October 1-11

Note to my children: If you want something documented, make sure it happens in the first part of the year, when I'm still managing to update regularly and haven't succumbed to the overwhelm of life and the perceived futility of ever catching up.

October begins the loosening of our busy schedules. Theodore played his last fall soccer game. He's been loving it, so we are looking for an indoor winter option for him. Matthias played his last fall soccer game as well, probably. His team was undefeated in the regular season, and there are rumors of post season opportunities. 4th grade soccer has been very last minute, though, so if there are more games we'll find out approximately 24 hours before they happen. Kaitlyn's cross country season ended with a 16:29 PR on the hardest course of the season (our home course). Sixth graders do not compete at conference. Gretchen has one more race (conference), Olivia has at least two.

Olivia ran a great PR at our October 3 meet -- 22:57. She also placed second on our team that day. She and her friend, Elaine have been back and forth between second and third. They push each other well. Gretchen has been chasing a PR all season, eking out season bests by a few seconds at each race, but missing that elusive time from last year. On October 3 she finally managed a 16:15 for a PR, and then three days later at our home meet (the hard one), she crushed her goals and ran a 15:44. Also at the home meet the junior high girls got second place! There are only four of them, so normally they can't score as a team, but only two schools at this particular meet had full junior high teams, so we all agreed to alternate scoring -- teams of 3 instead of teams of 5 -- and I spent the high school race running the junior high numbers by hand.

School has settled into a routine. We are accustomed to getting out the door early enough to get Gretchen to Spanish class, which is this year running as a zero hour class at the grade school. Last year Olivia's Spanish class was first hour at the high school and then they bussed the students back to St Charles. We've figured out the pickup routine as well, and head over to pick up Olivia from a back door after being released from our row at St Charles. Olivia and Theodore have their homework bases covered and have adjusted to the demands of their new grades. Gretchen and Matthias are relatively on top of things. Kaitlyn is disliking middle school thus far and does not appreciate the amount of homework that is assigned.

LCC had homecoming last night and Olivia went! A small sliver of Bryan in that decision, but the rest of the night was mine. She quite happily went shopping in our basement and wore one of Jacque's old homecoming dresses. She warmed it up with my lace sweater and a pair of leggings, but did consent to fancy sparkly heels -- borrowed from my closet. Her plan going in was to text us when she was ready to come home, which she did at 10:00. On the drive home, she happily told me about her night: I went inside with my friends and we walked to the gym. I joked, "Okay, I did it, let's go now." The room was dark and the music was loud and we couldn't hear each other. There wasn't really anything to do, although people were jumping up and down. I guess that was the dancing? I went and found a quiet hallway and read my book for an hour and a half, and then I texted you. I had a lovely time.

Bryan and I also got all dressed up last night. We went to a wedding with a formal dress code that was actually formal, so I wore my senior recital dress and Bryan bought a suit that fits. We fit in fine, but he maintains that the suit jacket was unnecessary since dinner was a buffet on foam plates and drinks were bottles of beer. It was a little bit of a juxtaposition. How often to I have an excuse to wear my fancy dress, though? Never. The ceremony was quick, the food was tasty, and the company at our table was pleasant. We knew exactly one person there (the bride), danced a line dance and a slow dance, and came home in time to take a picture of Olivia before she left for homecoming.

Bryan got tired of having holes all over the backyard, so he designated the side of the house as a place where Matthias and Theodore could dig with abandon. They've been industriously working on it (with the help of some friends) and have quite a sizeable hole now. Unfortunately, it's closer to the house than is advisable. Bryan took a picture of them with their hole and we are going to put it in a jar as a one item time capsule and fill the hole back in. A new spot, further from pipes and foundations, has been marked for their next hole.

Pictures:

Playing Catch-Up: July

Summer is the worst. It's also the best, but the things that make it the best contribute to it being the worst. We get to sleep in, but our days are packed. Not predictably packed, though. Randomly, inefficiently, new-adventure-every-day packed. We get to take trips, but we have to prepare for, endure, and recover from those trips. The kids have activities, but someone has to get them there. And back. I'm glad school has started again and returned us to predictable schedules.

