October Review

What? You say it's already November? That can't be!

October was a crazy, crazy month and yes it might be mid November, but life has hardly slowed down and I realized that the one measly post I did in October didn't even begin to cover everything that went on .

As usual, our month was filled with soccer. Lots and lots of soccer- 12 two hour practices and 8 games.



One of the games was scheduled for 5:00 the night of the Homecoming Dance. Garrett missed out on all the pre-homecoming activities including pictures, but assured me he'd get pictures later. And he did-one iPhone picture :-(


Luckily he tried on his clothes earlier in the day and I snapped a picture of him.



I worked in Jack's class twice this month. I love watching him interact with his classmates. Apparently he volunteers to say the prayer everyday, he's very outgoing.



Chris had his big Open World conference in San Francisco. This is a huge event for his company and each year he seems to speak at more and more seminars. I guess you have to be part of his world to understand what a big deal this is. He keeps telling me he's a VIP, maybe this picture proves it :-P
Thanks to Mom coming up and staying for a few days, I was able to join them for their big appreciation event. It's located on Treasure Island and it's quite a production. After dinner at Roys with his boss, we headed over there and watched Tom Petty and Sting perform.



About a week later, Mom and Art were up for another visit. I'll share more pictures later, but one of the days we headed to San Francisco and while Jack and Grammie rode the trollie cars for hours, Art and I rode on Segways and made our way around town. 3 words: So. Much. Fun!



October wouldn't be complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch. Jack went with his class and then we visited another one.







We went to a Halloween party and Jack got second place.
>

This picture cracks me up. Here he is being lifted up like something being auctioned off by some creepy looking guy.

And here's our Angry Bird pumpkins. Got the whole family in making these and I think they turned out so cute!


And here's Jack who decided to forgo his prize winning fireman costume and wear his knight costume.



Morgan went with a friend in another part of town. She came home with 10 pounds of candy. I think that more than made up for not trick or treating last year.

So that wraps up the month of October.

We've Got Spirit

yes we do. We've got spirit how 'bout you?



So I had updated about Morgan's injury, but right after that she started physical therapy. Two mornings a week before school we went and she did her exercises and was given the go ahead to participate.

The night before the first competition we hosted a hair rolling party. That would be 18 girls and 18 moms, a sister and a coach that came to our house for a potluck dinner. Afterwards we gathered around my family room and were instructed in the correct way to put five gazillion rollers in your daughter's hair. And in case you're wondering, that would involve nearly an entire bottle of hairspray per girl. The air was thick!





Then they were told how to apply their makeup. Morgan volunteered to be the model.




I went back and forth about taking pictures that day. I really wanted to just watch them perform, but I just hated to not come away with a few pictures. They did awesome, came in third and qualified to go to Nationals which are held at California Adventure in March. Chris got a nice video, but it's top secret and if you saw it I'd have to kill you~ha ha.

That would be Morgan tumbling right there.






Way to go girls!

Not MY monster

Here's a project I recently did I thought I'd share. This past month as Morgan's cheer team has been spending more time getting ready for their first competition, tensions are beginning to flare. Morgan's coach has two sons, I think she is getting a crash course in dealing with pre-teen girls. And lucky her-she gets 18 girls 8+ hours a week. God bless her.

So using this project I did last year, I created a little gift for her.




I included a gift card to Starbucks and in between the candy is a bottle of aspirin. Her coach gets paid a very minimal stipend and I think really appreciated the thought and the humor.

The October Curse

I guess it is more like the fall curse, but the last few years October has been particularly bad for Morgan.

2007-The day Jack was born, Morgan came down with strep throat. She was so bummed that she couldn't meet her brother.

2008-We escaped sickness this year.

2009-Highly anticipated week at Outdoor Ed camp with school. Not there even 24 hours before we got a call that she had a fever and had to come home.

2010-Snapping pictures and excited to head out trick or treating and once again hit with another high fever that put her in bed with not an iota of interest in going out.

2011-In an effort to break this string of bad luck, I made sure Morgan got her flu shot and was just about ready to laugh in the face of this curse.

I should know better.

