After our many and varied summer adventures, we were ready for Maryland life again. Being in Maryland brought normal problems back to us and my van wouldn't start because of a bad alternator and battery. The kids thought it was exciting to have the car towed:-)
Mormor's mother's old wig has proved a popular part of our dress up clothes.
The kids started the new school year. This year was big because Karina is now in middle school! That makes me feel a little old. I was nervous about how middle school would be, but I have been pleasantly surprised, and Karina continues to love school and 6th grade.
Derek is now in 1st grade and Lydia is in 4th.
Our elementary school bus stop is much smaller this year. There are nine 6th graders at the middle school bus stop, and that is nine kids that are no longer at the elementary bus stop without a comparable number of new kindergartners to take their place.
Derek started school with two very wiggly top teeth. One of the teeth was so wiggly that it sat horizontally. That tooth soon fell out since the adult tooth was already halfway out. His other front tooth was soon just as wiggly and crooked.
And now he seems older without the cute baby teeth.
Derek also started cub scouts this year. He loves it, and I love to see him in his uniform. He's adorable.
Lydia started flute lessons as school. She still practices piano 45 minutes a day, so with the addition of daily flute practice (and lots of soccer practice), it is a lot. I had never played the flute before, but I figured the difficult part was the fingering. It never occurred to me that blowing the air correctly to produce a sound would be so hard. Using the flute disassembled, with just the head joint, was how Lydia started her lessons. The technique for blowing the air is difficult and progress was slow! I had started to regret purchasing the flute instead of renting it because I wasn't sure Lydia would ever be able to make a good consistent flute sound. However, she persevered and now sounds good. Her teacher at school said it usually takes the kids learning the flute one month to produce a sound on only the head joint, and longer for the whole flute. Lydia is making progress learning the fingering on more notes now too. Here I am trying to hold the head joint at the right angle for Lydia as we both learned some initial techniques.
Karina, Lydia and Derek spent many free hours creating Lego dragons. They must have made about 30 of them altogether.
On one of our many random school days off (we get a lot of religious holidays off), the kids and I headed to Gaver's Farm. They have a pumpkin patch with hay ride, a large corn maze and a huge selection of smaller attractions and farm animals. We started out with the tractor ride to the pumpkin patch:
There were some fun slides and playgrounds and a huge bounce pillow.
The goats were social and hungry! We also saw llamas, rabbits, a pony, donkey, chickens, and pigs. I was too stingy to buy food to feed the goats, but the kids had a blast picking up the goat food that other people had dropped. There were literally thousands of people there that day, and many day-off school groups, so it was easy to find food for the animals. Lydia and Derek loved it!
The corn maze was tough! Karina and I tried to memorize the map they had at the entrance, and we had the general idea of how the backtracking would have to work, but I was still surprised we managed to get out. Derek wanted to lead the way, and didn't appreciate being told we were going the opposite way of what he wanted, so I had to carefully give him chances to be the leader.
The fall leaves at our house were seemingly endless. Nate cleaned up multiple trash cans of leaves for several weeks. Derek's job was to be Daddy's tool by standing in the leaves and stomping them down. He took his job very seriously and was a good helper in stomping and also with raking.
For Halloween, Lydia was a witch, Derek a ninja (a recycled costume my brothers wore over 30 years ago), Karina a box of Froot Loops, and I was a 'cereal killer'. The Froot Loops containers on my shirt were purposely unharmed though.
Halloween itself was rainy. Karina trick-or-treated in a different neighborhood with friends, and Nate and I went around with Lydia and Derek. There weren't as many people out because of the rain.
Most of our Fall Season was taken over by soccer. Between the three kids, we had five practices per week and three games per week. It made it really hard to fit in piano (and dinner), and the kids often had to practice piano before school. Derek's team got used to blow-out wins and Karina and Lydia's teams struggled greatly. Both of the girls' teams were young for their league. I think they still had fun though.
Most of Lydia's team:
Karina, warming up before a game:
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