It has been a VERY busy October. Nate and Grace are dressing up tonight as Thomas the Train and Red Riding Hood to go out and forage for candy. (Roger was the big bad wolf.) I bought four bags of candy so we're set. On Friday, Grace had her 11th birthday party, complete with 8 girls and a trip to our church's Harvest Festival. They had a great time...although I'm thinking this will be the last year to have so many at once. Each year they get bigger and louder and more giggly...
Roger was in Belgium most of this month. He's home now but thinking he's leaving again Tuesday for Malaysia. This means less than a week at home...sigh. In the meantime, I've been doing a long-term sub job for Grace's teacher at Academy. The kids are great but the schedule is beyond hectic as a single mom. With all three kids doing sports and activities, most nights I'm not home until 8-9 p.m. which leaves very little time for prep or grading. Her teacher comes back Wednesday and I'm counting the hours. The job has put me far behind in my research class so I have to really hustle to get the research done and the paper written by the end of this month.
Luke is a swing freshman on the high school varsity hockey team. This means he gets to play both varsity and JV, in addition to playing on the bantam team for club hockey. Some days he has three practices back-to-back, which is great but leaves him exhausted. He's doing okay in school so far but hopefully he'll improve as he adjusts to the bigger classes/more distractions of high school. His first HS games are Wednesday; I'm trying not to stress at the thought of all those bigger kids slamming Luke against the boards.
Mary Grace is playing basketball. They had their first "game" last week, although there's no scoring and the 4/5th grades play together. The coaches are also the referees and basically guide the girls through the plays in 5-minute increments. Grace made a basket during the game, despite having nothing to practice with at home and never having played before. She's busy with piano and Girl Scouts and robotics....and putting up with me as her teacher.
Nate is skating IP - or intro-to-play hockey twice a week. I have deja vu everytime I watch him because he's just like Luke at this age...although a little whinier. I have a video of his first time on the ice - he's the player in white in the middle of the frame. (see below) It's amazing how fast he learns. Although he's missed almost a month of preschool, we did manage to go on a field trip to the local reindeer farm, where Nate was quickly bored with feeding the reindeer.
We have a loss and a new addition to our family. Our beloved Casey cat disappeared around fair time last August. We think/hope he wandered into someone's RV, and rode off to a new home. I REALLY miss him - he was one of a kind. A few weeks ago, we visited the local shelter and came home with Anubis, a black kitten who is adorably crazy. He torments our older cats mercilessly, races around the house attacking things and has terrible gas whenever he eats the older cats' food. (The kids want to call him stinky) So now I feed him separately just like I did Casey. He's great but there'll never be another Casey.
