The Rest of October

October really flew by. Annmarie and I went to the Wylie Opry a random Saturday in September and she auditioned to sing.  She was given the date of October 28th.  She worked really hard and prepared two songs, "Any Man of Mine" and "Independence Day".  She loved singing in front of a crowd.

Jonah had his last football game on Halloween.  His season went pretty well and they won more games than they lost.  He also enjoyed playing football.  He went straight from his game to trick-or-treating with his siblings, so he dressed as a football player.  Annmarie was a country girl.

 

Fall Band Concert

Jonah had his first junior high band concert. He made symphonic band, which is the second highest band at Cooper Junior High. He has really been enjoying learning the trumpet.

 

Horseback Riding

I wanted to be more active, so I joined a Facebook group called "Hikerbabes of North Texas". Unfortunately, almost all the hikes they plan take place either on a Sunday or on a Saturday when I have a million other things going on. There are seroiusly no groups for stay-at-home moms whose kids are in school. I know more exist than just me, but there are just hardly any activities for women during the weekday. But anyway, during the week after we went back to school from Fall break, I saw a post about horseback riding, that some people had backed out and there were openings. Now, I never saw the original invitation, but I was not doing anything Saturday morning that week, so I jumped on it. We went to this place in Anna and rode all over the hills there. It was perfect! I will definitely take my kids riding here at some point.

 

Silly Choir Boys

I hardly am able to get any pictures of Travis having fun, so I snag pictures from his social media whenever I can. The A'Cappella choir had a park day and these were pictures he and his friends took hanging out at the park. They are demolishing this playground and building a new one, so this was the last time they'd get to play on this playground.

 

Principal's Honor Roll

Nathan made in on the principal's honor roll the first term he was able to do so. They don't get actual grades until second grade, so that is the year they start being able to make the principal's honor roll. That means the score 95 or higher in every subject on their report card.They get to have lunch with the principal and assistant principal one day.  It would be amazing if he got on it every term this year.  So far, nobody else in the family has done that.  They have come close though.

 

Fall Festival

Our ward fall festival (aka Trunk-or-Treat) was on a Wednesday night.  I think they do that to get youth to participate.  They put the youth in charge of games.  Annmarie was a princess, Nathan was Dobby the House Elf, and Jonah was a yellow crayon.  I've also included a picture of Corey here with some of the ward members who've worked for him. 

 

District Championships at Dynamix

Annmarie had her district championships for gymnastics at Texas Dynamix. She once again got a higher All Around of 35.8, the highest this season, and placed 6th. She was 3rd on bars (9.2) and 5th on floor (9.225), also thinking she got jipped there. Next stop is the final meet of the season, state championships near Houston in November. 

They also had a professional sports photographer there and I ordered some pictures of her from the meet.  I don't take great pictures, so it's worth it to me to be able to buy such pictures.  

 

State Fair of Texas

Every year the kids get these free tickets to the State Fair of Texas from school. This year, I decided we were actually going to go to the fair. We decided to ride the train and we went the first day of the fall break. Travis had football and work, plus he had already been the week before with his pie, so he did not come along, and Corey was working. 

Everything at the fair cost money, so we set aside some money to use.  We did get to a see a free show, which was a marionette puppet show.  Mostly we just walked around and looked at everything.  We did try some fair food, most specifically a crepe and also some corn dogs.  The corn dogs have always been super hyped up and they were, sadly, disappointing.  Not quite as good as I had imagined.  The younger kids seemed to think that riding the train was the best part.  That was really nice to not have to worry about parking.  It seems a lot of other people thought the same thing because the train was packed on the way down.  But I think we'll definitely do this again.

 

Giant Spider

We were throwing around the baseball in the front yard and discovered a huge spider that had built a web in one of our trees. There was actually another smaller one, same type of spider, in the other tree too. This one was so big. We put the baseball next to it for comparison. It didn't last long, though. I'm sure it got eaten by a bird.

 

Travis the Baker

Travis submitted a pie at the Texas State Fair and won a prize for third place! The pie he submitted with a raspberry cream pie.  He is really enjoying his culinary class. I was able to pull some pictures of him from culinary off the district's Facebook page. 

 

Annmarie's Adventures at Camp

Annmarie went to Fifth Grade Adventure camp the first week of October. She was so excited to go camp for three days and stay the night. She even got to skip gymnastics during meet season, which is usually not possible but it was only possible this time because she didn't have a meet that weekend. I was pretty upest to get a phone call from the camp around dinner time that I would need to come pick her up because she'd been hit in the face by a golf club. Another student was messing around while they were doing mini-golf and swung the club and it hit Annmarie in the face and broke her tooth. She also got a cut on her forehead. She was pretty upset too at having to leave camp and having a bad headache and toothache from the incident. Corey ended up going to get her because I couldn't. She came home and early the next day went to the dentist to fix her tooth. Corey did end up taking her back to camp but later she said that she didn't have much fun the rest of camp. I felt pretty bad for her.

 

Judges Cup at Classic Gymnastics

Annmarie had the judges cup gymnastics meet at Classic Gymnastics. She got her highest all around score for the season so far of 35.575. She placed third (tie) on floor with a 9.0 and 4th (tie) on bars with an 8.95. Her coach and I both think she was jipped because her routine was so well executed. Her coach even went and spoke with the judge because she thought it was unfair. But the score stood. We listened to General Conference on our headphones while watching the meet. If I had a better camera, I would try to take pictures, but they would just end up blurry.