AND IT BEGINS

HELLO ALL!! Between Diet Cokes, I DO have time for some family fun. We love the crazy northwest coast. It may not be 95 degrees and sunny; the rip tide would pull you out to your death if you go out past your ankles...but hey...it's home.

My Hadley is...well, she's Hadley. What a hilarious little person. She's in the first grade now. Last year she decided that Ethan was just dreamy! So she talked about him and played with him. I became friends with his mom and when she found out I was Hadley’s mom, it was “OOOOHHHH, Hadley”. Evidently Hadley was a little bit of a stalker. So Hads and I had a talk about being discreet and “playing hard to get” as it were. So the next day she came home from school and nonchalantly mentioned, “I told Ethan that I love him and that I want to marry him”. Well, I guess she decided to go with the direct approach instead. I guess it worked because by spring Ethan was head over heals in love with Hadley. Now they’ve decided to just be good friends.

She was THE most gorgeous flower in Alice in Wonderland.

She has found her athletic calling. Soccer. The soccer bulb came on a few weeks ago and she has been a scoring/dribbling/corner kicking machine ever since. She practices dribbling in the yard and talks about playing indoor for her coach when the weather turns.

Kord recently joined the "Science Olympiads". An after school competitive team based program. Last weeks team challenge was to build a contraption out of straws, a small amount of duct tape, and other materials that would protect an egg in an 8 foot fall. Their team didn't win but in Kords words, "at least the egg didn't explode everywhere, it only cracked".

Kord is also playing flag football again this fall and usually finds himself playing quarterback because of his size and hands. Today was a historic moment in his career as he scored the go ahead two point conversion on a QB sneak in the final seconds to win the game. In two seasons of play that was his first score so he was pretty happy. So were we.

Layne has devilishly charismatic older siblings and sarcastic parents to guide her development so we have no one to blame but ourselves for her wit and charm. Hadley came in way past bedtime a few nights ago and complained that Layne was being naughty and not letting her get to sleep. Layne than ran to the top of the stairs and instead of protesting her innocence put her hands on her hips and in a nanny nanny boo boo tone of voice yelled "that's riiiiiiiight". It was a kind of a "and watcha ya gonna do about it moment". Well, what dad did about it was stifle laughter for several minutes and then having lost all credibility as a disciplinarian let Layne fall asleep in our bed. She just started her first year of pre-school and loves being a big girl like Hadley.

Case is moments away from crawling. He has finally broken out of the basement with regards to his weight percentile ranking that we were worried about. It might have to do with the fact that he is eating us out of house and home now that he has been introduced to solid foods.

This summer we got to go back to Maryland and D.C. to hang out with Dad. The kids loved seeing the declaration, national archives, library of congress and other sites they remember from "National Treasure". Kord spent a lot of time devising a plan to steal the important national documents, in the end he stole the Declaration and bolted for the door. Okay, it was the $10 replica and we DID pay for it...but we had tons of fun with it.

Then we proceeded to the National Gallery of Art. I was explaining Seurat's style and discussing how we thought he did it. In a flash, Kord said, "Yea, it's bumpy" while raising his hand and touching the painting. AHHHHH. It was all in slow motion for me. I couldn't stop him before he touched it. Well, I obviously spent some time helping him to understand the magnitude of what he just did. After all was well, we all love to laugh about it. Honestly, how many people do you know who have touched an original Seurat.

Since that was only a day after he drove grandpa's golf cart into a tree--Kord had an eventful Maryland trip.

The kids also had a great time getting to know Grandpa and the bottom of one of the many tributaries to the Chesapeake. Grandpa towed kids around the river day after day attempting to throw them from the tube.

I'm still working on Halloween costumes. AHHH. The issue is that every year the kids want more complex costumes since they know that mom will do it. "Mom, how about you just make me Eragon with a life sized dragon to ride. And not the way it looks in the movie. I want it the way it looks in my mind from reading the books. " Russ is still working with the young men. He was released as the YM president and put right back in as the Venture advisor. He loves it, none of the administrative garbage and all of the fun.