brimming over

Games with Parker

Parker has been playing middle school team tennis this fall.  He really loves it a lot. 

I haven't gotten any great pictures of him playing.  I need a better camera lens for sports action photography.  Too bad that's about number 211 on our list of 220 things we need to purchase.  Sigh.

Anyway, here is one picture just to prove that I tried and that he has been playing:

That was his first singles match this season and he'd really been looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, I think he's so accustomed to playing doubles that it threw him for a loop.  He really struggled to cover the whole court and made mistakes that he doesn't usually make.  It was a heart-breaking defeat.  For me.  Parker seemed to take the whole thing in stride after a couple of minutes to compose himself.

And best of all, he made us so proud because he displayed good sportsmanship throughout the entire match.  Even when I could tell all he wanted to do was get off that court, he was still kind and generous and did not act angry or frustrated.  I was really impressed.

Now, on to a game where he apparently had the upper hand...Bananagrams!  I've been wanting to get this game for quite a while and finally threw it into an order I was placing at Rainbow Resource.  Wesley was too caught up in the last chapters of Harry Potter book 3 to play with us, so Parker and I played one on one. 

I was sailing through the entire time, creating my puzzle with ease, and he was struggling.  And then he pulled out a victory with the last tiles!  Turkey!

Just four tiles left and I couldn't figure out how to rearrange and make them fit!  Argh!!

We give Bananagrams two thumbs up!  It took us a while to get the hang of it but it was great fun.  And we think it will move a lot faster with multiple players. 
  
 
 

A friendly rivalry

In our house, fall means a lot of things...back to school, pumpkin foods, Halloween, crazy weather.  But most of all, fall means college football!

And college football means University of Alabama football!  Roll Tide! (that's for Craig and the boys.)

College football rivalries can be pretty fierce in the SEC.  And we are out of our element since we live in a part of Georgia that is liberally populated with about 30% Auburn fans, 30% Georgia fans, and 20% Georgia Tech fans.  The remaining 20% are split widely among teams as varied as Maryland, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss, Miami, and more.

We have developed a very friendly, and mostly civil, rivalry with our very close friends who are Tennessee fans.  It's particularly interesting since I'm a UT traitor, having given up the fight when I realized it was just too difficult being married to a man who eats/sleeps/dreams Alabama football.

A few years back, our friends' teenage son covered Craig's Alabama car tag and decals with UT stuff when they beat Bama.  And that started the ongoing battle.  There were a few bleak years when the Vols won several in a row.  Then Bama won and we hung an Alabama flag in a tree in their yard (where it remained for several days while they were out of town before they came home and removed it!). And so the rivalry progressed.

Now this year, it should have been easy victory.  Alabama is ranked in the top 5.  Tennessee has been struggling.  But this is a game that never goes as expected.  The Tide won, but just by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins.  Or should we say by a certain player's chin.  Terrence Cody saved the day by blocking a last minute UT field goal (his second block of the day!). 

Craig and Parker worked on this masterpiece and delivered it to our friends on Halloween.

Tonight our doorbell rang and we found this awaiting us on the front porch.

(It says "VOLS" for anyone having difficulty reading the word.)

If I must watch endless hours of college football, at least this makes it fun.  :) 
 
  

Trick-or-Treat!

Bleak, rainy, and cold.  That just never happens on our South Georgia Halloweens!  Weird. 

As usual, we were still preparing at the very last minute.  But highly unusual, we still had no idea this morning (yikes!) exactly what everyone would dress as for Halloween! 

Try as we might, Amy Grace and I could not convince those stubborn, stick-in-the-mud boys to help us decide on costumes.  I had pretty much decided that Amy Grace would dress up to Trick-or-Treat and the boys would just have to deal with not getting any candy.  Too bad.

Then this morning, Parker had an idea that Wesley was totally on board with doing.  Amy Grace wasn't completely sure but eventually came around to join in the plan with gusto.

So I present...a trio from Mount Olympus...

Parker as Poseidon, god of the sea:

Amy Grace as Athena, goddess of wisdom and victory:

And Wesley as Zeus, lord of the universe:

And this is what you get for Halloween when homeschoolers study the ancient world.  :)

We trick-or-treated with our friends and had a sort of "block party" beforehand for everyone to fill up on munchies.  The cold rainy mist only dampened spirts a little bit!  Here's a picture of all the costumed kids from the little ones on up to the teens...