I believe I last left off in July. Jillian and Caleb had an engagement party. We got to see my whole family (almost all at once, but not quite) at camp and then at our house. Things were settling down a little bit. For a moment.

The Sunday after everyone left (actually on the day that Jillian and Caleb left), I piled Olivia, Gretchen, and three other teenagers into my van to drive them to St. John's Camp. It's a little over a four hour drive one way. The trip was quite pleasant. After depositing five teenagers at the doors of four different cabins, I began the trip back home. I had a new audiobook to listen to and there was a Culver's along the way. :) I actually didn't need to stop at Culver's for anything because that's where we'd had lunch on the way to camp, but my phone battery was dying, so I stopped to plug it in for a while. It was on this trip that I discovered that my backup battery charger no longer worked. By the time I got near St. Mary's, my phone was at 2%. No big deal, I thought, because two of my children were born at the St. Mary's hospital, so I should remember the way home from there. Unfortunately, I did not start at the hospital. I got off at the exit for St. Mary's and started having regrets just as my phone died and the sun began going down. I pretty much never travel into Lima from the southwest, so I began zigging and zagging along country roads, hoping to eventually hit one I recognized. When the moment came, I almost missed it because it turns out that Fort Amanda is named something else once it crosses a certain point. Luckily, that point was the exact road I was on, and I had a feeling that I should check the street signs going both directions. I made it home and put a new battery charger in my Amazon cart.

Monday began the boys' week of Safety City, which is a free program offered each summer. The kids go for two hours a day and learn various types of safety: bike and road rules, fire and tornado safety, how to yell loudly and run away if someone tries to grab you. The big draw is the scaled city of Lima with business sponsored model buildings along a bike road. There's one stoplight and also a train crossing. Theodore did not love the bike days, though, because he can't ride a bike yet and we don't know where the training wheels went. He works on it sometimes, but he's not excited to try.

This was the second year in a row that had mornings when I was home alone with Kaitlyn. As is our custom, we learned a tiktok dance. This year we picked a harder one, so we started with the simplified version of Stateside and moved on to the harder official version. I've already forgotten a lot of it, but we did have a chance to pull it out and dance it at Jillian and Caleb's wedding.

On Friday after Safety City I took Kaitlyn and the boys to Grandma's house so that Bryan and I could go to a friend's wedding in Michigan. The wildfire smoke that was bad in Lima was even worse in Ann Arbor, but the wedding was indoor so it didn't matter much. The reception was fun -- pickleball instead of dancing. Everyone was warned and brought clothes to change into. Only a few people already knew how to play pickleball, so the groom ended up teaching everyone so that he could beat them. Bryan and I had a good time. Saturday morning we stopped by to visit the Sledges before heading home.

The next week was VBS at St. Stephen. I'm in charge of that, and my helpers are usually whatever teenagers I can coerce. This year I had another adult, which was pretty exciting. Not that the teenagers aren't capable -- after a few years of helping they're old pros. My favorite part of this year's VBS was the homemade Hullabaloo game that I put together. Our categories were churches, crosses, feast days, and saints (the saints being the ones we focused on this year) and in transition times when we were waiting for a few people to finish up we would head out to the parsonage garage and play a few rounds of Hullabaloo. The very first time we played we tried being outside instead, but I immediately dropped St Basil's Cathedral through the slats in the front porch and we had to play without it until I printed another one. It landed face up, so all the kids just flopped down to look at it through the cracks. Kaitlyn helped part of the week and Olivia and Gretchen helped the other part of the week. The times they were not helping were spent at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

On that Friday we all headed to Sidney to visit. On Saturday Bryan and the kids attended Lincoln's birthday party at the park. I met up with some friends and drove down to Cincinnati for a day of puzzles. We did the regular pairs and teams divisions, but I opted for the casual division solo puzzle -- only 300 pieces instead of 500 -- and have zero regrets. My puzzling days are few and far between at this point.

On Sunday we woke up, went to church in Dayton, and then headed to our now annual trip to Great Wolf Lodge. The kids loved it, as always. I'm happy that they are old enough that they pretty much take care of themselves. I think I got in the water 4 times total, and once was to help an unrelated child across the lily pads. My book and I had a lovely time sitting by the wave pool and checking in on people.

I will have to find the pictures from this month and post them later.