Fall Festival

Zach was so excited to go to his fall festival this year.  It was from 6:00 to 8:00 and we arrived right at 6:00.  I've learned that if you arrive at the beginning of it you can get an awesome parking spot and you can get most of the activities done before it gets too crowded and long lines start to form.  Then when the lines start to get long we head to the cafeteria to eat dinner.  This year it was Zach, Megan and myself that went to the fall festival. 

 

Megan found some friends to hang out with so I gave her some tickets and didn't see her again until the end of the night.  So then it was just Zach and me.  We went to the gym and Zach did the moonbounce/obstacle course first.  We just stayed there and he did it over and over about 5 times since there was no line.  I eventually pried him away from there and he chose to do the rock wall.

 He then played all the games in the gym and won his little prizes.  We then headed to the library to do the cake walk which he did several times in a row.  Unfortunately he didn't win a cake.  He was very close quite a few times, just one number away.  Oh well, better luck next year.

After we ate dinner we went back to the gym and stood in line to try to unlock the treasure chest.    His picture was taken for the yearbook as he tried to unlock it.  Here's my picture as he's getting his picture taken. 

The person helping with this game helped Zach find the right key so he could pick his treasure.  There was lots of treasure to pick from too.

I always stay until 8:00 because I want to hear the winners of the basket raffles.  Each classroom puts together a basket with a theme and they're put on display during the fall festival and at the end of the night the winners are drawn.  Zach's class basket was a Spa theme but some of the other themes were:  Disney, A Night Out, Sports, Cooking, etc...  We didn't win anything this year so we went home basketless.  Megan however saved the night for us by winning a cake from the cake walk.  Here's what she picked out:

So at least we didn't go home empy handed.  Thank you Megan!

Even More Band

These pictures are from all the games since the last time I posted something.  I don't remember which picture is from which game though so I I'll do just one post and include them all.  They've had all home games except for one away game so far.  Each time I see them perform they get better and better (which they should!). 

 They need to ride a bus for away games or competitions and normally take 2 buses but this time only one came so they all had to squeeze onto it.  Luckily Kristin's a tiny little thing.

 They play in the stands during the game and all the clarinets sit together in the same the row. 

 Another picture of the clarinets from the other side.  Probably from the same game since they're sitting in the same order.

 I love being able to get field pictures of when she's playing since that's not something I can do from the stands.  I love parents that are photographers and that share their pictures with the rest of us.

 A close-up of her playing in the stands. 

 And having a little fun with her friends.

That's if for now.  They have one more home game but I'm going to have to miss it because Zach has a fall festival at his school and he's really looking forward to it.  The rest are away games and I'll doubt I'll go to them.  They are marching in a Halloween parade so hopefully I'll be able to catch that.  Her marching band days for this year are soon coming to an end.

Homecoming Dance

 

Homecoming time again.  This year I have two girls going to the dance.  Lauren wanted to get ready at a friends house so I never got to see her wearing her dress or take any of my own pictures.  She was kind of enough to send me one she took with her phone.  Well, she actually sent me two pictures, one of just her and then this one of her and her friend. 

 I chose to put the one of her and her friend on here so you can see that it's not just Lauren that has a skimpy dress on!  It's hard to find anything that's not skin tight and short.

Lauren went with a white dress while Kristin opted for a black dress.  She however invited some of her friends to our house to get ready.  They took forever to get ready too so I quickly snapped a few pictures of them before driving them to the dance. 

I picked Kristin and her friends up afterwards and they seemed to have a good time.  I guess I'll hear about Lauren's night tomorrow when she comes home for her soccer game. 

Happy 15th Birthday Kristin!

Kristin celebrated her birthday Thursday night with her friends when they came over and spent the night.  They ate pizza, went to the park, did girl things like do each other's make-up and hair, stuff like that.  This morning, her actual birthday,  Kristin wanted to make her own cake and had previously picked out a recipe so I could have all the ingredients for her.  At first she told me that she wanted to make either lemon squares or chocolate/peanut butter cake so imagine my surprise when she told me she wanted to make sweet potato cheesecake!  I was like really????  But since I wasn't making it I went and bought everything for it and here she is this morning making it.

It was an all day event!  The crust needed to be baked, the sweet potatoes had to be baked for an hour and then cooled and then the actual cheesecake had to be made and baked.  Then once all that was done a topping had to be made and put on top of the cheesecake before it could be placed in the refrigerator to set. 

Kristin went to Timothy's again this year for dinner and not long after coming home from that we got her cake out to sing happy birthday.  Lauren was in charge of lighting the candles.  Too bad she doesn't know how to use a match!