Hope you had a great boo day, too! 
 
  
 
  

Capital gifts

Craig was away most of this week at the CCH User Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.  But really that means he was in Washington, DC. 

This conference really knows how to do things up right!  They give out gifts and extras like crazy.  And it's all stuff that you actually want to keep instead of junk that immediately ends up in the trash at home.

CCH also provides some pretty spectacular entertainment during the evenings of the conference.  One night this year the evening event was at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.  And we were lucky enough to get gifts that Craig hand-picked for us in the gift shop!

A prism for Parker...he loves it and was thrilled this morning to see the light spectrum when he took it outside.

For Amy Grace, a "flexi sphere"...a delicate wire contraption that flexes and changes to form many different shapes from a flower to a sphere to an hourglass and more.

Newton's Cradle for Wesley...click, click, click...the principles of physics in action.  And boring their clicking way into my brain...click, click, click.  Oops.  It's a wonderful gift and Wesley (along with the other kids) adores it!

And lastly, for me...does this gift prove to you that my sweet husband knows me well or what? 

Politics and Christmas all rolled into one!  Perfection!  Although this little guy is so cute, it may be hard to pack him away with the ornaments.  :) 
  
  
  
  

Pumpkin

One of my favorite things about fall is pumpkin. 

No, I do not mean pumpkins, like the big orange round things that people carve up with scary faces.  This is not about pumpkin patches since around here those mostly consist of plant nurseries and churches setting up goofy little areas with hay bales and scarecrows and other fall items in order to sell gobs of already cut off the vine pumpkins. 

One time we did make the trek to a fabulous real live pumpkin patch in north Georgia to actually cut our very own pumpkins off the vine.  That was cool!  They gave us vine cutters like we use to cut small branches in the yard and set us free in the pumpkin patch with a wheel barrow.  Once we chose and cut the pumpkins we liked, we carted them up to the front and they weighed them and we paid by the pound. 

Then we brought them home and made a lovely arrangement on the front porch, complete with a bale of hay and some potted mums.  It was delightful!  It was our first year in this house and our first year with a true front porch on which to put a fall display.

And then the very next morning we got up for church and the kids noticed that there were pumpkins in the yard.  Huh?  Yep.  During the night, someone (multiple someones?) had come along and vandalized our beautiful fall vignette.  Some pumpkins were missing completely along with a small sign and a scarecrow, things were overturned, and pumpkins were strewn about the yard.  Thankfully, our ferocious guard dog, Lucy, did not lose any beauty sleep while the hooligans did their dirty work.

I haven't had the heart to really do it up since then.  Sigh.

But I digress.  How did I get so off topic?  This is supposed to be about happy pumpkin!  You know, the eatin' kind! 

One of my favorite things about fall is that it's time to eat pumpkin and pumpkin flavored foods!  Yeah, yeah, I know that with modern conveniences you're able to have pumpkin year 'round.  And I also freely admit that I'm not getting my pumpkin the old fashioned way, except that I do use a hand-operated can opener rather than an electric one.

Fortunately, the children inherited my love of pumpkin.  They love pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, and pumpkin cookies.  And I'm sure Wesley would adore a pumpkin latte from Starbucks if I'd spring for one for him.  The only thing they don't seem particularly fond of is pumpkin pie but I'm working on it. 

They're always on the lookout for new pumpkin items.  So when we hit Trader Joe's in Atlanta last week, they were immediately clamoring for the Pumpkin Pancake and Waffle Mix that was prominently displayed.  And who am I to argue with something that sounds as good as that?

So we had pumpkin pancakes tonight for supper. 

Oh, yummy.

Full, satisfied grin.

And this one declared them, "The best pancakes I have ever eaten."

They were really good.  Honestly, I think they smelled way better than they tasted but I'm glad the kids were happy.   

And don't worry, Doc, I'm pretty sure he was just caught up in the moment...everyone knows your sourdough pancakes are the best pancakes ever!
  
  
  

Countdown to Halloween

Because today is the first day of the beginning of Halloween week...
And because my children love Halloween...
And because Amy Grace has been dreaming up possible Halloween costumes (even to the point of drawing instructions for me to make them!) for at least a month...

