Around Here in November

In November,

Collin, Reagan, and Katelyn played in their last soccer games of the season.

Kate slept in her crib for the last time.

I took it apart and Tyler brought it to Papa's house where he reassembled it with Papa for Hannah to use when she visits.

Kate has been sleeping in the trundle of Reagan's bed until their bunk beds arrive next weekend.

Reagan competed in the URI Fall Classic gymnastics meet and she placed fifth out of forty girls on bars.

 On November 11th, we celebrated Kelly's seventh birthday.

Reagan started basketball.  This is her first time ever playing and she is enjoying it.  I love this free throw, gymnast style basketball.

Collin made this notebook cover in art class.

This is our skeleton.  His name is Peach and he is a Halloween decoration, but Kate has been playing with him daily, so he's still hanging around.  Poor guy isn't doing so well, but Kate is trying to save him.

Reagan had her last orthopedic visit with Dr. Micheli in Boston.  He is an awesome doctor (he's the official doctor for the Boston Ballet), but I'm happy that we don't have to go back anytime soon.  She had to wear these silly shorts for her appointment so that he could see her legs and feet without pants in the way.

These kids worked with a bunch of others to put together bags of food and personal care items for the local families living in homeless shelters.  I really want to make a point of finding more service projects for us; I think it's important and definitely an area that I have not spent enough time pursuing with the kids.

September Stuff

The month of September was busy, and it was over in the blink of eye.  Here's a peek at some of what we did.

 Reagan went to see One Direction with Allison.  They had a great time.

Reagan's soccer team.  She has teammates named Tyler, Collin, and Katelyn, and they all spell their names the same way our children's names are spelled.  How funny is that?

 Kate started taking swimming lessons at the Barrington Y.  She LOVES it this time and really looks forward to going.  Her teacher is wonderful.

 Kate and I went to a zoo class where we learned about giraffes.

After the zoo class, we spent some time with the goats.  Kate enjoyed feeding, brushing, and loving them.

 It was just about this time that a zoo employee told Kate she was giving out a little too much love.

 Reagan saw an orthopedic doctor at Boston Children's and we learned that she has extra bones in her feet.  She is doing physical therapy to help with her ankle pain.

 Spirit of Somerset was fun!

Disney on Ice was a birthday present for Kate, and she was very happy to share that experience with Reagan.  We had a great time!

 Reagan started playing the cello through the school strings program.

 Public Safety Day fun!

 I love Kate's corner kick.  So cute!

 Reagan is playing in a weekly field hockey league at Moses Brown in Providence.

 Magna Tiles are awesome; they are played with often here.

I took this picture looking into the top of Kate's Magna Tiles tower.

Kate enjoys patterns.  We have tons of these little erasers, and she used them to make a few different patterns.

We ended September with an early start on Halloween horrors!  Almeida's haunted hayride had some of us in stitches laughing, while some did not find it funny at all.  A few tears were shed that night, but it was fun to have a big group and overall it was entertaining.

August Happenings

I am SO FAR behind on posting.  I considered just skipping all of the stuff that happened and just going forward, but I'm way too sentimental to leave anything out.  Here's a look at the second half of August.

 Kate and I had quite a few water balloon battles.

My cousin Sandra visited from Florida.  Collin, Reagan, Kate and I had a great time with her.  The kids swam in the pool at her hotel and we went to Panera for lunch.

We went blueberry picking on a super hot day.  It was the end of blueberry season and the bushes were pretty bare.

I purchased two of these huge containers to fill, and we didn't even fill one.  It was just too hot and the pickings were too slim.  We did get enough to make our favorite blueberry muffins and blueberry pie!

Reagan had a great summer of gymnastics with this group of girls.  I think they are all still together for this season.  Reagan is competing at the Xcel Silver level this year and this means that she is now competing sanctioned.  I don't know enough about gymnastics to know what this really means, but my explanation is that her scores are more meaningful and will be used to determine eligibility in meets.  (FYI:  the two girls in the front middle are half of a set of quadruplets!)

 Tyler met his favorite country singer, Brantley Gilbert.

 We could not let summer slip away without tie dyeing.

Kate had her very first soccer game.  She is having fun being part of a team.  Kate runs back and forth with her team, but she isn't really interested in getting too close to the ball yet.  She is happy to go in whenever her coach calls her though!

We ended August with a bang.  Ha ha!

We had an end of summer party and I guess I was too busy having fun to take many pictures, but I have a couple of some of the kids watching Tom's fireworks display.

Now I have to catch up on September before this month is over!