See her lovely cheesecake?  It came out looking beautiful.
Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday dear Kristin.  Happy birthday to you!

See those couple of candles that didn't go out?

After huffing and puffing on them she realizes that they are trick candles.

That was Lauren's idea to do that since Kristin loves gag gifts.  As for the cake, the middle was not quite firm but that's probably because it needed to stay in the refrigerator longer.  The taste of it was delicious though!  Good choice Kristin!  Hope you had a happy 15th birthday!

Day Off from School

The kids and I were both off on Friday and it was a beautiful day to be outside.  It was Megan's idea to have a water balloon fight and she originally filled all the balloons.  When it was over Zach, however, wanted to fill some more on his own so I set him up with everything and then sat nearby to take some pictures.

He liked it when he let go and the water squirted everywhere.  In fact he insisted that  I take a video specifically to put on my blog so here it is: 

It's pretty neat to be having water fun in October!  That's going to change this weekend though when it's supposed to be 55 degrees on Sunday.  Time to dig out the winter coats!

More Band





Here are several pictures/videos from the past few events that Kristin has done.  It includes two different games, band day at UD and a festival at Rising Sun.

 

Last weekend Kristin went to the University of Delaware with her high school band.  There were several high schools there and they all got together and practiced with the UD band in the morning and then performed with the UD band during the half time game.  Thanks to other wonderful parents that take pictures (I didn't go) I got some pictures of her.  Here she is with the UD band.  She's in the very center of the picture wearing one of the bright yellow shirts.

The band sits and plays in the stands for every quarter during football games except the 3rd quarter, they get that one off.  Kristin is in the 2nd row from the bottom, 5th person in from the right.

She's the first person to march off the field after their performance.  Well, the first person behind the drum major that is. 

Having fun in the stands with the other clarinet players.

They played in a festival in Rising Sun, MD yesterday which was basically a competition among different high schools.  Her school came in third place.

Another picture of her in the stands.

Now onto the videos.  I've taken several and I had a hard time choosing what to put on here.  I narrowed it down to these 3 because you can see her the best in them.  The marching band theme this year is Santana. 

 

 

 

 

The band seems to have a lot of fun when they're playing in the stands.  A couple times they get up and dance.  That is everyone except Kristin!

And yet another one of her not dancing.

 

She is definitely not a dancer!  Maybe by the time she's a senior she will.  That's it for pictures and videos for now.  Sorry to overload you all in one post.

Helping Mommy

The kids have had a lot of days off from school this month.  In fact they've only had one full week of school in the month of September.  They got off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur but because I work in a Catholic preschool I obviously did not get off.  Where I work they allow us to bring in our kids so Zach came to work with me.  He had the option of staying home with his sisters but he chose to come with me probably because he knew he could play!  Here he is the first day he came with me, he was showing my preschool kids how to build a tower with the blocks.

He loves the blocks and loves building with them but he also likes to crash them down which is NOT what we want our preschool kids to do.  Mainly because it gets too loud in the room and we don't want any of the kids to get hurt with flying blocks.  So I told him to make roads with the blocks instead so he showed the boys how to do that.

He came with me on a Wednesday and on Wednesday's the kids have both music and gym classes.  I went to gym with the preschool kids and Zach came with me for that one but during music class I stayed behind and got some work done.  I put Zach to work sweeping the floor!

Of course that lasted long enough for me to take the picture!  He won't have another opportunity to come into work with me until November.  He has a day off for Columbus Day weekend but so do I and then I actually have another day off but the kids don't.  I can't wait for that one, that hardly ever happens.

Kristin's Updated Room

Kristin's room got a much needed paint job yesterday.  She had pink walls before like this:

And now they're a lovely sea foam green like this:

It doesn't quite match her comforter and curtains but that's okay.  We'll make it work somehow.  If not she might be getting all new bedding.  :)

Mentos and Coke Experiment



On our summer bucket list was to do the Mentos and Coke guiser experiment.  So on the last official day of summer Paul set it up in the backyard with Zach's help.

With the countdown on here's what happened:

Yeah, not too exciting.  We actually did it twice and now we can officially cross it off our summer bucket list.  We got a lot done on our list and whatever we didn't get to will get put on next year's summer bucket list.  I'll have to update you on what we accomplished later, when I get more time. 

Apple Tasting

Zach brought home from school a monthly list of optional activities for the month of September and one of the activities was to taste test different apples.  So I went to the store and bought 4 different kinds:  Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Fuji and Pink Lady.



