October

Cruising- Girls Night Out in the Caribbean! We tried on wedding dresses with Hannah in Charleston and then boarded the ship to the Bahamas. We might not have been the wildest group, but it was fun to be together! 

• Jane and I elbowed out some kids to get our sewing kits for the ship craft time. 
• We spent 2 days wondering if our room's silver cylinder was an ice bucket or trash can. 
• We played putt-putt where you just had to place the ball on the green and wait for the wind to give you a hole-in-one! 
• We enjoyed many rounds of trivia and a night at the piano bar. 
• I personally am still dreaming of the cheddar steak and ale soup. 
• The Blue Iguana was our favorite dive. 
• We bought costumes and then chickened out of the ship party so we just tried a million times to get a good shot of us in the room instead. 
• Conn took us on a walking tour of the Bahamas. The Queen's stairway was cool. (She actually took us on a 5 day walking tour because we followed behind her all week like little ducks.)
• The day on Half Moon Cay was picturesque.
• Our tv was possessed and would come on randomly and make creepy noises. 
• We would not recommend Indiana Jones 5. 
• We had to learn to avoid the spa and its inundation of sales pitches.

Other than those last three, the only bad part was missing my boys and having no contact but all the while somehow still magically receiving Parent Square messages from work. Sheesh.

Rory put this note in my suitcase. I did remember sovneres.

 

 

 

Halloween- Rory had a week-of costume change and landed on being a Power Ranger. The mask kind of creeped me out but that was fine because we ended up holding it for him all night. I had to bribe Silas with sushi to trick-or-treat, but he was a pretty good sport. I loved his costume. Our neighborhood was very dead. We were going to head out at 5:30 but no one else was around so we waited until 6:15 and still were the first. A few more trickled through and we hit one cul-de-sac with neighbor friends. It was fun and enough. By the time we were home to pass out candy we got about 2 doorbell rings.

 

 

Randomness- Rory made his robot self. He now has a cardboard lap top too! He really likes working from the recycle bin. He was the astronaut from Life on Mars by Jon Agee for Book Character Day at school. He thought marching around the halls for the parade was torture. Silas had skate night (Much to Rory's devastation at having a baseball game.) We spend way too many nights at the ballpark. We took family pictures and put up our outdoor projector for a night.

 

September

Look how cute the view out my classroom is! It is so cute I have to use window time as a behavior incentive or my students would spend their whole day counting the fish and looking for frogs. Silas's ALERT class went to Charleston to look at architecture and trudge around a salt marsh. For a minute they were short a chaperone and I thought I might get to go, but no dice. Rory was supposed to go to The Stinky Cheese Man play but apparently the cast all got sick and it was canceled. We had conferences. Silas's report was "Don't schedule one, he is fine." Rory's was good. He did well on MAP and now I think I get to teach him for an hour and a half once a week as part of a new first grade advanced thinking skills program we are piloting. (Why?) But I kind of think it will be fun to teach him and get to know some of the kiddos in his grade.

We surprised Denise for her 70th and I think we pulled it off and she was pleased! The kids did charades of funny memories and that was the highlight! We all got respective Meemaw/Mom/Denise tattoos, and played Bingo with some of her favorite things. Anne and Mike came and Libbi sent some of her amazing cookies!

We went camping at Myrtle Beach State Park with the Venturas. It was more of a check-it-off-the-list thing for our kids than a real act of passion on either families' part. Silas and Rory have both camped but possibly too long ago to really remember. It rained all Friday so we only stayed one night but that suited us and it turned out to be perfect weather. When we pulled up at our camp site it was surrounded by other campers and there were smokers and dogs and hardly even trees. I was thinking stormy things, but called the park office and they let us trade for one that was perfect! Here we are moving our unrolled but not constructed 20 man tent. There were beach walks, and walking stick adoptions, and a nature class, and a found jawbone, and racoon visitors, and smores, and playgrounds and Uno.

We visited the Williamsons and went to Denver Downs. There was so much we only did about 1/4 of it, but we are wimpy and it was hot so that was enough. Back at their house there were new sheep and bunnies and goats that only I enjoyed because Rory was preoccupied in the hot tub and Silas was preoccupied being a zombie in the massage chair drugged up on Benadryl. 

 

Finally, here are my amateur cross stich offerings to family and friends.

Pigeon Forge

(Gatlinburg? Sevierville? Are they all basically the same thing?) 

This mountain Labor Day tradition is become one of my favorite things. We drove on Thursday and got to our cabin. That night the fire alarm went off at 1:00 am and continued till morning. It was the one in the eve so all we could do was stare at it. I was all for ninja raftering, but was shot down. Turns out another alarm had the batteries out and in replacing those the next day, Gramps found the fix we could have done 8 hours and 500 beeps before. Hilarious. Gramps also ended up being best friends with the maintenance crew who between the fire alarm and a broken tv spent half of the weekend with us. 

We went to Dollywood, just the 4 of us. I didn't realize it was Silver Dollar City 2.0. Like literally it used to be Silver Dollar City. This made it underwhelming because even with so much similarity it lacks the childhood nostalgia and just can't compete. If I liked rides I think it probably had a few that ranked. The bird show was comically bad. They literally showed 3 maimed birds, none of which even flew. We did have fun, but mostly just from being together at a theme park while the rest of the world was in school.

The cousins arrived Friday night. Saturday we drove through the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. At first it was depressing because it was crowded with no parking so we couldn't actually get out to do any trails. But then at the exit there was a parking lot with immediate access to a waterfall and views I imagine to be just as good as anything we would have hiked to. Cue family pictures.

  

Back at the cabin we are still in awe of two novelties.

1. A black bear showing up on our front porch! (I couldn't get my camera until he was meandering off through the yard.)

2. The questionable coffee table book, Rodzina, was a talking piece until Logan came in with a Rodzina shirt, blowing our minds with coincidence.

We played Hillbilly miniature golf where you had to ride a cable car up the mountain to get to the holes. Daron and Eric tied for best golfers, but Logan had 2 holes in one! We also did a mountain coaster and a lumberjack show. Silas (as ambassador for the cousin crew) was selected out of the crowd and given a tree cookie when our side won an event. We were on team Dawson who unfortunately did not end up victorious. All of these excursions were all the fun they promised. We also celebrated Conor's birthday, picnicked, had a fire/smores, played ping pong, and all the boys had fun with the retro video game machine that had like 300 choices. I am so excited that the cabin for next year is already booked!