More Random Updates from Our House

I'm typing this at 11:10 in the morning and it's already been a full day for me here in my house!  Whew!  With morning swim practices now filling our schedules, Morgan and Marissa are getting up and leaving the house around 4:50 a.m. so I try to get up when they do in order to see them out the door.  I normally would go back to bed for two hours after they leave before Melayna needs to head out, but it was also my turn to do breakfast for the girls' team this morning, so I stayed up to brown sausage and to get the rest of the breakfast bagged up and ready to go.  Then, at 6:30 a.m.,  I headed over to the school so we'd be ready for the girls when their practice ended.  The whole team is super appreciative of a hot and filling breakfast and I am always thankful for the other parents who take their turn to keep my girls fed as well.  It just makes for a couple of very early mornings.  (Although, how do I complain about two or three extra early mornings a year when those two do it three times a week and average 3500 yards in the morning and another 3500 yards in the afternoon.)

Please ignore Coach D and his "odd" look.  Apparently he doesn't know how to use an iPhone so he was having trouble taking selfies for the girls.  LOL

But I think this is the girls saying that they love morning practices!

And these pictures are just my two girls being silly one night after swim practice.  

A couple of the teachers at the school get the girls confused and often think they are either the "other" sister when they see them separately and get their names mixed up, or they just think they are identical twins.  The girls took this picture hoping to prove that they "don't look anything alike".  

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Let's see, other than swimming, what else is happening in this house?

We've had two more weeks of absolutely gorgeous weather and I've been able to continue my morning walks.  Aren't the trees just beautiful?

We've also had some pretty amazing sunrises and since the two older girls drive themselves before the sun comes up, Melayna and I have been enjoying the sunrises on our way into school a bit later.

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Just a shout out to Melayna... that poor girl has been working so hard these past weeks.  She's in her freshman year at the high school and with Chemistry, Honors Geometry, AP History, and Honors English (among others like Spanish, Band and Art), she really has a full load almost every night.  (I also signed her up for online driver's training because I was thinking that she would need to complete the course between XC and track season, but I wasn't really thinking about all of her reading homework that would also need to be completed.  So, to say that she has been such a trooper through the past couple of weeks would be a great understatement.  By God's mercy and grace, she is hanging in there and taking it one day at a time and continuing to stay on top of it all.  She just wishes that she had a little more time in the evenings to paint or do something fun for herself.  

Here are a couple of her recent art projects though for future safekeeping:

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Noel continues to be busy working on renovating the rental house along with another big house addition that he's been working on.  The rental house is all wrapped and enclosed and sealed up for the winter.  He just recently finished wrapping the windows and the door and getting everything ready for siding.  'Hopefully that can happen soon.

And the inside is coming along too as most of the rooms have at least the first coat of paint on them and the ceilings are textured.  The flooring is being ordered today and should be in shortly.  It's going to look so nice when it's completely finished.

The kitchen has a few spots where cabinets will go that Noel will touch up later, but for the most part, even the kitchen is complete.

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Don't worry, it's not all work and no play for him.  He has been coming home in the evenings and trying to teach Nolan some new card games.  The latest hot new games are "Speed" and "War".  

And Nolan asked us to help him put together his old car tracks last week and after we played with him on them for a bit, he made this fun video....

I think that's it for now.  Things are always going.  Things are always changing.  Things are always being added or taken away from our calendar.  But at least for this week, I think those are the highlights.

Other Random Happenings...

One of these days (weeks), things will slow down just a bit, right?  Or, maybe not.  

Once again, I was downloading pictures from my phone and I realized that in our busyness, I have missed writing about some "simple day to day" activities so I'll try to drop a few pictures or videos here for our future reference.  

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I don't remember the exact context of these pictures, but apparently we had an arm wrestling contest a while back.  There were some surprising wins, that's for sure!

