Monday, November 10, 2025

October Blog

 

Evan wanted to make caramels for his teacher for his birthday, we also took some to people that donated to Alex's robotics team. Eliza helped us with wrapping them up for delivery. 


Eliza won one of the Summer Reading prizes from the library. She got all these book sets.

Oma took all of us to the Yankee Air Museum near Ypsi to show us Dave's parents memorial that is set up there and also to tour the place. 


One thing I wish was that we knew more about planes, but it was interesting just the same. They had the front of a refueling plan that you could turn all the switches and dials. Evan spent a long time in that thing.




Third times the charm, my MOPS group finally escaped a Escape room. So proud of us.

Evan sold mums to help with the cost of his 5th grade camp. He sold 42 mums and raised himself $140 towards camp. He used Alex's old radio flyer wagon to deliver them to the neighbor's houses.

Turns out transporting mums takes a lot of room. Mike and I had to make 2 1/2 trips (two with my car and one with his) to get all of them home from the school.



Evan had more fun this month with his telescope. His class is studying the moon phases so we went out a few times to take pictures. 

Saturn

One last swim for the season at the Douglass's. Can't believe the kids were in the water on Oct. 5th!

Burrrrrr!!


I tried my hand a moon pies. Learned a few things: You need a stiff marshmallow fluff or it will ooze out of the cookies unless you keep them cool, and they are much better after sitting a week in the fridge. The chocolate mellows a bit and it all goes together a bit better.

I had a pretty good pepper harvest this year. This is about half or less of the peppers I've cut up and put into quart bags in the freezer for the winter. 

The library book sale strikes again. All these books for ~$40. We love our books!

Eliza and Evan were invited to their friends birthday party at a Zap Zone. There was way more to do there than I thought there would be. 

Alex decided to drag us all to the High School band concert. Alex went for extra credit and to dance to "The Time Warp" in front of everyone. It was fun and the Jazz band was really good.

I ordered seed garlic, turned out not to be that great. I planted it anyway, but we will see what comes up in the spring.

My garlic bed for the winter. The left has the seed garlic I ordered, under the harvesting basket is my seed garlic I had from harvesting this year. 

Alex's concert playing trombone in the Symphony band (he's in the highest band in the Middle School). He did a great job.

Aunt Jamie and Uncle Dave came to see him play. 

I tried making English Muffins, and did pretty well. Everyone liked them and Mike can't wait for me to make more. Fresh are way better than store bought.

Eliza's bus got home at 4:50pm on the day of her trunk or treat, she was late because of a sub. So we all jumped in the car and headed the 20 min north to her school with our dinners packed to eat in the car (which we never do). Most of the parking at her school is a free for all on the grass, and with the van I can't jump curbs so we try very hard to be very early to get a spot. 

All ready to get some treats.

After everyone got treats they took off their costumes and went to play on the playground. Eliza loves sliding down a hill on her playground. It makes her hair stick straight up from the static.

We were called in to help at the church to spread 10 yards of wood chips. 

With a crew from the church we were able to get it down in 45 min. 

Flu shots for the kids. They are showing off their muscles. 

I've been going through my Grandma Manny's picture books and I found some pictures of me and I felt like I had seen them before. Turns out I cloned myself to make Alex. (I'm the lower two pictures, Alex is the upper two pictures). 

Turns out they do have microwaves at the Bavarian Inn. Who knew?!

We signed up to go to the new water park in June, so gosh darn it, shut down or no we still went. The kids had a BLAST! They went up that tower of stairs for 2 1/2 days and they slept like rocks. They thankfully opened the wave pool the last day we were there, but the water was really cold. I was too chicken even to try the most simple of water slides, but Mike and the kids took full advantage.

We were able to hang out with some of our favorite people while we were there. We even got to go to dinner with them as well. Thank you again Laura.

Evan figuring out his coding for Lego League.

Alex's Robotics team

More moon pictures for Evan's class.

Zoomed in on the craters.

Evan with his telescope

Oreo spiders I made for Evan's class. Use Double Stuffed if you make them they will work better. Also, I had to make my own eyes because the candy eyes have red 40 in them.

We helped with Evan's Halloween party this year. Mr. Malisow knows how to throw a party. The kids decorated the whole classroom and it looked amazing.  He also made brain cakes for the kids and left the red frosting off Evans, and made "blood bags" with sprite and juice and even went out to get Evan a vitamin water so he could have some too without red dye. 