About 8 weeks ago, Morgan did a jump and landed funny on her knee. She complained it hurt, but we did the ice and Motrin and she seemed to be getting around fine. After 3 weeks of her still complaining I took her to an orthopedist. He didn't see any swelling so thought she needed to rest-took her off PE, put a brace on her knee and said in a couple weeks she'd be as good as new. But she wasn't. So she got an x-ray and it was negative. So she got an MRI. We got the results yesterday and apparently she wasn't making it up. Her orthopedist seemed quite surprise, she has a tear in her quadriceps tendon-an injury rarely seen in kids, it's more likely to occur in middle aged people. Leave it to Morgan! It apparently is a complete fluke and the fact that it taking so long to heals means she's been to active to allow it to heal.

Cue bad news...she cannot compete in her first cheerleading competition. It's 2 1/2 weeks away and he thinks she's 4 weeks away from being healed. She's really disappointed. She'll be going to physical therapy to help, but there's no way to predict where she'll be in the healing process so she has to bow out.



Next year, I may not laugh at the curse, but I'm taking extra precautions.

Roar....Jack turned 4

This year I decided to take a birthday shortcut and have Jack's party at an indoor inflatable bouncy place. I had a couple other birthday ideas, but this just seemed like a good place to celebrate this year.

And with smiles like these, I'd say he had a great time. The kids bounced and slid and giggled and sweated. Oh boy, they were worn out after an hour of bouncing.


We then headed to the party room where the purple and red decor of the room really clashed with the blue, orange and green decorations I had brought. But somehow, when everything was decorated, it looked real cute. If you can't tell, Jack (with some nudging from me) picked a dinosaur party. I bought a couple of digital files on Etsy and made the water bottle wrapper, cupcake toppers and a few other bag toppers. I also found some cute fabric and I sewed a banner in coordinating colors. Probably not necessary, but it turned out super cute. We weren't supposed to bring in outside food (I purchased pizza and fruit trays from them), but I did and they didn't say a word. What's a dinosaur party without some herbivore dinosaur treats? A basket of squeezable apple sauces and bags of veggie sticks were perfect for our hungry little bunch.




I had some mini plastic dinosaurs on the table that I used for decorations, but it turned out to be a fun thing to keep the kids busy while the food was being served.


Jack ended the party by passing out the goodie bags. I purchased plain kraft bags at the dollar store added a dinosaur ribbon and cut out a dinosaur on my Cricut. I actually purchased all the goodies inside the bag several months ago. Found some dinosaur goodies at Michaels in the dollar spot and took a gamble that we'd be able to use them. There was a dinosaur placemat, a dinosaur book, an egg with a dinosaur inside, an etched dinosaur pad and a small bag of jelly bellies that I packaged with a topper that said "prehistoric dinosaur eggs".

We brought the gifts home to open them as we were running short on time and Jack has been in toy heaven the last couple days.


Happy Birthday to my sweet 4 year old, you are a little ray of sunshine who delights in play and makes us smile every single day.

Summer-ventures-July

I wrote this up some time ago, but I guess it never got posted. Better late than never.

We're are making good progress on getting through our lists of fun things we wanted to do this summer.
One Friday night, we went to the county fair. It was a beautiful summer evening and the crowds were very light-my type of event.
We thought we'd be doing a lot of this...


But instead we wandered through the 4-H rabbit hutches and got detoured by the railroad sign. And Jack stopped us in our tracks (pun intended-ha ha). An entire room was devoted to O and H-O scale model trains. Of course we didn't know this at the time, but the elderly volunteers were quite taken with Jack's interest and knowledge of trains and spent a good part of the night teaching us about model railroads. We had so much fun watching Jack, we actually came back to the fair on $.99 day and spent an afternoon here again.



Our big summer vacation this year was in Cayucos. But on the way down we stopped at Gilroy Gardens. It was the last day of the dinosaur exhibit. You'll notice in the picture Jack looking back at that triceratops. They were animitronic and gave him a startle the first time they moved. I think he was never quite convinced that they'd take off after him.

Ahhh-Cayucos. My sister and her family made the long flight for the east coast to join us. Would have loved to get some better pictures, but the wind was pretty strong and the sand was even more appealing.

