September Thing

Reagan entered the hula-hoop contest at the 3rd Grade Olympics!!! I am hear to tell you that 3rd grade girls are hula-hoop masters!!! They can do it all day long. After 15ish minutes the teachers had to make it more challenging....walk around, jump, eyes closed, etc. I think Reagan made it to about the last 5. A little friend from our neighborhood won. The best part of my day was watching all the girls surround her, cheering so excited when she won. They were genuinely thrilled for her and I got teary watching.

Walking down the halls to Reagan's second event, I passed this picture on Gracyn's teacher's door. She has all the class pictured, holding this sign. I love it. We hit the teacher jackpot.

Then I ran into this girl on her way back from the nurse's office. She lost her 2nd tooth at school that morning and had finally gotten the coveted treasure box. I was so happy that I was there to see it. I was feeling so warm-fuzzy, happy and thankful for our great school on this day.

Reagan's second event was a game like Scattergories. They were assigned a letter of the alphabet and had 60 seconds to fill in all the categories with a word beginning with that letter. She did great and made it to the final round. 

I had picked this up earlier in the day, so we all had Olympic cookie cake for dessert after the bus. I am always looking for any reason to buy a cookie cake. 

Silly barn days. We spend SO much time out there handing out and waiting for Addison.

Getting on board?? It's hard to fit in around here on Saturdays without your HOGS shirt. WOO PIG SOIEE??? I think that's how it goes. :)

And the day we got that special treasure box, we lost our tooth down the drain, while washing it. Gracyn was heartbroken. The tooth fairy was very understanding about the "incidend"

My adopted, "outside" kitty. On my kitchen table, in the middle of somebody's Uno game. I LOVE her!

Gracyn won the "Head of the Herd" award for her class the first month of school. So proud of her hardwork and leadership. 

Gracyn with Mrs. Gunter, first grade teacher extraordinaire!!!

I went with her class to a field trip at the Amazeum, our new children's museum. It was tons of fun, but so crowded. I must have counted that group of red shirts every 45 seconds. I only lost 1 girl, for about 3 minutes when she wondered out of the bathroom. It nearly gave me a heart attack!!!

Love special field trip days. Bonus....this was indoors, far away from chiggars. 

More afternoon barn time. This group of little sisters is lucky to have each other. They play and play while they wait.

Reagan reading to the little guy in a doctors waiting room. LOVE.

This girl is a nut. She constantly makes us laugh. It is impossible to be around her and not be joyful.

It was the first chilly night of fall softball. We snuggled under blankets and drank hot chocolate. It was late game. We had lots of softball night at the field until 9am. Not easy when the bus comes at 6:50am.

And, this was at the bus stop the next morning. 50 degrees, 7:20am, the bus was 30 minutes late. We were tired and freezing. Ready for the weekend.

Jumper Jackpot

Addison had a jumping competition at her barn back in September. She and Zee did a great job!!! She works so hard at her love for riding all year long and it is nice to have the days to see her hard work pay off at competitions. I am thankful our local riding stable does these occasionally, so she gets the experience. It was a long day....around 9 hours at the barn. She did her events later in the day, but loved helping some of the younger kids tack up and warm up for their events earlier. I lost count, but I think she ended up with 2 firsts place events, 4 seconds and 1 third. Those earned her a Grand Champion and 2 Reserve Grand Champion awards.

It really is amazing to watch. She didn't pick an easy sport. She had to see the competition pattern written out, walk it once on foot and then memorize and be able to ride it within about 30 minutes. Jumping is hard....it combines lots of balance, footing, command of the horse and timing. It would scare me to death! All that and she takes care of a 1000 pound animal and all her tack in between. Thankful she loves it so much and that we are able to watch her do it.

Ozark National Science Center

I chaperoned the mother of all field trips for Addison's class back in September. We headed out around 8am, for a 12 hour day at a science center about 1 1/2 hours away. 

First stop.....long, windy, twisty, bumpy bus ride through the Ozark mountains. These girls sat in the back. I went back for a picture and then moved to the front, where smart adults sit. I wore an armband for nausea, keep my eyes straight ahead and sucked on peppermint all the way there. The bus ride turned out to be the easy part!

Shortly after our arrival, we split into our groups for the next 9 hours of exploring, hiking and field work. This is where I found out that the science center (not our teachers) doesn't allow parents to supervise their own child's group. So, after pulling many strings and spending a week arranging my 3 other children's schedules, to go on this trip with Addison, I was assigned a group of 10 children I have never met. I didn't know a single child in the group. I said a quick good-bye to Addison and off we went.

Now, I am all for hiking, trails and exploring. I enjoy it, but I like to stay on the move!!! Unfortunately, our guide was more of a sit and talk girl. Here we are on the porch of a 150 year old farmhouse. The house was very cool (think Fixer Upper)....sitting on the porch talking about it for an hour, was not!!! I wore my Fitbit and in a 4 hour hike, I had less than 3000 steps. We would walk for 10-15 minutes and then sit down in the woods to talk for 45 minutes.

It was already driving me crazy before the kids started noticing the ticks. It was seed tick season, and every time we sat down in the woods, we would be crawling with them. The guide was unconcerned and would just pass out duct tape for us to pull them off with.

Around hour 3 when I thought I couldn't get more bored, one of the girls in my group started feeling bad. She proceeds to tell me how she had fever that morning, but she took Motrin and came to school anyway. Now, 6 hours later, she is burning up with fever, miserable, 2 hours from home and in the middle of the woods. I ended up going back with her to sit in the "infirmary" for the last 2 hours. No books, no TV, no cell service. Just her and I in an empty room with a cot and a chair.

When dinner rolled around, she and I headed up to the cafeteria for "camp dinner". I did at least get to eat my sloppy joes with Addison. At this point all the kids are celebrating that they made it through the all day hike without having to go to the bathroom or laughing that they survived going behind a tree. All of us are happily guzzling water that we were too nervous to drink before and during the hike, due to the lack of facilities. We survived dinner took a few group shots, found an enormous tarantula on the way back to the bus (best part of the science center) and loaded up.

We drove about 30 minutes when 1 girls starts crying that she has to go to the bathroom NOW. The poor girl is hysterical and we are in the middle of nowhere!!! The bus driver kept an eye out and about 15 minutes later he spies a porta-potty on the side of the road in front of an abandoned gas station. He lets the teacher make the call and since the poor girl in beyond miserable she says stop. Well, then, of course SIX girls then decide they need to go. At a single porta-potty. On the side of the road. In the middle of nowhere. The potty crisis slows us down 20 minutes, but we get back on the road safely, laughing with the bus driver about how he has only had to stop for bathroom emergencies a few times in his 25 years of driving. We move along nicely for about 30 minutes and then one of the boys starts in. We are at least back in the city now with options and our bus pulls into a gas station. This time 5 boys have to go and they unload with the teacher!!!! The bus driver tells me this is the first time in his career that he has ever stopped twice for emergency bathroom trips on a field trip. It turns out all that water we drank after surviving our hikes, came back to haunt us.

The cherry on top of this field trip came the next day. I woke up itching like crazy and COVERED in chigger bites. I probably had 100 bites on me. 50 of them on my feet. I have never been so miserable and itchy in my life. Chiggers are EVIL!!! It took 3 weeks for those to clear up. Thankfully I can laugh about it now, but I promise I'm not going back in 2 years when Reagan's class goes.