You Don't See That Every Day

The annual knock on doors and ask for candy routine went down tonight.   Sadly, we are down 2 of our players though. The remaining 3 rallied for a good finish, but the older two members of the team were missed.  Tonight's team consisted of a cute little puppy (easy to make, and easy to keep warm!!), a snow queen, alias Elsa. (Strangely enough, we saw a lot of these Elsa characters tonight) and an unknown movie starlet. The head coaches managed to get a good mile out of the 3 players, who did not complain until the final stretch. And then it was only the youngest saying, "my legs are tired." We were fortunate to not have rain! Hurrah! And thankfully the administration knew to bundle up. It's one of the prerequisites of the night's uniform. Now that the team has headed to the bunks, it's time to "sort" the night's winnings.

School in the fall includes costumes and shaving cream

Back in the nicer days of fall (before the rain!), I took a bike ride with some of my girls, my sisters, niece, and brother-in-law. Since I was hauling an extra 30+ pounds on my bicycle (Little K is at leas t 35 lbs) I was in the back most of the time. So I gave the 4 yr old the camera, with instructions on how not to drop it. Seems like she understood that one fine. After the ride I checked out her photography skills. My girl was pretty good at taking selfies:

Fall usually means football, candles, pumpkins, wood stoves, hats, and finally a chance to wear my boots again. But it also means we are starting to get ready for basketball! I love basketball. Ever since I was a sophomore in high school and begged my mom to play on the team. Love to watch it, love to play it, and now I love to 'coach' my kids on it. No, not like one of "those" parents who coaches (ie. screams) from the sidelines. Earlier in the week, I had the girls out on the driveway practicing some drills. Tryouts are coming up soon, and they want to be ready. THEY want to be ready. (just for clarification here) So I dug back to the recesses of my playing days and drug out some drills for them to go through. Basic stuff, nothing fancy - passing, dribbling, lay-ins (oh, how I did not like those lay-in drills). And it was fun. I had fun talking them through what to do. And I think they had fun trying out what mom was saying. At least they didn't rebel or stomp...

Remember these? I came upstairs the other day to find a 'playground' that the girls had made. I love that they are playing with the exact toys I used to play with. We also have Lincoln Logs, and the square blocks that Avon used to sell back in the day when my mom bought things from them.

My girl had a birthday last month.  I am just now getting around to writing about it. (I haven't had a lot of energy or motivation lately.) She wanted a horse themed birthday party. So a day or two before the party, we threw some ideas together, sent out some invitations, whipped up a cake, and came up with games. I am so thankful I have older girls to help me with these kinds of things! The games were held outside - they including horse races (on stick horses), roping a barrel, barrel racing, and tug-of-war. Unfortunately we didn't have any horse shoes, 'cause that would have been a fun one to play too. Overall, it looked like all the girls were having a great time.  Later in the evening, her grandparents came over, and got to see her open her family presents. I was able to score an A.G. doll for half price earlier in the year, and saved it until the big day. I think she likes it ;) How did she get to be 9? Seems like just last week she was walking around with ...

99 jars of pears on the wall, 99 jars of pears. Take one down pass it around, .... Ok you get the gist. On Saturday my sister and my niece and I canned up 99 jars of pears. We had one jar beak so actually we only 98 jars, but still.... It was a long day. I did learn some things about my family though. My parents showed up in the middle of the day. They were on the way to the coast. Mom offered a few tidbits of advice, since she has been canning since she was a teen. It was interesting to hear how all four of us had different ways of doing things. I learned some new things, and I kept some of my own ways of doing it. Off my parents went to enjoy the cool ocean breezes while we slaved away in a very warm kitchen. Thankfully we did the actually cooking outside. Just as we were figuring out when to wrap it all up and if we were going to church that night, my parents show up again. They didn't make it to the coast because of a bad traffic jam. So they came back to our place. ...