I bring you a blast from the past:

Emily and Amy Grace on Halloween 2006.  Aren't they too cute?  Note that Amy Grace is wearing her dress backwards for some unknown reason. 

And while the picture above is the cuter one because they are both smiling and happy, I have to share this one so that you can get the full scope of Emily's "costume" created by Amy Grace, complete with wand:

Em, you're such a good sport!  Amy Grace would dearly love to dress up with you this week!  We miss you. 
  

Bubbles

Remember how much fun it was to take a bubble bath when you were a kid? 

Oh, the joy! 
  

Three months off

Well, I never really meant to take a 3 month break from blogging.  Whoops.  Sometimes these things just happen and life gets in the way.  I hope I can still convince some of you to come back here and read again. 

In the time I've been absent...

• Craig turned 38
• we celebrated our 15th anniversary
• Parker turned 12
• we grew a garden; its most prolific crop has been banana peppers and jalapenos but we managed to cross-polinate some squash and cucumber resulting in a rather odd veggie
• I was elected Treasurer of our local homeschooling group
• Parker moved up into the youth group at our church...yikes!
• we started back to school...Amy Grace in 1st grade, Wesley in 4th grade, and Parker in 7th grade
• the boys played Upward flag football and had a blast!
• all 3 kids are playing tennis and Parker has declared it "his thing"...he is playing on a middle school team again this year and loving it; he is taking a more advanced class that meets twice a week which puts us at the tennis courts 4 or 5 times a week with matches, lessons, and practices!
• also, all 3 kids started piano lessons; they're really enjoying them and progressing nicely
• we have started the process of re-working our dining room to make it a homeschool room...I finally faced the facts that the table was always covered with schoolwork and otherwise the room was only being used as a pet bedroom; more on this to come!
• we've had short (and wonderful!) visits from Craig's parents and my parents but our guest room is feeling lonely...doesn't anyone else want to come?

I'm sure there's much more but those are the highlights.  I've missed writing here and I'll do my best to be more intentional about keeping things up to date.

Yummm...Georgia

Last weekend we made the short trek to Fort Valley, Georgia, for a Southern summer treat...peaches!  We visited Lane Orchards for the afternoon and had a lovely time. 

We took a tour on an open air tram through the orchards and heard about the history of the Lane farms as well as all sorts of interesting facts about growing and harvesting peaches and pecans.  I thought it turned out to be a very educational tour!

Looking through a pecan orchard...my pictures are on the fuzzy side due to the bumpy ride!  And yes, they are called orchards.  Pecan groves are created by nature.  Pecan orchards are planted by humans.  :)

 

 

A young pecan orchard...eventually every other tree will be removed to give the trees room to expand to their full size.  They are now working on ways to successfully transplant the removed trees to new orchards.

Looking through the pecan trees to the peach trees behind.

 

Peach orchard...oh, how we wanted to hop off and grab one!

 

 

 

 

And the highlight of the day for me and Craig:  homemade peach, strawberry, and butter pecan ice cream!  Heavenly.

But I think the children might say that the highlight was playing on the "fake merry-go-round"...

 

Snaggletooth

After many weeks being just a tiny bit loose, one of Amy Grace's bottom teeth finally worked its way to being truly loose. 

One recent afternoon in the car, she asked me how the Tooth Fairy gets into the house.  And after a short discussion about how the TF might gain entry into the house, Amy Grace declared, "I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, Mama."

Oh, geez.  I figured we had a long time before this happened.  After all, she hadn't even lost her first tooth yet!

So I asked, "Why not?"

Her reply:  "Because she's a fairy and fairies are not real."

Well, duh!  I guess all this time answering questions about whether elves, monsters, mermaids, and fairies are real or not has backfired!  Whoops.

I decided that although she was using very sound logic, I wanted to keep the magic alive.  So I posed the questions, "Well, who else would want your old teeth?  And who else would give you money for teeth anyway?"  Of course, she didn't have a good answer to those questions.

The tooth finally came out about a week later at our family reunion, on July 10th, while she was eating a piece of cinnamon toast. 

 

And after the Tooth Fairy gave her $5 that night, I'm pretty sure that the magic is still alive.  Or she's at least forgotten her unbelief for the time being.