Sunday 22 September 2013

A Week in Review (September 15-21)

A Week in Review (September 15-21)

Watched: The Jayhawks get a 2nd win.  It was such a close game and they won on a 52 yard field goal.  The offense still played pretty poorly and the defense looked weak at times, but they found a way to win. Let's hope they take that momentum into the buy week and come out ready to play. I think that Texas Tech is one of our best shots for a victory in conference play.

Read: A book ended up coming off hold, so I never even started Seduction and Snacks. Instead, I started Reconstructing Amelia.  It is a story about a girl who has supposedly committed suicide, but then her mother starts getting anon texts saying she didn't jump. It's told through a mix of point of views and venues, such as traditional writing, text message histories, and Facebook status updates. I'm not sure where it is taking me, but it's kept me interested so far.

Listened: I ditched A Prayer for Owen Meany for Dad Is Fat.It's a good little book that makes you laugh about parenthood. Sure, there were things I couldn't relate too, but no parenting book outside of one you would write would be 100% relate-able.

Made: A lot of to-do list. We are refinancing the house and want to get a good appraisal so we are doing lots of little things and a couple major things to try and get the highest appraisal possible on the house.

Felt: Thankful for my handy husband. He is good at so many different things. This week he put in a new door and a storm door. I never would have guessed all the work that went into that process. He also startled tackling the other major project. A new patio door.

Planned: The Fall Fun Day in detail. I always forget how much work there is too be done, but the kids always seem to have a great time.

Loved: That Nick finally let me have a storm door. He doesn't like them, but he knows that I have been wanting one for quite some time and since we were already ripping off the front door, he went ahead and caved.  I think it will get lots of use.

Here are the pics for the week. I only took two all week. That's how busy we've been!

Jack preparing to mount the bar over the foam pit. This is his favorite part of the Parent's Night Out Event at a local gym. 

Jack with his green curls. This was at one of less exciting portions of the KU game. 



Monday 16 September 2013

A Week in Review (September 8-14)

A Week in Review: September 8-14

Watched: Jack get to play tailback for his flag football team. He was very excited to get to play a special position. I really like how his coach rotates the "skilled" positions each week so that the kids get to experience different things on the field.   Ended up changing the names of the positions so that the kids could remember them more easily. So the tailback became The Rocket and halfback became The Bruiser.  He was also excited that he had another +2 in his cheering section because his Great Aunt Debbie and Uncle Kevin came to watch him play.  He was also surprised that his teacher was there too. Her son was playing on a field close by and she recognized one of the cheerleaders as her student, so she came over to see them. 

Read: I finished up The Silver StarThis book was nothing special for me. It was a decent story about a girl who has to overcome a lot of obstacles to life with a messed up mother. It didn't paint a rosy picture of life, which I did appreciate. Not sure I would recommend it to others, but isn't something I would caution people to stay away from either.  I also began and finished Uncharted (On the Island, #1.5)While I was totally surprised by On The Island, this novella was just okay for me. It was a bit too cookie cutter for my taste.  It was a quick read and did answer any questions you might have about the bones from the original story.  My next book that I started was Seduction and Snacks(Chocolate Lovers, #1)

Listened:  I'm still plugging away on A Prayer for Owen Meany.  I don't think I will finish it within the next week.  Guess I will have to see if I can renew it yet again.  It is a long story, but the tale is good. I am hoping that it starts to get to a climax soon though as I am heading into the last 1/3 of the book.

Made: A yummy recipe inspired from Pinterest. It was an Avocado Egg Salad. I used 1 avocado, 4 boiled eggs, some diced cilantro and onion, crumbled bacon, and garlic salt. It was quite yummy.  We ate wrapped in the best tortillas that we get from a local Mexican bakery.  I highly recommend giving it a try!


Felt: Proud of Jack for rocking the dentist!  He has always had a fear of it and usually it's quite the production just getting the teeth cleaned.  Luckily, last time his dentist told him that he had some Superhero teeth in there and she started naming off different ones. As we were talking about the upcoming trip, he brought up that experience and seemed to be more at ease with going.  It was nice because most of the kids were at school and so there wasn't much else going on to overwhelm him.  He just sat down, got to business, and enjoyed a quick cleaning with birthday cake flavored toothpaste.  Also thanks to his Sonicare brush, we've been cleared to now go the traditional every 6 months :)

Planned: To help Jack get better with personal responsibility. Now, I just need to come up with a concrete plan. As a kid, I was extremely bad about forgetting things like lunchbox, bike, backpack, homework, etc.  As an adult, I have to make lists or I forget it or won't get it done.  Therefore, I feel this is a bit like the pot calling the the kettle black. Nonetheless, I am hoping to teach him early that only he will suffer the consequences from this. But is that really true as a parent?  For example, Jack was supposed to be coming home with sight word lists that we would review at home and send back to school so he could check them off with his teacher.  One day, I saw a student come out with one and asked Jack about his. He said he didn't have them yet because he knew those words. Seemed reasonable to me, so I didn't think about it again.  This week, I was checking his teachers website and saw she had posted a newsletter and calendar. I thought it was odd because I had never gotten a paper copy. I stopped and asked his teacher and she said that he should have brought  those home when other papers that I did get had made it home. Also, he should have had his sight word list quite some time ago.  I apologized, saying Jack had failed to bring them home.  Consequently, I looked like the parent who wasn't working on sight words with her son. However, 
he got that worked it out, and had a couple good days bringing home the lists and returning them.  But on Friday, he forgot not only his next list, but also his teddy bear that he had taken to school. I'm not sure how to fix it (as I never found a way for myself), but maybe YOU have ideas to share?

