Only 2 Days of Band!

I filmed this video Tuesday night of Blake practicing his trumpet...after 2 days of band class!  He is loving every minute of it.  There isn't a beginning band class since he goes to a small school, so he is thrown in with the 7th and 8th graders and has to hold his own...kind of nice that he will move at a faster pace since he has a music back ground already.  Now if we can get him to just sit still when he plays!

Quack Attack Soccer

 Ashlyn continues to have fun with soccer.  We really had to talk her into to signing up, but after each game she talks all the way home about how much fun she is having.  She is playing on a team that everybody has played for 2 years already, but she is quickly learning the game.  She hasn't quite got the concept of running past the pack of girls to get ahead of the ball to cut them off, but she sure is aggressive when she can get to it.

Another Season of Baseball

Blake's season of Fall Ball is in full swing and he is having a blast!  He is happy to report that he is one of their pitchers...talk about a happy camper!

Rick wasn't at his game today so I had to keep his pitching stats to let him know how Blake did and he did GREAT!  He had parents coming up to him in the parking lot afterwards congratulation him.

He pitched 2 innings (max per game with pitching rules for the league) and threw 36 pitches total...

20 strikes, 10 balls

didn't walk ANY batters

struck out 5 batters (was happy to report he struck out their 1st batter both innings)

Not too bad for this being his first season of pitching...him and Rick have practiced VERY hard this summer.  They have gone out for a couple of hours just about every evening to work on his batting and his pitching and it shows.

It has been a lot of fun watching him pitch each game, along with a lot of time on 1st base and we can't wait for more to come!

Heaven Help Us!

Blake is the new owner of a trumpet...boy are our neighbors gonna LOVE us!  He has wanted to play the french horn since he was 3 years old, but that wasn't an option at his school so he had to settle for a trumpet.  Yesterday we drove to Pendleton to pick one out...he insisted on holding it the whole way home.

 I made him wait until Rick got home to even get it out of the case.  They played around for a few minutes last night with it before we watched the Duck game...lets just say he sounded like a dying Duck or a really sick elephant!  Again our poor neighbors!

This morning though they got it back out and worked on how to use his lips properly and he was actually able to play a partial scale that sounded legit.  He is one excited kid!

Soccer Time

 We convinced Ashlyn to play soccer this fall and yesterday was her first game and she had a blast!

 She started out a little timid, but quickly got the hang of it and did really well.  She is happy to report she even scored 2 goals...and had a few that were close but were blocked by the goalie.

She even got a shot at playing goalie...the other team was pretty bad so it only came to her side of the field for her to block once, but she did it great and didn't let them score.  They ended up winning 11-2, way to go girls!  The whole way back to the car she was talking 90 miles a minute about how much fun she had and that she definitely wants to play next again next year.

1st Day of School Already?

Today was the kids' first day of school.  Every other year we are all chomping at the bit for them to go back, but this year we were really busy and didn't have time to get bored, so I found myself wishing for a few more weeks.  Today was Blake's first day of Middle School and Ashlyn started 2nd grade this year.  I can't believe how old/big they are getting...makes me feel REALLY old to have a Middle School kid.

Blake said one of the very short kids he is friends with came up to him this morning, "Wow Blake you grew TONS this summer!"  I hadn't really noticed, but we did have to buy him size 10 tennis shoes and I am only about 1/2 inch taller than him these days...he's hoping he passes me up by Christmas.  When I walked into Ashlyn's classroom with her I heard a couple of boys who were sitting together say, "Woo hoo, look Ashlyn is in our class!"  Those boys better stay away from her!  Man, my kids are growing up WAY too fast.

That Is A LOT of Ice Cream!

This summer our frozen yogurt place had a Summer Reading Program for the kids..as long as they were reading independently they were able to participate.  For every 500 pages a kid read they earned a $5 Blue Palm Frozen Yogurt coupon.

It was finally some incentive for Ashlyn, who isn't crazy about reading, to sort of get into a few books this summer.  She discovered a new series - "Judy Moody", and finished book #9 yesterday before handing in her reading sheet.  She also read a few "Ivy and Bean" books.  Her page count was 2,281 pages!  That earned her 4 gift cards, but the guy was nice and gave her a 5th one since she was past half way to the next card...that is $25 of free frozen yogurt!  Neither one of them can stop talking about all the toppings they are going to put on it.

Blake read the newest Kingdom Keeper book, quite a few Artemis Fowl books and a Fabelhaven one....his total page count was 3,601!  He earned 7 gift cards for $35 of free frozen yogurt!  I swear this is the MEANEST reading reward they could've come up with since I can't eat any thing cold while undergoing chemo and ice cream/frozen yogurt is my most FAVORITE thing...at least it got them motivated to get lots of reading done this summer, which was HUGE for Ashlyn.  I guess that deserves a "Thank You" to Blue Palm.

Fair Parade

This weekend Blake was in the Fair Parade on the Altrusa float since he was the winner of the Spelling Bee this Spring.  He wasn't very happy to have to go since it was the first weekend of College Football, even though we would be home in plenty of time for kick off of the Duck game...Rick brought the iPad and sat and watched games during the parade though.

Even though he was grouchy to have to go, by the time they got to us along the parade route he was having a good time.  He had his wave down and loved throwing candy.  He saw quite a few kids from church, school and baseball along the route so he ended up walking most of the parade so he could walk up to them to give them candy instead of throwing it to the masses of people.

I think next year we are going to do a float for Rick's office...we'll see how ambitious I get though!