A Quick One...

Young Matt and I...

This was a long week and weekend and we are tired! I failed and didn't take too many pictures. I finished going through everything in the basement. Loved finding all sorts of old pictures and things. All the hard work to clean and a day before our new equipment is to be delivered - the order cancelled! Boo! We have it reordered through NordicTrack directly and we hope it have it delivered in December! 

The basement is at least organized and clean - one less thing to worry about in the house!

The original Piñata costume... ha!

This week was weirdly waiting for volleyball. We had tryouts a week ago and it was waiting to see what team she would be on. It is a long, rough process. There is definitely a ranking process in volleyball that sometimes it is fair and sometimes not. There is a loyalty to the girls doing it since 3rd grade and the girls who are "gym rats". We haven't done any open gyms or lessons because of COVID. Its hard to get on the coaches minds when they really don't know who you are and our coach from last year left to start her own club! There is always a little game when it comes to these things. Get your girl noticed by talent and then as a parent, I need to make sure she participates in a few more open gyms, lessons and have those conversations of what needs to happen to best prepare Heidi for upper teams.

Heidi did really well in tryouts and the coaches noticed her but didn't know where to put her. After all said and done - the main coaches came and talked with us - the position she wanted to play, there wasn't any room on the higher teams and they put her through tons of drills (just her) to see if she could potentially play a different position. The coach said she did really well but wants her to develop more and maybe consider switching to being a setter. One coach in particular said she has the hand eye coordination that can't be taught - you either have it or you don't. She has it (I guess juggling helps??? ha). 

After lots of back and forth, she was placed on a team, no idea what position yet, but she has the main guy as her coach. He normally chooses a team of girls he wants to develop and watch for things. It will be interesting what position they put Heidi. Other parents said this is good she is on that team, but we will have to wait and see.

We are still excited for VB to start and exhausted by this process. Heidi actually isn't disappointed that she didn't make the top team. She is still on a good team; she is actually just happy to have so much of the coaches mind space. The coaches made sure to talk with us after it was all said and done - he didn't do that to any other of the 100 girls. Heidi said she is ready to improve and play and then next year they will have no doubt to take her! 

We don't start practice until December (IF that even happens with the threat of the state going back into lockdown) and play doesn't begin until end of January. The team plays in masks and everyone is dripping in sanitizer. Enough about volleyball for now!

Remy sneaking into our bed to watch the Husker volleyball scrimmage!

Finishing with random playing of Lucy...

Now it is prepping for Thanksgiving and starting to get all the Christmas shopping done with trying REALLY hard to just do online! Everyone stay safe out there!

Well that happened...

We will get to our exciting Sunday event in a bit... first it was time to say goodbye to our pumpkins and Heidi wanted to smash them for some reason... 

Remy discovered the little tiny pumpkins and I'm pretty sure he thought they were dog toys... he was running everywhere with them!

We are getting a new exercise weight lifting thing this next weekend, so it meant we finally need to finish organizing the rest of the basement. Most of it just needed to be put nicely away as well as I had a goal to get rid of as many cardboard boxes as possible. I pulled everything off our shelves and went through almost everything. I found BAGS of baby clothes and baby toys. 

Before...and kind of during...

It was beyond beautiful on Saturday. We enjoyed outside as much as we could. 

It was so beautiful that Saturday night we had a fire pit, like we have had numerous times before...Traditionally, the next day, Chris fills the pan with water and lets everything soak for 4-6 hours before dumping it into our back forest area...

Well... Chris started a forest fire. Yep.

He was cleaning out the garage while I worked on the basement and was power washing when our neighbor came running over. The back of our yard was on fire - like flames etc. It was kind of lucky Chris already had his power washer going - so he ran back there and started spraying what he could until the fire department came. Luckily they came quickly and dumped so much water. It burned behind our house and over to the right to the houses behind us. Nothing but the leaves on the ground and the taller grass burned - no trees too bad and nothing in anyones yards. I didn't know this was going on and the girls didn't even notice. I didn't take too many pictures, as it was pretty intense for of bit. 

It's hard to see in the pictures, but everywhere that is dark, is burned ground. It went back and to the right so it hards to tell unless you go into the trees. 

*sigh* lesson learned for Chris. I am also impressed with the amount of fire jokes, memes and gifs our friends have. hehe.

Everyone and everything is safe and ok. Hopefully it all grows back ok.

That isn't dirt... the black is burnt.

And after that fun excitement, I went back to the basement... everything ready for either bulk pick up or donation pick up...

That's looking a little better... I still have to go through our pictures and important paperwork to get those back organized. Our main stuff is in the safe, but we have artwork, school stuff and medical paperwork coming out our ears. That will be this week! I will take the final pictures this week!

One thing fun about going through everything is what you find...like baby pictures or your very first family Disney World passes. I think we might frame these!

We also wanted to wish a heavenly birthday to Grandpa Gonzales. We miss him everyday!

 

Happy Halloween

We finally got around to getting some pumpkins! 

Heidi doing one of her many Tik Tok dances...

I had to paint mine for a work virtual event, so the girls worked on their pumpkins a little as well..

Yep. I wore it for work. Chris was SUPPOSED to wear it on Friday but his event got cancelled... I did catch him wearing it for some meetings though!

School pictures! Heidi looks too grown up and I SWEAR I had Lucy's hair just right and from when she went into the gym and took off her mask - she messed it up. Oh well. I think it captures her and she looks cute!

The girls dressed up for school on Friday. Lucy was Queen Anna (Spoiler Alert from Frozen 2! ha)

Heidi was too cool to dress up - so it was a halloween shirt! I asked her for WEEKS if she wanted a comfy onesie or something. After I put on mine, she goes - I wish I would have gotten one of those... sigh... she is a tween!

I would wear this every day if I could. So comfy.

See I caught him!

For once, we enjoyed the gym assignment - it was run around the house and find the hidden ghosts. Lucy loved it!

We finally got our new large room air purifier. Maybe since we are always in our home and the weather has been weird... our house smells. Like food, like dog, like Chris' farts... We love this thing so far. We have smaller ones in our bedrooms and this main one. It triggers when it sensing things - like when I cook or I made popcorn...Chris has farted in it A LOT - still hasn't triggered it... ha

We made a decision awhile ago to not participate in Halloween. Honestly, the kids really didn't want to do it. So I tried to make the day as fun as possible. I started with a scavenger hunt super packed fun baskets of gifts and candy!

This face!

Heidi has been learning to juggle, so I got her official juggling balls!

Next we painted some craft pumpkins. Funny story - I thought I was ordering two large ones to be painted. I totally ordered 24 little ones... in my defense, the picture is misleading on OTC. I guess we can do it next year too!

Chris and Heidi finally got around to carving their pumpkins...

Oh, Lucy decided she didn't want to wear her princess costume on Saturday...so she chose this... yikes. 

Costume fun...They had to get different costumes on to play games!

Heidi was thrilled to wear PJs all day!

I don't know what to do with him sometimes...

The natural habitat of a tween...

It was a fun successful Halloween!