So our summer ended and now we are jumping into the fall. Everything is flowing pretty smoothly with our new daily routine. My routine is the most confusing since I am keeping busy volunteering at the elementary school, working occasionally as a sub teacher’s aide in the schools, and working as children’s ministry leader.
SKAT Bus Trip
After our great trip to Glacier National Park and Silverwood, we had a few important things to get done around the house. First of all, we had to fit in our Skat Bus Shopping Adventure! We caught the bus early in the morning and road almost an hour to get to the mall one town over. Anika was just dying to do this trip because she wanted to get her ears pierced! No tears were shed. She was a brave girl. Her choice of earrings were some cute daisy shaped studs.
Then we were able to get free hair cuts for Tegan and Anika at JC Penny’s. The just needed trims and there was a special deal going on.
We also visited the Children’s museum while were were in the mall because it was a free day there too! What a deal!
We even got most of our school supply shopping down that day. It was tricky getting it all home on the bus, but it was nice to get the errand out of the way.
Garage Sale
That Friday we decided to have a garage sale. We had been moving all our junk from rooms to the garage for a couple months. Finally we had time to get rid of it, but it just happened to be the hottest day of the year, so we only made it until about 11:00 before closing down shop and carting it all off to donate it. Kelby had a goal to make $20 bucks and she did it. I think they did better on their lemonade than the stuff we were trying to sell! We spent some of our spoils in celebration with a frozen yogurt.
Back2School Party
The next day we all went to help at at Back2School party at a local church. Our church provided the sucker tree game for the carnival event, and the girls and I worked our booth. The party was a chance for low-income families in town to come get free backpacks full of school supplies. It was a fun day of serving, but the girls got to enjoy the carnival fun too.
Amazing Race
My friend Jessica and I had to fit in the last hike of our “Amazing Race” challenge early the next week. The girls didn’t want to come on this hike because of the warning sign referenced in the instructions saying that search and rescue was called there often. The girls stayed home while I went off with my friend and we had a great day. The hike was so hard. The sad thing was that the weather wasn’t clear. The view from that point is apparently 360 degrees of amazing, but we couldn’t see off the mountain! It was totally socked in. The girls would have been fine on the hike, so I’ll have to bring them back another time to give it another try!
This is where we were, but you can see we couldn’t see the view!
OWL Training (Outstanding Wise Leaders)
That week I got to do a special training for all the youth that help out in our Sunday School classes. It was a lot of fun to equip them.
Adventure Friends
Man…what a bunch of fun adventures we had the last weeks before school started. I just love my friend Jessica!! We’ve had such great fun hiking, but we topped it all off with an adventure of “Stand Up Paddleboarding” or SUP. It is like a really wide surfboard that you stand up on and use a long paddle to move. We got a cheap deal at a place in Seattle and went with our other friend Effie from church. I wish I had a waterproof camera, but you just have to believe that it was awesome. We got out on the water as the sun was setting. We paddled around the Puget Sound. It was hard to stand up, but you could get in a groove after awhile. However, I was the only one to fall into the drink! I leaned back just a little too much once and fell in! Gross…salty marina water in my mouth! Thank goodness for the wet suit!
It was like this, only not quite so skinny!
Sun Fun
The crazy thing about our August is how hot it was and how little rain we had! Here are the girls enjoying that sun…
San Francisco
To top it all off, I got a great vacation during the last week of summer! Mike had a conference in San Francisco, and this year it wasn’t during the first week of school. We asked if Mike’s mom would like to have the girls and she said “yes!”, so I got to go too! It was win, win because the girls had a super wonderful, special time with their Gramma, and I got to relax and do nothing in the big city!
We walked around, rode the bus and street cars, tried out new restaurants and had a wonderful time. We knew another couple that were down there for the same thing, so I traipsed around town with her during the day.
…And literally ran around with Mike at night! I navigated us down by the water on the bus, then we ran together out to the Golden Gate Bridge, out a ways on it, and back. How cool to be able to do that together! How romantic!
During the day, my friend found some free tours around the city for us to go on. We went on a guided tour of the hotel we were staying in. It was “The Palace”, built in 1909 after the big earthquake/fires there.