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Nolan learned how to use the Boomerang app on my phone and entertained himself that way for a while one night.  I was able to keep these two gems:

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Other random news about Nolan (because it seems like I have a lot!)... A few years ago, we gave a keyboard to friends so that their boys could take piano lessons.  Now that the family has a full size piano in their home, they gave us our keyboard back.  I started with it up in the living room but Nolan makes so much noise with the prerecorded noises and percussion sounds, that it has now been moved down to our basement.

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Thankfully Marissa has only had to go to physical therapy three times this entire cross country season, and we are very thankful for that.  It's been so worth it and we are very thankful for Stephanie and the work that she does, but Marissa is always sore for a couple of days after our appointment.  Maybe these pictures will help to explain why -- dry needling isn't necessarily "fun".

And then after working out the knots and massaging the weak and sore muscles, she usually sends Marissa home with plenty of strengthening exercises to do on her own at home.   Considering the fact that Marissa had to see Stephanie seven or eight times her freshman year (during a five month time period) and now we're down to just three visits, I think she's come a long way.  Who knows?!  Maybe next year we won't need to go back.

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Melayna has been working on a couple more art projects this first quarter.  It's always so fun to see her developing her talent for drawing.

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Last week the two older girls had Wednesday off of school as the younger grades took PSAT tests.  I loved having Morgan volunteer with me in the nursery of my Bible Study.  She was so good with the little ones, and even one of the young boys who normally screams when his mommy left quieted down almost immediately and stuck with Morgan the entire morning.  (Now we're all wishing that Morgan could just come back for him every week).

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I recently came across an old picture of Morgan and Marissa the year that they transferred to the Warsaw Aquatic team.  I think Morgan was in the 8th grade and Marissa was in the 7th grade.  They have certainly grown up since this picture.  (And my heart cannot take too many more of these bittersweet memories as time is just flying by way too quickly!)

Speaking of swimming, we are back in the pool full swing.  Morgan has been swimming pre-season but official high school season kicks off next Monday and Nolan is loving club swimming.  He plans to compete in his first meet in the next couple of weeks and then he hopes to be promoted to the silver team. 

He is in the 5th lane in this picture.... waiting for his backstroke start.

His backstroke is really coming along.

 

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Let's see...what else has been happening around here?!

Our high school volleyball team won sectionals for the first time in a long time (if not maybe ever in school history?)  Melayna doesn't play volleyball but she loves to watch it, so she and Noel went up to Penn to watch the sectional championship.

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And while they were at the volleyball game and I was at a family photo session, Nolan went to a birthday party for his friend Andrew.  They played outside all night long -- laser tag and football and some sort of Zombie game.  He had a lot of fun.

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We got our first snow and sleet of the year on Monday, October 17th.  We didn't have any snow that stuck to the ground at our house but apparently they got one or two inches just a short 20 minutes north of us as proven by friends pictures online.  

By the time that we woke up on Tuesday morning, all signs of the snow were gone and the weather is suppose to be in the 60's again by the weekend.

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I think that's it for now.  

We are heading into Fall Break for the rest of the week although Marissa still has XC practice and a meet on  Saturday, so we will be sticking around close to home once again this year.  I'm sure we'll find a way to throw in a fun adventure or two along the way.  Until next time...

Random Weekly Updates // What Have I Missed?? // Longer Post Attached

 Some weeks have a lot of big things that earn their own blog posts while other weeks are just full of everyday things and while we're always busy, I don't always think to blog about it all.  So, in an effort to clean off my pictures and also preserve an update of sorts for our future records, I'll just post a few random happenings from the past week or so.

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Over Labor Day weekend, the girls had a XC meet on Saturday morning, but we also had a lot of time to just relax and spend time with family/friends.  On the way down to the meet, we passed by the drive-in theater near Wabash and they were advertising the "Wizard of Oz" that was playing later that evening.  Nolan mentioned that he hadn't ever seen the movie but wanted to (on a scale of 1-10 of how badly he wanted to see the movie, he chose 100!).  So later that night, we met up with Dawn, Amlie, and Aaron, and then Morgan, Marissa, Nolan and I all went back to the drive-in.  (Noel and Melayna stayed home so Melayna could catch up on some history reading).  We had a good time and Nolan loved the movie.

