Project 365: Day 305 - October 31

Halloween 2008 was much like Halloween 2007, except that I was not here to see the fun. That and the fact that Caroline went with her friends to the lawn and to a party.

David took our remaining kids to Carter's house where they love to hang out. Halloween is especially fun there because there are so many houses to visit, and so much candy to be had! This year Joey was there too - three little superheros all collecting as much candy as possible! And don't forget the princess! She came home with a bunch, too. Morgan helped hand out candy and then went off to a lock-in at church.

Project 365: Day 304 - October 30

I left town today to go to the Women of Faith conference in Greensboro. A friend and I decided to drive down early, play along the way, visit and stay with her sister-in-law who lives in Winston-Salem (Go Deacs!), and then head to the conference on Friday.

In my absence the family got the pumpkins carved! Yay!!!!

Project 365: Day 303 - October 29

Chula became a mother today.

There are five adorable puppies - 4 boys and a girl! The lightest one is the girl - we suggested they call her Caroline since it's her birthday today, but they have other names in mind.

This is a D year so any formal name has to begin with a D...so I guess Caroline is out. How about Darling, or one of my favorites, Dingleberry!

It won't matter much anyway since they'll all have new homes by the end of the year.

C13

Today #2 girl turned 13. I'm not sure how we got here so soon, but it's pretty clear that we'd better continue to hang on tight for this is sure to be a wild ride!

Tradition, if having only one before you counts as tradition, upon turning thirteen requires a scavenger hunt. There should be thirteen gifts hidden with riddle clues. The birthday girl, and one day boy, have to follow the clues to find all the gifts. Each gift leads to the next. Smart girls carry a flashlight and take a sibling along as a pack mule! Of course, this pack mule kept mum since she knew where all the gifts were hidden! She and the brother hid them all! David made up the very clever clues!

Happy happy birthday
To daughter #2
You have 13 presents!
Each one with its own clue.

Gift #1
Is in a big container that’s red
It used to go fast
But right now it’s dead.

You found #1!
No time to gloat
To find #2
Look in something that floats.

You found #2
You’re getting better and better
To find the next one
See if we got a letter.

You found that one too!
Now run, don’t you walk
And look behind something
We write on with chalk.

You found #4
You’re quite hard to fool
You’ll find #5
With the stuff for the pool.

You found #5
We hope you’re not draggin’
To find #6
Look under the red wagon.

To find the next one
Go back on the deck
Amid bottles and cans
Is where you should check.

To find #8
Back down you go
Look near the equipment
That makes water flow.

The next place warms in the winter
And cools in the summer
And when it goes out
It’s a real bummer.

Nine presents found
But never you fear
You’ll find #10
Near a target eaten by deer.

That’s a whole lot of presents
But there are still three
And one of them is hiding
Under the downed tree.

Two more to go
This is no clue for fools
You’ll find the next one
In with the tools.

You found the next-to-last
With the greatest of ease
To find #13
Check the house in the trees.

You found all 13 presents
We hope your birthday is happy
Now I’d better stop these poems
Before I start getting sappy!

Project 365: Day 302 - October 28

There's a certain amount of guilt that comes with being a mother. It may being the day you find out that you've got one on the way, or it might come later. Unless you're completely immune to feeling guilty, it will come.

Did I eat right? Have I done everything according to Spock, Dobson, my mother, his mother, or even the nosy woman down the road? It doesn't take much for a new mother to feel inferior and insecure.

One of the things that I've always done was to save the kids' holiday artwork. Aw. Sweet. So nice. I thought it was cute to see it again every year and since it got packed away it wasn't really in the way. And besides, who was I to toss something they thought was special? But yet, it was adding to the clutter of our house and our minds.

So, when I unpacked the two huge boxes of Halloween and Thanksgiving things (stuff, knick knacks, decorations, books, and whatever) I culled through and got rid of the cutest little hair bows and accessories, and outgrown holiday Ts. Luckily we have several little friends who still love to doll up for the holidays!

