Looking around for activities to do this fall, Tanja found an orienteering class that appealed to Lydia. I went with her one evening in September and we learned about reading maps and plotting a course with a compass. The second half of the class, we got to cheat a little and used a phone GPS to learn about geocaching. The instructor had hid some containers with small prizes around the park where we took the class and we used the app to get to the location they were hidden and then try and find them. We had fun doing it and I still have the app installed, but we haven't gone back out to look for more treasures people have hidden. Oh well, it was an enjoyable evening anyway. Here's Lydia on our compass course; she managed to get us to all our waypoints successfully.
Back at home, the kids have settled into our school year routine again and have built some cool creations with Legos. One week, they were designing different robots. Here's one of Derek's.
Derek also made this dinosaur looking robot. The mouth opens and closes and those teeth look pretty fearsome. This is his T-rex and is supposed to be me. Derek also made a maiasaura as Tanja, a velociraptor representing Lydia, a microraptor for himself, and a dinosaur we can't remember for Karina. He made a list Chinese zodiac style and counted through the list based on the ages of each member of the family.
Karina and Derek being silly as Karina tested out how strong she was by lifting him.
Then she gave him a piggyback ride.
Derek looks like a little squire boy carrying his knight's shield with this wig.
Tanja took the kids to meet up with a friend and her kids (the Heits) at Purse State Park to look for shark teeth fossils. I think the kids were more interested in playing with other kids at the beach than sifting through the sand looking for teeth.
It is a nice park to play at; Derek liked swinging on the branches through the water.
We went to a nearby farm to play one day when the kids had a random day off from school. They had a hay ride (without any hay) to pull us out into their pumpkin patch where people could select pumpkins.
We just used the patch as a photo backdrop with this cool looking old truck.
They had lots of different animals on the farm like donkeys, turkeys, pigs, and these goats that the kids fed.
The kids rode down several slides, both the traditional variety and sliding down a big hill on gunnysacks. We also went through the corn maze, jumped on a bouncy pillow, tackled a small obstacle course, and other activities. It was a very busy farm full of lots of people and things to do and would have been a complete success except on the way home, we got into a small car accident at low speed at a stop light.
The kids played hide and seek back at home by dumping out a lot of their toys, blankets, pillows, etc. and then burying themselves.
Tanja and the kids went to a different farm in Virginia with some friends another day when there was no school.
The elementary school had a Fall Festival that gave all the kids a chance to dress up in their Halloween costumes and go play. This year, Derek was a vampire with spooky makeup (that he kept getting on his white shirt).
Karina dressed up as a minion.
Lydia wore this vintage dog costume that Mormor had made for Uncle Erik 30+ years ago one more year. She was very insistent to people that thought she was a mouse or some other animal that this was a dog costume. The costume is probably getting too small for her to wear again next year.
Karina the minion and Maeve the Chick-fil-A cow at the school festival.
The kids each designed and carved their own jack-o-lantern.
They even helped dig out the pumpkin guts.
For Halloween, Karina went with friends to trick or treat in one of her friend's neighborhood. They all dressed up as minions. Lydia wandered off alone since she didn't want to move at Derek's pace and made it back home safely, though we were a little worried about her. Tanja and I took turns with Derek while the other stayed home to hand out candy. This was the first year we had someone at home for trick or treating. Tanja took the early shift and had a reasonably steady stream of trick or treaters coming down our small cul-de-sac (50+ kids). When I took over, I only had about 20-30 more kids in six or seven groups, so it was relatively quiet. Here are Karina and the rest of the minions.
Fall the last few years has been consumed by kids playing soccer. This year, both Karina and Lydia decided they wanted to stop with soccer - Karina because of not enjoying it any more because of her coach and Lydia because she just didn't want to play. Karina tried out cross country and she never enjoyed it as much as soccer, but we made her finish the season (going out and running with the other kids once per week). We're hoping she likes track and field in the spring more since she was basically using cross country as a way to train for track.
Derek continued with soccer this fall in a league that is much closer for us than where we have been playing the last few years. It was also much less competitive and more focused on having fun. He regularly complained about not wanting to play when we were trying to get him out the door to practice and sometimes games, but then when he was there, he was all smiles running around and having fun. When the games were finished and we asked if he wanted to play again next season, he said yes. Who can fathom the mind of a seven-year-old?
The league named each team for a major league soccer team, and he was on the Portland Timbers which is kind of cool since Uncle Thomas and Uncle Erik both live in Portland and Erik regularly goes to the real Timbers games.
He was older than most of the other players and more experienced from previous years of playing soccer. He likes playing defense and from the first game, the coaches remarked that he was one of the only ones who was actually playing his position by staying back on defense instead of crowding around the ball as usually happens with young kids. It was kind of funny cheering him on from the sidelines and hearing other parents talking about him - I heard other parents when he was charging up to stop another player laughing and commenting "Look out - here comes the Enforcer!" He probably was pretty intimidating to some of these other players who were so much shorter than him.
At the end of the year when they were undefeated (usually winning by multiple goals but having tied once) the coaches gave the whole team trophies and then singled out two players to be the offensive and defensive players of the year. Derek was awarded the defensive player of the year with this awesome trophy that the coaches found and he is very proud of.
He was selected to play in the league all star game (three players per team in the league) with his same coaches to coach his all star team. During their one practice they were doing a drill where Derek was a defender against two other players on offense and a goalie behind him. After several iterations where Derek kicked the ball away from the offense before they could get a shot off, the coach pulled him aside and told him to stop kicking it but just to go and stand in the way so the offensive players could have a better chance. I thought that was funny.
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