Loved: The email that I got from the speech path at Jack's school.  She said that he has what is known as a frontal lisps, which is something that should clear itself up as he gets his adult teeth in.  She will continue to check on him on a regular basis to make sure that the issue is correcting itself.

Here are the pics for the week:

As reward for rocking the dentist, we went to Chuck E Cheese. The new mascot just creeps me out. Someone said he looked like the bunny from Donny Darko. I so agree!  But notice the lack of people in the picture--perfect reason to visit in the middle of a weekday. Dreading when Jack wants to go and we won't have this time frame available!



I am bummed this picture turned out blurry, but Jack had fun playing with Callum. While the mostly played with balls, they did take a small break to camp  out underneath the desk together. 



Here are some shots from Jack's game. I actually used my real camera to take these since the other ones were so hard to see!  The first one is Jack in the middle of a block.


 Here is lined up as the rocket!

 Here is with the flag he got with a tackle.  He had the high for his team with 2.  haha  I totally wasn't prepared to grab this shot, but I am glad I was able to capture a little something!


Tuesday 10 September 2013

A Week in Review (August 31-September 7)

A Week in Review (August 31-September 7)

Watched: The Jayhawks play in their season opener.  While they looked a little rocky in the first quarter, things started click in the 2nd and were looking good in the 3rd quarter.  I don't feel they've got what it takes to be in the Top 25 year this year, but I am thinking we could win up to 5 games.  What a nice change that would be.

Read:  I started reading The Silver Star.  It is a short little book with a simple story.  I am not reading it very quickly because I am usually falling into bed two exhausted to read for long.

Listened: I picked back up the Owen Meany book on audio CD.  And while it is a good story, I just can't get through it very fast. It isn't drawing me in though.  I will probably return it when it's three weeks are up and just put myself back on the hold again.

Made: A genius kitchen move if I say so myself.  I was making a quick batch of rice krispy treats and was trying to figure out how to handle the cutting and bagging of them while at the game.  I decided to put them into cupcake tins.  It worked beautiful.  It was so easy just to twist out one and eat it.  No cutting, no bagging, just a quick bit of tin foil on the top.

Felt: Excited for Jack to start his flag football practices.  While I was a little shocked by the original email that I got, I think that his coach is going to be great.  He really seems to know his stuff and his personality really keeps the kids in line.  I am sure it will be an interesting season.  Their first game was against a team that I don't think could have followed the age cap.  They were huge. They got beat pretty badly, but none of the kid's seemed to notice.

Planned:  I am in charge of planning our school's party and special event days.  We have our first event in three weeks.  It is so hard to think Fall when the temperatures have been in the high 90s.  It feels like middle of the summer.  It makes it very hard to be productive.  However, I think we are going to have a great time on our day Called All Things Fall.  We will make an owl craft, make some apple sauce,  play some football, go on nature walk scavenger hunt, and play some pumpkin sweep and pumpkin bowling.  Should be a good time.

Loved: Getting see my nephews.  Roy decided to bring them with him for his yearly trip up for the Jayhawk home opener. I kept it a surprise from Jack knowing that he would never be able to go to bed if he knew the cousins were coming.  He was so excited when he woke up and found the three cousins were here.  They had such a good time playing together.  I wish the weather would have been a bit cooler, but they were so awesome through all of it.  I love that they are such good friends!

Here are the pics for the week:
First practice

Here are two pics of the game. In the first one, he is on the left side of the screen and in the 2nd, he is linked up on the right side of the screen.  He is number 5. 



Jack and his three favorite cheerleaders. 

My escorts to the schorcher of a KU home opener. Aren't I a lucky lady?  I think so. 

Week in Review (August 25-30)

Week in Review (August 25-30)

Watched: KSU lose to a Division II school. I couldn't believe Nick wanted to watch a the game, but it was Friday night and we didn't have much else better to do.  I even ended up getting goosebumps because I was so excited for NDSU. 

Read: 
The Shining Girls.  It was an awesome book. It combined a mystery book with The Time Traveler's Wife. Definitely an out of the book thriller, which I enjoyed. The ending really reminded me of The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7)

Listened: With driving to work all week, I was able to finish up 
Assassination Vacation. I did learn quite a bit that I had never heard about the Garfield and McKinley assassinations   She is a unique author. I did enjoy hearing Jon Stewart reading the part of Garfield.   

Made: My traditional Fruit Loop necklaces with my students. They are such a great group of kids and I think we are going to have so much fun this year. 

Felt: Itchy. The mosquitoes are horrible and my legs can tell it. The worst part is that the gnats also seem to be horribly bad and they are attracted to the scabs that I have from the aforementioned bites. Yuck!

Planned: I attempted to fugue out how we would spend Labor Day weekend without any KU football game to go to. It just doesn't feel right. I didn't come up with anything special. Guess we might just chill and enjoy being home together.

Loved: How helpful Nick has been to allow me to keep working much longer hours than we are used to. He has watched Jack during the day, cooked dinners, and just been so supportive of me.

Here are the pics for the week. Sadly, this is the only one I took. I posted this pic first because its a better pic of Jack. The second one shows the saying better. He was a bit bummer because his teacher, who is a huge KSU fan, didn't say anything to him about it. Oh well!  He knows he did the right thing by not wearing purple.