We went camping this weekend! It has been soooo long! We have no sports going on this fall but we really haven't taken the time to go. I'm really glad we did. It was great to get AWAY! We relaxed ALL weekend.
Friday night we went to bed at 8:30 and slept almost 12 hours! It was much needed! Saturday hiked (a tiny bit), played in the creek, ate, rode bikes and threw the football around. It was a good weekend of family time!
Last Tuesday I took Reagan out of school for a class at the local Nature Center. She had been studying spiders at school and the class was titled "Spectacular Spiders". Perfect timing. Plus Reagan has a thing for spiders! This summer she caught a Brown Recluse, put it in a glass jar and named it Ryan. She tried to feed it bugs but... it didn't live long. She also loves to put dead spiders in jars (they get names too). Anywhoo....
We arrived and Reagan quickly found a spot at the front table. When the class began the conservation leader started talking about the differences between spiders and insects. The class was quiet when she asked if anyone knew any differences. Reagan piped up: "A spider is an arachnid and has 2 main body parts: a cephalothorax and an abdomen. An insect has 3 main parts." Then the leader asked for other differences. No one said anything so Reagan added more info... "A spider has 8 legs and an insect has 6." Great. Anything else? Again, no one said a word. Reagan looked all around and said, "Insects have antennae and spiders don't." The conservation leader looked at Reagan and said, "WOW! You know a lot about spiders. Do you want to teach the class?"
A smile spread across her face. In fact, she did want to teach the class but I kept her from blurting that out!
We listened to the rest of the lecture. Walked around to observe some objects the leader had brought, made a spider craft and went on a hike to look for spiders in their natural habitat. Reagan had a great time. She loved skipping school to do something she considered to be super fun! I think she will never forget it!
My niece has moved to the area and is going to college (YEA for us!) She went to school up north for several years and has exhausted her eligibility to play "real" soccer so she is playing intramural. We had a fun time watching her play this afternoon....
Recently Carsyn and Luke had a visit from their long lost friends, Max and Briggs. Well, they aren't lost.... they just moved away. Thankfully they didn't move terribly far... only 4 hours. But, it's far enough that we don't see them very often.
Carsyn and Max and Luke and Briggs have been bff's since practically birth. The move was especially hard on Carsyn. She and Max have always clicked perfectly. I use to joke that they were each others "other half" (Carsyn could possibly be mortified by that comment, who knows?!) I do know that she was thankful for some time to catch up. Or at least pick up where they left off...
Last Christmas we gave each of the kids a set of 6 cards with a date night listed on each- 3 with mom and 3 with dad. Each child has various months (not including their birthday month and not in June because we travel so much). Ideally we would take them out each month but 3 kids individually on a date each month is just about impossible. We gave it as a gift so we would give it priority and set it in stone. Honestly, it was their favorite gift! I'm fairly certain they can't even remember what their other presents were. Parent score!
Carsyn had August with mom but with the start of school we couldn't make it happen. Luckily our school advertised a night at the ballpark for the beginning of September so Carsyn decided to make that our date! The school sold about 200 tickets to the game. One of the ticket holders was lucky enough to get to throw out the first pitch! The winner was one of Carsyn's closest friends. Carsyn was really excited for her!! She was even more excited that I was "chosen" as the personal photographer for the event (I asked)!! Yea! Another parent score!
We got to the ballpark hours before game time. We watched some batting practice (where Carsyn got a ball from a Pirates player), we went downstairs into the "first pitch" room and relaxed and had drinks, then we headed onto the field. It was so fun to be down there (even if we weren't throwing the pitch.)
After that we headed up top to our seats where all our friends were hanging out! It was an awesome night with friends and baseball! The Cards won, we saw the Friday night fireworks (amazing!) and got home after midnight!
Parent score!