I LOVE the architecture of this building and all the other on the downtown streets were were on.
My friend went on another tour of the town where she learned there are public spaces on some of the buildings. We found a “park” on the roof of the Wells Fargo building.
I ended up back there a few times to read a book and eat lunch.
We also went on a “Gold Rush Days” tour where we got to walk the streets that would have been underwater back in the original days of San Francisco. I just happened to be reading a book about that very same era and San Francisco at that time, so it brought the book to life! We saw actual streets and the town square mentioned in the book. (If you haven’t read Francine Rivers’ book “Redeeming Love”, you should!) I finished the whole book on that trip!
On our last night there, Mike and I went on another running date. We wandered through the Golden Gate Park.
Than meandered back through the city until we found the “Full House” houses! You remember…the houses they always showed on that TV show when we were kids?
Then we rode the bus back to our hotel downtown. We were well traveled on public transit by the time we were done with this trip!
After showering up, we went down to Fisherman’s Wharf and found some chowder and fish and chips for dinner.
Wow, what a whirlwind!
Labor Day Weekend
With the trip done, I had only 3 days before school started to make sure we had everything ready to go! And somewhere in the midst of that chaos, we got a bunny!
The girls had been wanting a new pet for the entire summer, but we made them wait until all the vacations were over. While we were gone in San Francisco I think they were praying that I would say yes and let them get one. Finally I said okay…one bunny (not the three that they wanted) and it had to be free with a free hutch. Lo and behold, a free bunny came up on Craigslist and the owner decided we were the winners. He was a dad whose daughter had lost interest and he felt bad for the poor thing. Since we had three girls he gave it to us. Good choice…because it is well loved here! Even I love the little thing. Her (we think it is a her) name is Daisy.
We weren’t quite done with our shopping, so on Labor Day, we went out…and stressed out! But the day after that, they were ready and willing to head back to the books.
Back to School
Yeah, Mike was there to take the back to school pictures! Aren’t those girls beautiful!
Tegan and Anika let me go with them, but Kelby went all on her own.
My Birthday
Mike made me Eggs Benedict for dinner for my birthday, so I didn’t have to cook!
Then for fun, we rode our bikes to Dairy Queen for Blizzards instead of a cake. It was perfect!
Camping with Friends
The weekend after the first week of school had us out camping with friends. We had such a wonderful time with a few families at a camping area nearby that I had never been too. They brought Kayaks that were so much fun and the view on the water was phenomenal!
The kids had so much fun and played and played together all day for two full days. They were in that water swimming or floating most of the time!
I don’t think they’ll really ever want to go camping alone again!
School Days
We are getting back to a normal flow finally. Kelby goes to school by 7:40 am with Michael on his way to work. Tegan and Anika leave around 9:00 am, but sometimes lately they have been riding their bikes to school. They have a friend that has a short cut so they can stay on safe roads the whole way. I did a lot of wandering and relaxing for a few days, but now I am back into the game and doing some subbing on the playground. Tomorrow my job starts again as an AVID tutor. I will be working 8 hours a week at the middle school for that.
Family Camping
This last weekend was supposed to be a Girl Scout camp out at the drive in movie theater. However, when I found out what movie they were showing, I had to back out. The girls weren’t too disappointed because we decided to go camping again as family instead.
We visited the newly restored, lighted waterfall hike the first night we were there. It was so amazing!
We had a great time just hanging out at one of our favorite camping spots. We did some hiking, fishing, reading, and game playing.
Kelby even caught her first fish all by herself on her new fly rod!
What a beautiful way to spend a fall weekend.
Up Next
Next weekend Mike and I run another half marathon! I have been training for it, but not as hard as last year. I am still hoping to beat my time, but I won’t feel bad if I don’t since I’ve been fighting my aching body a lot lately. Once this race is done I will go back to running less and keep my goals down to 5 and 10K races instead of 13.1 miles!…at least for now.
The weekend after that I get to go to a Women of Faith conference with my adventure friend Jessica and a bunch of other gals from our church! Then, really, life will slow down. No really…I mean it!
Love to you all!
