September Round Up

When you wait til the end of the month to blog, it feels never ending.  You also realize how much you have crammed into a month.  And then realize how much you didn’t even capture with a picture, but just enjoyed with your eyes.  Here are some more fun moments from this month that I managed to catch a picture of…

Our hermit crabs got a new piece of equipment in their aquarium when we changed their sand.  They love it!  I didn’t realize how much they love to climb.  It is fun to go in and see where they might be hanging out. 

On another animal note, we successfully raised two more caterpillars to monarchs.  We just let the last one go yesterday.

Related to butterflies… Madison started Jr. Missionaries at church.  It is a like a introductory youth group for girls grades 3-5.  They do about an activity per month.  Her first activity they went to Beech Creek Gardens.  It had a fun butterfly garden.  I got these fun pictures:

    

Landen and the girls had an impromptu play date with Grandma E.  It was fun for them and relaxing for us.

Jeremy often gets rental cars/trucks for work.  He came home the week after his birthday with a black Ford Mustang convertilbe.  It was pretty cool looking.  We took the girls out for their first convertible ride.  Their joy in the one picture reminds me how fun it is to be a kid and how I need to let it happen, even when a trip out is on a school night and it means getting to bed late.

         

Serving at MCC putting together school kits.  It was a highlight last year for my girls, and it was thoroughly enjoyed this year. 

    

Jeremy and I were invited to go the Cleveland Indians baseball game on a Thursday night this month.  It required a village to take care of our kids that night.  (Seriously – a friend watched them at soccer, my mom picked them up and got them in bed, and Jeremy’s mom pulled the late shift til we got home.)  But I was thankful for a night out with Jeremy; it hadn’t really happened this month. 

 

Baking, creating, and experimenting.  The girls have been watching the Netflix series Nailed It.  It inspires them to try baking things in the EZ Bake Oven and then decorate it.  They also like to be scientist and create things.  One day, it was measuring colored water.  Another day, it was mixing flour and water to see what would happen.  I try to let it happen.  I also try not to be in the room because I stifle the creativity as I worry about the mess.

We were invited over to a friend’s house for a bbq the other night.  There was a slew of kids and a group of parents.  We chatted while the kids burned off energy.  It was a good evening of fellowship.

Soccer season started.  This was a first for our family.  Both girls decided to play.  They both really enjoy it.  I am still trying to learn the rules (and strategy).  I’ll probably post pics at the season’s end, but it has kept us hopping this month with practice two nights a week and games on Saturday.  But it gives us moments to enjoy the sunset, to sit and be together as a family, and to get to know other families in the practice sessions and game times.

          

Indy

Four of us from college turned 40 this year.  We decided this required some commemorative event of some sort.  So, we tried in the summer to gather.  And failed.  So, we planned farther ahead and made it happen. 

We decided we would gather in Indianapolis, kinda a central meeting point, but more importantly, it wasn’t at anyone’s house where anyone’s responsibilities were.  There are three of us within 15 minutes of each other.  So, we carpooled on Friday afternoon out west together.  We took a slight detour to Taylor University to drop off some birthday cheer to a freshman we knew.  While there, it quickly became clear – we were definitely not in college anymore… and we might be getting a little bit older.

After a ridiculous number of construction delays (think about 1-1/2 hours of them), we made it to our little Air BNB house we rented.  Waiting there with a home cooked meal on the table was our friend from Goshen.  It was so good to be together. 

The first night we just hung out, caught up, ate stuff, and made some plans for the next day. 

Saturday, we went to Nine Lives Cat Café. A coffee shop and a adoptable cat facility all in one.  You could sit in a room (if you wanted) with adoptable cats and play with them.  Or you could just watch the happenings from behind a window – which is what we did and it felt a little bit creepy.  Then, we went to the arts festival that was happening in our district, Fountain Square.  It was fun to wander from booth to booth looking at the creativity of people. 

From there we went to our reserved Duck Pin Bowling lane.  Duck Pin Bowling is played with a smaller ball, smaller pins tied to a string, and three shots each frame to knock the pins down.  The bowling alley was a highlight of the trip.  It was a reconstructed 1930s alley, and it was just pretty cool to walk around and look at all the memorabilia.

                        

Our next event was a three hour food tour.  I had never done one of these, but would highly recommend it.  You go with a group to featured restaurants and eat selected foods at each one.  We started with appetizers (crackers, fancy cheese and meat) and mead (alcoholic drink of monks).

    

Then, we went to Three Carrots, a vegan restaurant.  We had salad and sandwiches there.

Followed that up with some pretty delicious Thai food.

    

And ended with come handmade chocolates.

After the food tour, we meandered back to our home and collapsed on the couch.  Rachel had brought some photo albums, and we reminisced about how fun college was and how annoying we were back then. (Not sure we are much better now…)

On Sunday, we ventured out to Mass Avenue, took in some shops, ate some ice cream made with the help of liquid nitrogen, and Power posed by the Indy sign. 

         

We came back for some tasty food tour leftovers before parting ways and heading home.  We decided we should do this more frequently than once every 20 years or so.  Friendships are good things.

Fair Time

It was that time of year again.  The fair – rides, animals, friends, food, and general fun.  This year, despite the rainy weather, we went on Saturday to watch my neice and nephew show their goats (named Calvin and Hobbes).  Last year, we missed watching them show, so we thought we would try to catch it this year.  We knew it would happen after noon… or whenever the animal before them finished… which took F O R E V E R!  Like, not until 4ish.  It was fine though because most of the cousins were there; food was there; and free entertainment was close by the goat pens. 

We walked through the school buildings.  The girls love that their art teacher hangs so much artwork up.  It is always fun to try to find if their artwork is on the wall.  We found two from Ellie:

    

And two from Madison:

    

We also roamed around the produce building to find names of people we knew attached to garden samples.  We also enjoyed the scarecrows in the building.

    

There was tasty food – Walking tacos and gyros this year. 

And there was free entertainment (oil and gas propaganda, but it was fun for the kids…)  They were all involved, and it helped pass an hour quickly.

         

The goats were, of course, the reason we were there.  Lilli did a great job, and Same did, too.  They even won some ribbons (which I would give them credit for, but I can’t remember the places,  and I don’t want to mess it up!)

    

    

I took the girls back on Monday (fair day = no school and free admission and cheaper ride bracelets).  I let them each get a ride bracelet for unlimited rides and ended up getting one for myself so I could ride with them if needed.  We stumbled upon friends from church.  The girls were static to each have a friend their age to ride with.  And it made it more pleasant for me as well.  Some of the fun…

         

We parted ways and ate our packed lunch as we recovered from the rides.  We visited the goats, checked out more animals and buildings, and then hit the rides one last time.  A few we did by ourselves.

         

Again, we found some kids the girls knew.  The downside, they were mostly Ellie’s age, so Madison felt a little left out.  She handled it well though and still had fun.

    

Until next year…