I helped make caramel apples with another adult while Mike helped with one of the game stations.

We got to see Eliza's costume parade at school and join her for her party as well.

The trick-or-treating crowd this year. We got Enoria, Clayton, James, Clara, and Aunt Shawn to join on for Trick-or-Treating this year. Mike dressed up as Beetlejuice. Eliza was her normal unicorn rainbow princess, Evan was Death again, and Alex was Charlie Brown in the Great Pumpkin. 

Alex found a fellow Charlie Brown fan our neighbor Mike.

The kids did pretty well on Halloween candy this year. They were able to mostly fill their 2 gallon zip lock bags. 

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Sept Blog

We headed to the library for a free craft. The kids got a personal pencil holder that they got to color.

Alex is the only one that is actually old enough to do this craft session, but we are friends with so many of the staff a the library they are kind of enough to make an exception for the other two. 

Evan decided that his telescope mirror needed to be cleaned before our Astronomy in the Park event. So we got to work on removing the end of the tube and cleaning the super delicate mirror. It was scary, but all was well. 


We all headed up to Keego Harbor for the Oakland Astronomy club to give a presentation and we had a few other telescopes to look through that evening. 

Evan was the only non-digital telescope there. So even the other older people with telescopes were coming over to look through Evan's to see things with their own eyes rather than on their phone. Funny thing, we were trying to get Evan's telescope to work and we could not get it to focus no matter what we did, and I was soooooo worried we messed up something cleaning the mirror... turns out he didn't have the lens extension on so he put it on and all was well. Gave me a heart attack though.

Alex and Mike worked hard on going through the Atari games we got from Oma's house. They were so excited to play all these games. 

I had a giant spider that lived in my garden, it kept making a web from my garden door over to the other fence, so every morning I would break it. After about a week or two I moved it one day and he was happy over by the peppers, but I think a bird got him or he just moved on.

Rock tumbler was a success. The kids were very happy with their rocks. 

My dad came to visit for a few days. He enjoyed going through his Mom's albums that I have. He pointed out family members and told me stories about them. It was nice.

He also helped me put my onions away for winter storage. 

He was very impressed with our turkey herd. We have about 14 wild turkeys wandering our sub right now.

We got to see Nana and have lunch with her and Aunt Jamie and Uncle Dave. Alex is taller than Nana now but not Evan or Eliza, but it's close. 

I'm reading the City of Ember series with the younger two and after we finish reading for the night they ask to watch funny cat videos on my phone. Alex comes running down the hall to join us.

Evan has started playing Trumpet at school. The boys love their half mile walk in the morning to the bus stop with their instruments. I love that I'll have some people to play music with soon.

Eliza made a wreathe from a broken branch off a neighbor's tree and flowers from my garden.  

Eliza's backpack is as big and heavy as she is. I usually carry it to the bus for her in the mornings. 

Carrot harvest, not bad.

No idea what I did different but it worked. 

Our church had their annual October Fest, so we invited some of our favorite people to join us. Good food and good company.

Alex is loving Robotics this year. He's on the build team and the Code team this year. He is very busy, but loving it. 

The kids had the day off for Rosh Hashanah so we headed to Greenfield Village. No one was there and we got to ride all the rides and even got to ride in a "Woody" Model T. I asked them if we could tour some of the gardens and they enjoyed it as much as I did, no joke. They were asking me what kinds of plants things were, and I had no idea. It was a lovely day for the village. Alex and I are now thinking about where we can put a new garden bed just for flowers next year.

Eliza at her FUNd run that I volunteered at.

Evan and his FUNd run I volunteered at. They both did great and had beautiful days to be outside. 

We had 12 wild turkeys in our yard this weekend, and we had a vulture on our playset hunting a groundhog. Rosie was very entertained. 

What do you get when you have kids that can't play electronics... fun! Alex and Evan attached Alex's Radio Flier wagon to a bike and off they went.

Evan is in "relaxed mode" being pulled by Eliza on our walk around the block. 

Evan took over and Eliza was not relaxed at all. He was going too fast for her.

Alex was honored at the board meeting last night along with the other top 36 readers in the district. We love our library!

This is Alex's third year getting the award. He dressed up for the event as well. Good job Alex! He read 120hrs this summer. He's reading currently the Wheel of Time Series (14 books) and the Narnia Series for school and is going to start a book club through school next week.
 

October Blog

  Evan wanted to make caramels for his teacher for his birthday, we also took some to people that donated to Alex's robotics team. Eliza...