Hi! our Rec and Comp Soccer leagues have just ended and we are now in the School Soccer season. Max made Varsity this year at Melbourne and Jack made the JV team at West Shore. They each play twice a week on the same nights. Thankfully at different times. This week was the first week of games. We will be parked here under the Lights twice a week until February.
Max and Jack are excited because their uniform kits have included some cool warm up suits.
I am having to adjust our dinner menus to be prepare ahead kind of meals because once 4 o clock hits its homework and soccer with everyone coming and going at different times. Fitting in a family sit down dinner will happen probably only a few times a week for now. Tonight was the first night I had to pull out a jacket. We are excited for highs of just 67 tomorrow. Ha!
I can't believe it's already Thanksgiving. Mer will be coming home next week so she can see a dr about her knee and get an MRI and then we will probably have some decisions about what to do next. She continues to do well at school and is super excited to come home and eat non cafeteria food.
I ran the Savannah Half Marathon a couple of weekends ago. It was cold that morning so I ran so much faster than I usually do and then slowed down quite a bit at the end. But I ran it about 13 minutes faster than I did a couple of years ago so I'm happy with that.
Mischief of the week includes Jack going all out and creating a Hot Wheels collection of all his favorite cars. He and Max and Luke have been obsessed with fast cars lately. They identify them all around town and do research on them. Keeping life interesting over here.
Also for FHE one night we had night swimming. Even though it has still been hot here it hasn't bee quite hot enough over the last 3 weeks to keep the swimming pool warm. So they decided to try the wetsuit on for a little warmth.
Jack had to warm up a little by doing some exercises before jumping in.
Today was the first day of General Conference. I love Conference weekend. Jack and I started out today at 5:45 am driving to Lake Louisa State Park for his Cross Country Meet. He goes to a jr/sr high school now so he gets to run on the JV team as a 7th grader. He makes a new PR every meet. Today he came in at 22:45. Here's a little video form last week
Jack turned 13 last week. Our 3rd official teenager. He invited a bunch of boys over for a pizza Party last week to celebrate. They played ping pong, swam, and ate a Vermonster from Ben and Jerry's. The house was loud but oh so much fun.
Also today Mer played in her first college game as a starter. She played every position on and off while the coaches tried to figure out where she would be best. Her knee has been giving her a little bit of trouble so she was super glad that it held up well in the game for her. She is loving college. I will try and post and put up some pictures from when we dropped her off. She is loving all the hiking and beautiful scenery there.
Tommy has been doing preschool with our friend group again this year. He LOVES it. It was at our house this week. G is for Ghost!
He also has become a great swimmer in the last couple of months. We still have to watch him closely but he is pretty independent and can swim all over the pool taking breaths while he goes. He's just cute. Here he is at his first Dental cleaning.
We are getting all of our Halloween Decorations up slowly. Luke is the pushing for us to decorate as many things as we can. He loves Halloween and is considering being Storm Trooper. I'm not sure I can make that costume. I'm finally stumped. Luke and Doug have been working on a Science Fair Project. They are building a system where they pump water from the pool up to a bucket using solar power and then as the water flows back down they are trying to harness the energy produced by a turbine in the line to power a motor. They are having a pretty good time with it.
Max hurt his knee in Soccer a couple of weeks ago so he has been laying low. A couple of guys came down on it from the outside and it strained his Medial Collateral Ligament. It's a lot better now thankfully and he should be able to play this week. Hopefully it will continue to improve because soccer tryouts for school are in a couple of weeks and he is hoping to play on Varsity this year. Here's a video of the injury. Two guys went up for the ball and came down on Max, he's the one rolling on the ground.
I've been sewing a little lately on a commissioned tutorial for a Unicorn Halloween costume for the Fabric.com blog. It has been almost a year since I posted on my Blue Susan blog but I'll share more details about the costume there soon. I'm excited to have brushed up on my pattern drawing skills. It's so fun to make things.
We have one more month of soccer season for Jack and Luke and today we are finally tasting a little bit of slightly cooler weather.
Also Doug had a birthday this month.
He closed out his birthday night by showing Tommy Boy clips to the kids. Now Tom knows all the lines.
Hugs to all you who read this.
Happy times over here, Hope you are having happy times there too.
Good Morning! We have a had a fun couple of weeks. Tom and I made some Easter cards. We are hoping to send them out today. I did the cutting but he did the gluing and choosing of colors.
We made a quick pinewood derby car with Luke last week. He started it with Pa when he was in town. He took fourth place in a couple of the races but I think he came in dead last overall despite looking up all the tricks on the internet and the Hot video Tip from Uncle John. We told him he is carrying on the Markos tradition. But it was fun anyway.
Thomas is doing joy school with a few of his friends once a week. He LOVES it! We rotate who's house it's at each week. We do a letter each week and have made it all the way to the letter Z. Sadly we missed this day because he had a cold but we did our own activities at home instead.
He also has been loving Cucumbers lately. Balsamic Vinaigrette is his dip of choice. Sometimes he likes ranch though (which he calls Branch)
Last weekend Pa flew out to take care of the kids for us so I could join Doug at his conference in San Diego for a long weekend. We were so grateful for him willing to do this for us. It is not easy running all the kids to there activities and such. Here are some photos of our trip. We toured a retired aircraft carrier. It was amazing.
We met up with old friend Ab and Danelle saw their cute family.
We hiked around Torrey Pines and Cabrillo National Monument
We went to see the seals in La Jolla.
The temple was closed for cleaning while we were there but we stopped by.
We also took a lot of pictures of really nice cars at Jack and Luke's request.
Then we traveled up to LA and Doug humored me by stopping by my childhood house in Mission Hills.
We drove north to Liz's house to hang out with her family for a little while.
And had some IN n OUT
Then stopped at the Getty Center to see the beautiful gardens and art work.
All in all it was so fun and relaxing. Especially after the whirlwind of a week that lead up to it. I was a real treat to have no responsibilities. Thank you Doug and Pa for making it happen.
I've had these pictures loaded for months. They are the perfect summary of our November 2017. I will continue to try and catch up. Tom and I had lunch with Luke at school and Tom is showing us that he learned to wink.
The week before Thanksgiving I sold my bags in the annual craft fair. Its always a fun day for me. Doug also bought us a new car (honda minivan) that day while I was at the show.
Mer had a YW event where she was recognized for completing her personal progress.
The next week we drove up to Georgia to for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving day we had an Apple taste test. Who knew there were so many different tasting apples. My favorite was the Envy
Thomas said "YaYa makes good puppets" when he saw this picture.
the next day we traveled up to Helen GA to look around.
He hiked to a water fall
And hiked up to a place called that Brasstown Bald. Which you can look out over a few different states.