Then I saw the artwork, but it wasn't really artwork at all - just crafts. Crafts without personality even. Why keep it? So I took this shot, and tossed most of it. I might have kept the spoon-headed pilgrim girl place card holder that Caroline made in kindergarten. And I know I kept Will's "I'm Thankful" from preschool when he was thankful for dump trucks and Thomas the tank engine. That's it though - gone are the spiders, pine cone turkeys, and pumpkin glyphs. Also gone is the guilt that used to come with tossing anything "special" the kids brought home. Truthfully though, if there is something truly special they get to save it in a treasure box that is kept in the attic.

We're now down to one box of fall stuff. There's no way around that one box, so I'll give up and rest up to conquer the Christmas boxes!

Project 365: Day 301 - October 27

Project 365: Day 300 - October 26

These pics are from our church's annual Fall Festival held out in Free Union at Jacob & Emily's Nana's house!

Project 365: Day 299 - October 25

Tonight was "Scout Night" at the UVA/FSU volleyball match.

The gym filled up for the games and the teams were evenly matched. The scores were close, but FSU won all three games. The girls had fun, but commented that it would have been a lot more fun had UVA won! Next time, I hope!

Ball Girl

Caroline has been looking forward to this day for weeks. She signed on to play in the halftime game at today's UVA/WFU game, but that's not what had her so excited.






Because of the rain, fifteen of the girls didn't show up for the halftime game. Instead the girls who did brave the wet were asked to be ball girls for the game, and got to play on the field during the haltime break. What fun! Caroline had a blast being down there with the players! She didn't even mind being soaked!

It was pretty clear that the ball girls had more fun than the UVA players who lost to WFU.





Caroline got a pizza and a t-shirt for her efforts today, and on top of that (and the reason she'd been looking forward to the game), she won the drawing for the iPod! She's been talking (can you say fixated?!) for weeks about entering all of our tickets into the drawing and that she was going to win that iPod. Well, she did.

Did you know that her birthday is Wednesday? We now have to find something else for her to unwrap!

Saturday Games

Because of the rain and the lingering cough that has kept him home from school, Will did not make his soccer game this morning. Instead he played other games.

First, we played Four Words, and then he and Caroline played Telling Time games. The Telling Time games are cool - there are four of them, each concentrating on more advance time-telling. They're also good because they use both digital and analog clocks. They played the o'clock and thirty games. We'll wait on the quarter til/past and twenty til/past games.

After playing, Will left us and went to his room, shutting his door to play by himself. Only in a house with so many sisters!

Project 365: Day 298 - October 24

Sickie girl sure did appreciate the loan of the DVD player - Thanks Keswick Chicken!

Round Hill Farm

Project 365: Day 297 - October 23

XC Districts 2008

We couldn't have asked for better weather or a better location for the District meet today. Morgan's race was the third race today - the first was varsity girls, then varsity boys, and then the open race for all JV and non-top 7 varsity runners.

Uncle Bill and Granddaddy came to cheer! They also got to play horsey in between races!

Here's Morgan coming back after the two mile mark - maybe a bit more than 2 1/4. She'll pass these runners before she gets to the finish.
Morgan kept a pretty even pace throughout this race and looked great every time we saw her.



Caroline and Katherine took turns wearing Morgan's superhero cape and cheered on all the MHS runners! Will picked grass.





Here she is coming into the finish.

Her goal this race was to beat 25 minutes - remember last time her goal was to beat 26 minutes - and the time before that was to beat 26:30. This girl totally rocked!

This course has a long finish - and she could see the clock the whole way in and knew she was going to beat her goal but continued to push hard for a strong finish.



When she crossed the finish line the clock read 24:26. Somehow her official time was 24:29. Whatever. It was a great race. Not only did she kick some serious bu**, she beat her Short Pump goal by 2 whole minutes!

You rock Morgan!!!

Project 365: Day 296 - October 22

Here's Morgan's t-shirt being screen printed.

