his teachers and see his room. Paul took him to that since my open house for my class was the same day. So...today was his first official day where I got to take him and drop him off.

I thought I was going to get to drop him off and then head to the grocery store and shop in peace but at the last minute I was asked to sub in one of the 2-yr-old rooms. Actually I was a 3rd person because you just never know how the 2-yr-olds are going to act. My boss kept apologizing because she knew this was the first time in 4 years that I had NO kids! But it was really no big deal, the 2-yr-olds are done an hour earlier than the rest of the school for the first week so I still had an hour to hit the Acme.

When I picked Zach up he said he had a good day. His teacher said he especially liked the playground and Zach kept talking about the double slides. This summer a new piece of playground equipment was put in and that seemed to be a big hit with all the kids.

Can't wait to go in and experience my class tomorrow! They did really well at last week's open house but their parent's were with them. They all seemed pretty confident, hopefully if there's crying it's short lived. (I still think I'll take some Motrin before going into work, just in case!)

Weekend Fun

This past Saturday Zach got to make a couple of things. We first did the Lowe's Build and Grow workshop where he made a dog leash holder. I don't know what I'm going to do with the thing since we don't have a dog. Oh well, I took him more for the experience of it anyway. Then a little later we went to AC Moore where he decorated a Thomas train. They were decorating them with a Halloween theme so he made his into a jack-o-lantern. I guess I should say Paul and I decorated it, Paul colored it orange and I cut out and put on the jack-o-lantern face.

In fact, Paul pretty much put the whole dog together too. I think Zach might have hammered in 2 nails. In the above picture he's showing off the crafts that his parents did!

Sports Sunday

Kristin

She's playing volleyball again this year and she had her first game today. They played two games but unfortunately lost both. Kristin has gotten really good at serving, too bad she only got to serve once. Here's a short video of her. She's #56 and you can see that she has one good hit over the net.

Kristin got the first point for her team when she hit the ball over the net and no one returned it. Yay Kristin! Her game was an away game so as soon as she got done we went straight home because then it was time for...

...Lauren

No sooner did we get home then it was time to leave for Lauren's away soccer game. It was her first game for the fall league.

This isn't the best picture but this was taken right after she kicked the ball into the goal. Yay! My baby scored!

Lauren scored the third goal for her team and they ended up winning 3-2.

This is the start to a very busy couple of months!

Children's Musuem

Yes, I know, another post about this place. I think this is the third one since June. Just remember that we have an annual pass to this place and Zach loves it so there will probably be more posts in the future too.

Last week Paul was off and since he had never been there Zach and I wanted to show him the place. We didn't get there till about noon. I was a little worried it would be crowded but there was hardly anyone there, I guess everyone was having lunch and taking naps!

Paul got to relive his rowing days in college:
Zach got a turn too.

Zach had the water area to himself. He loves taking one of the boats and going around the whole stream. Here he is trying to do the tornado/vortex thingie.

We went fishing next and caught a whole bunch of fish for dinner. Zach and Paul even caught a soda can, boot and a diaper which got put in the trash.

If we had more time we could have gone out to lunch in the area while we were there but two of the sisters were coming home from school soon so we headed home. If it wasn't their first day of school I wouldn't have cared but I wanted to know how there day was. We'll probably head back again in a few weeks. Maybe I'll spare you all and not take any pictures next time and therefore not create yet another blog about the place. Knowing me though I'll have to take pictures.

Last night's dinner

I was making tacos and had Lauren brown the ground beef, she also cut the tomatoes. No one wanted to shred the cheese though, that is until Zach came running into the kitchen yelling, "I want to cut the cheese! I want to cut the cheese!" I really wish I could have had a video of him because it was too funny! So here he is "cutting the cheese."

Pool Fun

I don't think I made one single post about the pool this summer. With it being such a hot summer we spent most of our weekends there to cool off. Here's a pic from early in the summer:

It took Zach awhile to jump off the diving board but towards the end of the summer he became a pro. Of course in this picture he has his little floatie vest on so it wasn't like he was going to sink or anything. He would jump and grab hold of Paul's legs.

Zach hanging with the sisters... well... 2 of them.

Okay, there's lots of pictures of Zach. That's because he's so darned cute! (Plus a lot easier to get pictures of than his sisters.)

I wanted to get a picture of him swimming but he kept being evasive. Every time I went to take a picture he would turn around. I finally got this. Look at that ornery grin on his face.

Sometimes Zach loves the attention, other times he wants his sisters to leave him alone. It looks like he's liking the attention at this particular moment.

Two short videos of Zach jumping off the diving board. In the first one he jumps off the board wearing his floatie vest (very short, 13 seconds).

In this second one he jumps off the board to Kelly wearing NO vest. Then Kelly makes him swim. (18 second video, I think.)

He did a pretty good job too. I wonder what he would have done if that floatie hadn't been there. Hopefully by next year he's swimming all over the place. Maybe over the winter I'll look for some swimming lessons for him.