I took it one step further and instead of just Zach taste testing we asked Paul, Megan and Lauren to taste test also.  The Fuji and Pink Lady tied for the best and the worst tasting was the Red Delicious.  I wish the Honey Crisp apple had been out when I went shopping because I heard it was really good.  Maybe we'll do another apple taste test before Zach takes his paper back and include that one. 

Band

Kristin had her first marching band experience last night.  We weren't sure she was going to march or not since her shoes that we ordered through the band department hadn't come in yet and the band director has a rule that if you don't have the shoes then you don't march.  Good thing I ordered them through her band director!  It wouldn't have been my fault if they hadn't come in.  But fortunately they did so she was able to march. 

When Paul and I arrived the band was already sitting in the stands.  Kristin is bottom left in this picture.

 I should have cropped this one for you but you can sort of see her near the middle of the picture.

 During the first half the band played music in the stands.  Kristin doesn't quite know all the music yet because that's a lot to memorize when you're a freshman!  At halftime they performed 3 songs (will eventually do 4).  Yet again, it all needs to be memorized.  Here's my girl as she marched on the field.  I love the hat!

 They had the 3rd quarter off to go do what they wanted to do so Kristin stopped by and Paul snapped this picture with his phone. 

 It was a hot night and she was a big sweaty mess in that uniform.  Paul gave her money to go buy a water bottle at the snack bar.

Then for the 4th quarter they had to be back to play again in the stands.

I was going to take some video of her while she was marching but my cameras display wouldn't light up and at the moment I had no idea why.  I didn't want to fool with it and miss the whole thing so I figured I would video her another time.  It's not like they don't do the same performance for every single game!  I was kind of excited to start camera shopping but when I got home it turns out that one of the buttons must have accidentally been pressed, the one that turns off the display.  So no camera shopping for me (well, maybe I will anyway :)   These pictures (except for the one Paul took) are ones that other parents took and then put up on the band website.  Thank goodness there are nice parents that have nice cameras or this blog post wouldn't have happened.

Pool Fun over Labor Day Weekend

I haven't posted many pool pics this summer so I wanted to at least post one of all the kids.  They rarely are ever at the pool at the same time because one will be at a friend's house or Lauren has to work.  So for the first time in a long time the kids and I (Paul was at a softball tournament) got a little pool time together.  

Don't they make a cute bunch?  So grown-up looking.

 

Here they are from August of 2009.  Zach wasn't as cooperative then!



Actually, he's still not!  I was surprised he was so willing to get this years picture taken.

Longwood Gardens

I was coming down to the wire with using my Brandywine Treasure Trail pass at Longwood Gardens.  The pass is up on September 3rd and the only thing left that I really wanted to do on it was to visit Longwood Gardens.  I wanted to see their Light exhibit and it's best viewed at night so we couldn't go on a school night.  Last night finally worked for all of us (except Lauren but she didn't want to go anyway) so we left the house around 6:30 and headed to Longwood.  We had about an hour before it got dark so we headed to the conservatory.  We got to see the lily pads:

 By the time we finished touring the conservatory the inside lights were coming on, here's Snowballs:

It looked much better in person because there were more of them and they were synchronized to change colors. 

After leaving the conservatory it was dusk out and I was ready to move on to see the different light exhibits set-up outside.  The kids had a different plan though and wanted to run along the grass "steps" for 15 minutes.  Whatever, I think all that did was wear Zach out for later.  So we finally move along and visit the Forest of Light.  We didn't do the whole forest walk but what we did see was gorgeous. 

 Water Towers was the next light attraction we saw which was situated way out in a field. 

 It had 69 structures that were made from 1-liter plastic bottles that changed colors.  It was probably prettier from a distance as we were walking to it than when we were close-up.  My picture doesn't do it justice because you can't see all the pretty colors.

We saw a couple of the other light exhibits but by this time Zach and Megan were both whining to go home.  I really wish that we had left the kids at home and just Paul and I went.  It would have been much more enjoyable!

I was able to pull off one last picture of the 3 of them at the entrance. 

And that conluded our evening out and the start to our Labor Day weekend since no one had school or work today.

1st Day of School

The kids started school on different days.  Kristin and Zachary started on Monday.

Megan and Lauren started school on Tuesday.

All elementary school plus 6th and 9th grade went on Monday and since Kristin was starting 9th grade she started before the other girls.  One advantage was that the 9th graders had the school to themselves to figure out where their classes were before the rest of the high school started.  Good thing too because it is a confusing high school!

They all seemed to have a good first day and even a good first week.  Here's hoping they have a good year!