The sisters had a fun time watching the t-shirts being made and would have stayed there all day helping.

Suddenly the weather turned cold and we were all looking forward to the end of the awards ceremony and some good, hot chili!

Project 365: Day 295 - October 21

You can never have enough spirit ribbons!

Tomorrow is the District Cross Country meet and we need to be ready!

Project 365: Day 294 - October 20

This is the story of my life this weekend! My van battery decided to give up the ghost, so beginning Friday morning and continuing through Monday afternoon, I had to get my battery jumped.

The good news is that there are a lot of people out there who are really good at using jumper cables! More good news isd that I bought a new battery! We're good to go!

Yet another totally cheater picture - Morgan took this one. We were at Round Hill Farm - a totally cool field trip with 52 of our closest friends! More later on that fun!

Project 365: Day 293 - October 19

Here's my finished top with border done. It felt so good to have it done I just wanted to be done with it. I left the quilt with my mom so she could have someone machine quilt it for me. Were I to hand quilt it, it might never be finished!

***Upon looking at the picture though, I've decided it that it looks unfinished. It's only supposed to have the border along the two sides and the bottom. The top edge is supposed to be hidden when the bed is made. The dilemma is whether to add the complete checkerboard border along the top or just add a strip of the green focus fabric across the top. Mom asked her quilting coffee friends and they all agreed that I needed to send along a strip of the green fabric so Mom could sew it onto the top before sending it along to the quilter.

Project 365 - Day 292- October 18

This is what I awoke to on my second day of the quilt retreat.

Remember the last one? By the end of that retreat I had almost finished piecing the top of my mystery quilt. I only had the border to finish. I came home with great plans to finish the quilt within weeks, but ended up never taking it out of the bag to sew the first stitch!

I really thought it would only take me Friday afternoon and evening at most to finish and was supremely disappointed when I didn't get it finished last night.

But I did get it done today, and even began a new project. I did not sign on for the fall 2008 mystery quilt challenge. Only one mystery at a time.

Project 365: Day 291 -October 17

Let's hear it for Dangy! That's early Morganspeak for "granddaddy"! Granddaddy went with the 5th grade to Jamestown today! What a brave man!

Katherine's been so excited about this trip that she's nearly giddied herself out of her shoes! So much to be excited about - the bus (charter bus!!! with bathrooms!!), - granddaddy chaperoning!, - getting up very early! Even the worrying for days about oversleeping was exciting!

Project 365: Day 290 - October 16

This is a totally cheater picture.

I did not take it today, but I could have.

More often than not this child falls asleep in this chair while doing her homework.

Project 365: Day 289 - October 15

I'm finding it hard to take out my camera lately. I'm looking forward to the end of the year, if only to be done with the self-imposed, growing burden of Project 365.

We finally made it to a Wednesday night dinner - our first in a month. We'll skip another week or two before adding back into our regular schedule again.

Project 365: Day 288 - October 14

This dog desperately wanted some popcorn... and string cheese.

Not that she'd have known what either were had there not been some sloppy eating going on.

In the end she had to be banished, and she hated it.

Poor Gracie.

Project 365: Day 287 - October 13

"Adios. My pool is closed."
Can you tell the boy is learning Spanish at school?!

Project 365: Day 286 - October 12

Field Hockey Game # 4

Project 365: Day 285 - October 11

Albemarle Invitational at Panorama Farm

Today's meet was held at a farm that serves as the home course for the host school. The kids love to run here. There's even an open race for parents and other non-student runners. Maybe next year we'll be able to get there early enough for that race. I'd love to see David run this course.

Morgan ran the JV race and had a good strong start, though she probably went out a bit too fast. She held on though, and ran through the awful pain that comes with such a fast start, to run her best race ever! Her goal going in to the race was to break 26 minutes.


Wednesday's PR was short-lived - today's finish was 25:27 - 57 seconds faster than Wednesday's PR!!!!

Way to go Morgan!!!