The big surprise. Everyone thought we were going to Cambria to shop for the afternoon, but a little surprise was in store. 4 generations in a limo, made for a pretty memorable afternoon. Of course, some of us remember it a bit more clearer than others. But...what happens in the limo, stays in the limo :-)

If you ever are in the area, I highly suggest driving to Montana de Oro State Beach. I believe this area where we spent the day is called Spooner's Cove. My goodness, this is one of the most gorgeous beaches. It's not a swimming beach or a lay out and sun yourself beach, but geologically it's magnificent. There are tidepools, rounded stones, unusual rock formations, areas to climb and explore. In one word-GO!

Garrett attended a 4 day camp at UC Berkeley. He liked the camp, but he loved the dorm experience at a prestigious college. All in all, I'd say he learned some new soccer skills, but also gained a strong desire to make sure he's able to go away to college.


After we dropped him off, I took Jack to the Lawrence Hall of Science which is on the same campus. They have a similar dinosaur exhibit, but bigger. There was a lot more to see.



Well summer is chugging along, we bought a few school supplies just the other day so we know what's around the corner. Still have a few days of fun we want to squeeze in before it's back to school. Stay tuned for our August Summer Ventures.

Well that was kind of cool

Last weekend Garrett and I flew down to Southern California for the NHB Soccer Tournament. With the tournament scheduled over Labor Day weekend, we were a little scared about the traffic we might encounter so Chris stayed home with Jack and Morgan-our regular cheering section for Garrett's games.

But our Southern California entourage showed up and definitely made up for it. And in return Garrett gave an awesome show. He scored 3 of the 9 goals in the tournament.



And I got lucky and captured a couple of those goals.

Unfortunately, our winning streak ended in the quarterfinals when a tied game was decided in PKs. Still had a great time.

Paia-Part 2

Well I'm bound and determined to share the rest of our Maui trip so on to part 2.

So as I was saying...Paia-small, small town. Chris did all of the planning so he thought it would be best to do most of our excursions while we were here. The day we arrived we had a snorkeling trip planned, but upon landing we had a message saying it was cancelled due to the weather. Not exactly an ideal way to start a tropical vacation.
But we rescheduled for the following day. The snorkeling was supposed to be at Molokini, a partially sunken volcanic crater known for its snorkeling. About half way there, we were informed that the water was too choppy so we were going to head to Coral Gardens. Did we see fish? Yes. Did we see lots of them? Yes. But whatever spin your boat company may give you, Coral Gardens is the ugly step-sister to Molokini.





The boat was great as was the crew. The wetsuits were provided by the tour and boy were we glad we had them. The water was definitely on the chilly side. We enjoyed a nice lunch. So all in all it was a beautiful day.

That night we ate dinner at Mama's Fish House. This is probably the most popular restaurant on Maui and for good reason. The food is amazing. Chris and I showed little self control and ate until we were about to burst. If ever given a choice of last meal-Mama's Fish House would be it :-)






So the next day was probably one of our most favorite excursions. As it turns out, this was something that we could have done on our own, but we had the most wonderful tour guide that made this day long adventure so memorable. Our tour was booked through Hike Maui and we went on the full-day Hana waterfalls and rain forest hike. Actually, we didn't go to Hana, which having been several times before so that was totally fine with me. We stopped just as you got on the road to Hana. Our guide was Kahi, a native of Maui, a grandfather (still can't believe it), and just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet. The tour provided everything-river boots, bug spray, lunch, transportation from our hotel, etc...


Kahi is a naturalist and throughout an entire hike we were taught about the native (and mostly) non-native plants and their uses. This included some tasting along the way.

I would say the day could be summed up~over the river and through the woods...
In all we saw 5 separate waterfalls, Chris jumped off one cliff into a pool of water, I braved the freezing water to swim under a waterfall, we dined on boulders, hiked on slippery rocks, followed the trail of wild pigs (as identified by their urine~ewww!), and pretty much were exhausted by the end of the day. But, wow, you can't call the day boring, it was pretty amazing.



On Monday morning we checked out of the Paia Inn and drove up Haleakala to Skyline Eco Adventures for some ziplining on the crater. It always amazes me how different it is on different parts of the island. It's quite forested up there, Ziplining was fun. I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert, but we do seek out ziplining while vacationing so we felt pretty comfortable up there.









So after this excursion we headed down the volcano and over to the other side of the island-Wailea.
To be continued...