Halloween 2008

Not exciting but a great picture.  The kids love "Photo Booth", a program on our Mac, and took this picture during a visit from Jenny (Vargo) Chodyniecki and Marci (Kruger) Charuba this summer.  Ignore the messy dining room table behind the kids.

How can Halloween be over?  Our traditional group shot on the porch, with the renovations done this summer.  (Post to be added later on the porch.)  Elijah was a robot, Amelia was "the floor of a movie theater", and both costumes were great fun to make.  Ivy is hard to see in the picture because she's in back, but if you aren't from here you wouldn't understand her costume anyway.  The Manchester high school team name is "the Flying Dutchmen" and the logo is a pair of wooden 

shoes with wings.  So Ivy and her friend Jessica made up the two halves of the logo, each has a wing and a shoe.  It got a lot of rave reviews, and won a contest at the middle school.  You will just have to take my word for it.  Amelia and Elijah both won gift cards at my parents' club party (Amelia rarely leaves without an award from that party; we go every year and they just love her.  The year she dressed like Teddy Roosevelt the judge said the prize was going to "The little girl with the moustache".)  

Finally, one more funny Photo Booth picture.  They do so love playing with that program, Ivy especially.

Flag football

Elijah is loving football even more this year.  Flag football is great for moms because there is little contact and no injuries.  We'll see how much I enjoy it when he's wearing pads and crashing into other little boys.  I say, "boys", but he has a girl on his team, named Taylor.  She is fast and generally runs the ball into the end zone before anyone realizes she's started running.  In these pictures, Elijah is the one wearing red shorts.  The top picture shows him ready to snap the ball; the bottom shows when (in another play, of course) he has just caught a pass and is ready to run.

Some things never change

I just re-read last year's blog from around this time, and noticed that I mentioned the Buddy Walk (yes, it's the same family in both stories), and flag football.  Hmmm.

When Kris asked if we'd post once a year...

OK, so I lost the password and forgot how to post new entries. Luckily, cleaning out my e-mail inbox brought it back to my attention. Who needs to hear from us more often than once a year? Let's see, what have we done since LAST DECEMBER?Just kidding (I heard you sigh). We'll just start with recent. Here are a few highlights, chosen not because they were most important or significant, but mostly because had the camera along, so I can post some pictures.

Summer was great. I (Theresa) had to work some but not too much. Unfortunately, the summer Early On playgroups that we ran happened every other week, so I never had a solid three weeks off, but there are people with worse summer work schedules than mine so I'll stop complaining. (Early On provides services to children under age 3 with any delay in motor, speech, or other areas.) We had lots of time for other fun activities, like camping in Tahquamenon in June with my parents, visiting with friends, enjoying our community Fair, eating chicken at the Chicken Broil (along with some 14000 other hungry people) and giving our house a facelift.  

Oh, and we attended a few Lansing Lugnuts baseball games (minor league).  The girls were excited because they got to be on the big screen, dancing and being vivacious, not once but TWICE.  We had great seats, thanks to a coworker of Jordan's.  (Her husband works for them and got us free tickets.)

Now it's fall, school is in full swing, and we're running full tilt from one activity to the next. Jordan is still on Village Council, which takes him to three meetings a

 month. I'm still on 

PTSA at the Middle School, and on the search committee and other groups at our church. Ivy is playing volleyball for her school, Elijah is playing flag football in a nearby town, and Amelia is in choir and takes dance classes. Oh, and the girls are in Girl Scouts, and I'm one of Amelia's leaders. Fun stuff. Volleyball ends in less than 2 weeks, and football wraps up around then, too, so life will get a bit easier.

At the end of September, we participated in the Buddy Walk, an event to raise money

 for Down Syndrome awareness and education.  We have gotten close to a family with a toddler that has Down Syndrome; in the picture you can see Elijah pushing his stroller, but Wil

 is being carried by his mom, behind them.

I have some great football pictures, so I'll make that a separate post. Sorry to take so long to update.......