One Busy Week

The weeks are becoming busier as all of our activities are beginning to start up again. Gabe is in volleyball, and Maddie's fencing classes have begun again. Girl Scouts started with a great activity to the California Pizza Kitchen and Jayd already has two fall baseball games over and done. Cub Scouts is up and running, I am going for another year in that organization. Then when you add back to school nights, and a couple of personal items, they all start to be busy weeks!
This week had two highlights. I assisted my dad with his cleanup of Grandma's house. My Grandma Reeder has decided that it is time to sell her house. She has been living in assisted living for about 2 years now. So my dad came down for about 2 weeks to go through things, help divide, distribute and clean. I came home with Grandmas sewing table, and the parlor organ, along with several books and knick knacks. I am thrilled to get them and have spent the week trying to assimilate them into my home.
The other highlight was Jayd's Eagle Scout Board of Review. He passed the review and is officially an Eagle Scout. I am very proud of him. He worked very hard to complete this achievement before he turned 14. I am so happy for him.

Tour, What Tour?

So for our first kickoff cub scout activity, I planned a tour of the local firestation. This requires some preparation because you must determine which shift is scheduled for the day you want the tour, then find out the next day they will be in so that you can call them and make a reservation. You can't really change the reservation, or call to remind because it is always a different shift that is there, and communicating small details like a cub scout pack coming to visit apparently isn't very high on the priority list. So I made the reservation with the correct shift back in August. I gathered my cub scouts, and did opening excercises right on the driveway of the fire station where the firefighters were washing the truck, then stood expectantly with 9 smiling little boys and looked at the firefighters. Eventually they noticed us, but didn't really invite us to do anything, just smiled and nodded. So I hesitantly asked about our tour. Tour? What Tour? was the reply. Apparently the shift that was scheduled for that day was away at a brush fire and this was a skeleton crew pulled from other stations. Oh no! Luckily, they were a good bunch of guys and were willing to give us a tour anyways. You could tell he was showing us and doing things on the fly, but I don't think the boys cared. They got to see the bunks, the kitchen, the office, and the fire truck. They held a nozzle, walked through the back of the truck and watched the firefighter get dressed in 47 seconds. With about 5 minutes left, they got a call, so they all hopped in the truck, honked goodbye, turned on the siren and drove away. The cub scouts thought it was the best trip to the fire station ever!

Can you count to eleven?

I could bore you with more pics of Disneyland, but I thought the better of it. So instead, I will go with another date entry. Yesterday was 9, 10, 11, so we had a minute long celebration. at 7:08, we celebrated counting to 11. In this picture there is one, two, three, ...etc items up to six, bringing us to a total of 11 (7:08, 9-10-11) Can you figure out the other items? Answers are in the post below/previous.

Can you count to eleven? - answers

1 - our lizard, Toby
2 - our turtles, Lyle and Minnie
3- laffy taffy candies
4- Stouts
5- fingers (although there are multiple hands)
6- magnets above the 9-10-11 sign

First day of School

The kids tromped off to school again this year. The summer fun had come to an end. As usual, I am happy to get back into a routine, but sad to see them go. This year I only have two schools to deal with since Jayd started highschool along with Maddie.


Jeff decided to go with a few less conventional first day of school pictures. I guess Maddie is letting Jayd know where his place as a freshman really is.

A Recreational Birthday Party

Last Saturday, our local parks and recreation department celebrated their 50th birthday with a bash for the whole city. They had concerts and activities at four locations throughout the city. We went to the local park for a Garth Brooks knock off concert, complete with country activities. The moment we arrived, Allie and Gabe wanted to go on the pony ride. The line was long, but we hopped in and waited for nearly an hour. Luckily, we were able to ride the ponies, the people behind us weren't so lucky. We were the last riders of the night! Phew. We played horseshoes, saw the animals and Gabe caught the last hay ride of the night. They passed out ice cream sandwiches to the crowd and frisbees to take home. Then to cap off the night, there were fireworks. The fireworks were bright, shiny, shimmery and beautiful. There was a bright and festive finale, then everyone packed up to go home. It was a very fun evening. Half an hour later, on our way home, we heard a huge boom! We looked up, it was another firework! They set off about 8 more fireworks, then they were done. Apparently, they forgot to set those ones off during the celebration, but they couldn't put them in storage, so they just set them off. It was a little funny!

Summer Highlights

It seems like this was one of the calmer weeks of the summer, yet when I sat down to blog, a lot happened this week! Here are some of the highlights:

We decided Saturday to throw a party on Sunday for our good friends, the Asplunds. They are moving.
Maddie went to Girls Camp
Allie and Gabe went to visit with their cousin, Benjamin, for two days
Yuka, our Japanese student went home
Allie turned 10 years old, for her birthday, we went to visit my sister, Krissy, and spontaneously stayed the night.
We went to the dive in movie

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of any of these events except our Japanese student. For their farewell, they put on a great presentation. It was full of games, dancing and singing. For one of the contests, they played "Japanese Roulette". They gave a panel of 5 people a cream puff. One was filled with wasabi. The goal was fool the audience that you didn't have the wasabi cream puff. Jayd and Gabe eagerly volunteered. Here is their contest.