I didn't get Nolan in this picture because he had taken off to play at the playground until it got dark enough for the movie to start.

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On Sunday night, we were able to drive over to Plymouth to watch the Blueberry Festival fireworks.  Once again, we met up with friends and family there and had really great seats right near the front.  (Many thanks to Nate and Dawn for getting there much earlier than us and saving plenty of room for us).   Doug and Noel drove over in one truck and I brought Aaron in the van with the rest of our family.  The forecast had shown a possibility of heavy rain earlier in the day but as the day went on, that seemed to clear up according to the forecast.  As we started driving over however, it started raining and the dark clouds were headed our way.  It took about 45 minutes to drive over and the rain was just clearing up as we parked but I wasn't sure if it was done for the day so we grabbed umbrellas and hoped for the best.  Thankfully the rain held off until after the fireworks were over, although the wind was blowing too hard for the hot air balloons to be put up, so except for the one that balloon that was blown up temporarily for the National Anthem, that portion of the show was cancelled this year.  

The fireworks (and drone show) were amazing though and worth the wait.  We were all thankful that we were able to sit and watch it once again this year.

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Nolan continues to keep us laughing...and always on our toes.  He didn't want to go to the football game last week so he told Morgan that he was going to lay on the couch and pretend to sleep so that we'd forget and go without him.  Then he actually did fall asleep.  

Unfortunately, although he slept about an hour, he still woke up before we left so he thought he was going to have to go with us anyway... but then fortunately for him, his sisters were at a team dinner about five minutes from our house so we agreed to let him stay home by himself until they got home to be with him.

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In other "Nolan news"... he came across some gloves that Noel uses when he stains.  Nolan asked if he could have a pair and then he went downstairs and dug through the costume bin and came back up looking like this:

He told me that he was now a doctor and asked if I was feeling okay.  I think that I will be "feeling okay" for as long as I can if he's my only medical option.  LOL

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Noel and Nolan bought a couple of necessary parts and worked on the go-cart once again this week and then Nolan spent several days riding it around our yard.  Noel also took him out and tried to teach him how to mow the yard.  Nolan thinks that he should be able to mow the yard a lot like he drives the go-cart and since that's not really the way it works, it might be a while before we turn him lose with the mower.

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We've had some absolutely gorgeous sunsets around here lately!!

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I think that I mentioned back in the spring that Melayna had been chosen to work up a t-shirt design that would be used at the middle school XC Tiger Invite.  She spent several weeks putting her ideas down on paper and then recreating the drawing in a computer program.  Finally she completed the work and sent it off to the XC coaches.  We didn't hear much more about it until last week when the high school coach asked her what size she wanted and told her that she would receive a free shirt as appreciation of all of her hard work. 

I know that I'm a little biased, but I think they turned out really good!  

I'm so proud of all of my kiddos and how they use their God-given gifts and talents.

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Let's see.... what else has happened in these busy days?!

I came across this funny meme the other day and I saved it because it's so very true!  We've gone through this two times already with one more daughter getting ready to begin driver's training in just a few shorts weeks.  Surely I can survive a third round, right?  LOL

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Nolan learned how to play a new game and then taught Noel and I to play it with him.

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The xc team has had a couple of fun dinners in recent weeks and they also got together with the boys team on Labor Day for a combined practice / pizza night.  I'm just putting a couple of pictures here so we have them later.

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And finally, club swimming has started up again as of Monday the 12th.  Nolan had been planning to start all along, but recently Morgan found out that high school's pre-season start had been pushed back almost a full month so she also decided to swim club so she could get a head-start on training.  I can't believe it's that time of the year again already!

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EDITED:  I just found a whole other row of pictures on my phone from when Noel was recently working on the "flip" and also Nolan's latest field trip adventures.  

Oh well, I think I've posted enough for now.  I'll just save those goodies for another day.