Homecoming Spirit Days: Country vs Country Club (both of my high schoolers chose the same!)

"now be super serious"

(golf clubs did not go to school)

(but Joel did wear a belt to school, which might be a first)

 

All Six kids with Dad!

My niece Allison sent me a bunch of photos, including this special one!

(Dad, I am printing an 8X10 for you!)

 

HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA SCHILLING!!

 We had such a wonderful celebration for a wonderful Dad!!

We had 31 people together in Burlington. 

My Dad will turn 90 on November 30th and today my mom would have turned 90.  She would have ADORED the party!!!

You might notice Anna, Joel and Ken were missing.  Anna had a marching band competition, which in addition to 6 COVID exposures for my school aged kids in 7 days, caused me to ask Ken to keep them at home.  Joel wanted to go, but it just felt so risky.  (Matthew, Carolyn and I all took COVID tests and are overall being more careful than Anna and Joel (masking up-wise))  

With the mask mandate now active in Ankeny schools, I will feel less nervous about bringing Joel and Anna around the grandparents around the holidays!  YEAH!!

Ankeny Schools do the right thing!

Last week a federal judge ruled in favor of parents of student with disabilities who sued the state of Iowa over their mask mandate ban !  Yesterday Ankeny school board met and reinstated the mask mandate:

"Ankeny is not the only district to reimpose a mask mandate after a U.S District judge barred state officials from enforcing a law that forbid school districts from doing so. Des Moines, West Des Moines, Urbandale, Johnston, Iowa City and Ames schools have all adopted mask mandates since the order was issued last week, too, among others. [also Burlington and West Burlington schools....where my Dad lives - yeh!]

 Claeys shared that 225 of the emails opposed a mandate, while 375 supported one."

-----------------------------

I am happy to say that I am one of the 375 who wrote an email to the school board.  While my kids are protected by the vaccine, they were exposed a combined 6 times in 7 school days recently.  Plus my hospital is starting to be stressed again by COVID cases.  I didn't even mention this in my email.  I just said that we need to protect the unvaccinated children and the immune compromised.  Despite my children's risk being low, I supported the mandate to protect the young children and the community.

Here are my favorite Ankeny students:

(just got Joel's senior pictures so this won't be the last photo you will see)  (I didn't tell him about the change in the mandate....it starts tomorrow.  He can hear it at school!  It will not make him smile because he feels like he is safe, being vaccinated.  He also may feel generally invincible, like a teen boy does.)  But is he cute.

I did tell Anna on the way to school.  She said, "It is no big deal, we did it last year.  It is better when everyone has to wear a mask."  (sweet girl's best buddy does have younger siblings and her friend has been wearing a mask all year, which helps)

Ken's Family Reunion

 Ken's sister was in Marion due to the High School Reunion for her husband.  We went to visit and Matthew drove Carolyn to join us as well.  Joel stayed home....as I feel that he is a germ fest (vaccinated, but involved in many many activities with many many people) and his cross country team did a 19 mile bike ride that day.

I love this picture.  Ken's mom's garden is so much fun.  Plus I love that Carolyn loaned Anna her flannel shirt because she had on jeans and Anna was chilly.

One of Aunt Debbie's butterflies just hatched.  (Carolyn and Matthew came wearing masks, which I thought was very considerate.)

9/3/21 Anna's first official Marching Band Performance

 First home football game.  Exciting game, Ankeny (South....not real name) vs Ankeny (Centennial).  Probably the biggest crowd of the year.  (since it is essentially a home game for 2 teams because we share the field)

PREGAME

HALF TIME (Through the Looking Glass (AKA: Alice in Wonderland) theme)

AFTER HALF-TIME.  I like seeing the football team run through the band!

9/2/21

 I am doing the Cross Country banquet slide show.  So I have taken many many pictures.  Alas on Thursday, I took many good photos, but not one of Joel....although I bet Ken has a photo on his phone.

I digress.  Here is a photo from the Cross Country Shutterfly (photo) site, where people share the photos they took of the boys.

Joel had his personal record (PR), 18 minutes 36 seconds.  He humbly declared that the race was a little short of a 5K.  Still he took almost a minute off of last year's PR!  HOOT HOOT

We had 15 boys within the 18 minute mark! 51 boys finished the race and 3 boys traveled with the team to cheer them on despite being injured.  (love that)

9/1/21 Team Dinner.....43ish boys came! (not 100% sure, they were moving targets)

Team parents....helping out:

Some of Joel's good buddies (Evan and Joel (to Joel's right) went through all of Boy Scouts together, next to Evan is Will, Joel's good buddy since he was in kindergarten)  sniff sniff, now they are seniors.

note the beautiful porch furniture pads (ha ha)

Post-dinner Football....oh my....made me a little anxious since they weren't entirely in our yard.  I decided I could be a bad neighbor once every 11 years.

Post football quiz game (such a smelly basement.....20ish boys after cross country practice and pick-up football game)

and ping-pong.

Everyone was gone by 9.  whew!

 

8/28/21 Johnston Twilight Race

 After the first Cross Country race had to be cancelled (106 heat index) , the boys were able to run tonight!  

It was a tough race.  Joel (and his team) were not very happy with their runs.  The course was a bit of a mess, with some overlap between the fastest and slower runners at a couple of places, even really close to the finish.  Normally there are at least 2 races, JV and varsity, but today they all ran together which caused some confusion.  Two of our freshman weren't directed to the final loop and finished in 18 minutes, only because they hadn't run the whole race....The course monitors didn't separate  them from the super fast kids who were finishing at that time.  

Worse still 2 of our boys went down with Heat Stroke.  It wasn't really extremely hot and the race was late in the evening, but of course that was the perspective of a participant and not a runner.  It being the first race, I also think the boys didn't have their usual race perspective.  All the boys were sweaty sweaty, but these two boys passed out near the finish.  One was Joel's best buddy and in talking to his mother, he had not eaten enough that day and didn't drink anything but water before the race, so he didn't have enough calories or sodium.  It was scary, he really pushed himself to go fast (he is one of our top runners), but it was too much for his body.  He didn't race the next week to be cautious.

Back porch furniture

BEFORE:

Many years ago we inherited my parent's furniture cushions.  But over the years they had gotten flat and sun bleached.  I went to find replacements before our big party, but of course this is not the time of year for porch cushions....so I folded these cushions to make one pillow and tah dah...

AFTER  

(the little pillows were from my older-still cushion set that I also recovered....the furniture originally came with similar to shown below large square pillows with no back cushion.)

I love the new look!

 

Applesauce

My friend Joelle has had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, so Anna and I walked to her house to pick some of her shared bounty!  It was then that we found out that one of her apple trees were so full of fruit that one limb broke.  So we went and picked mini-apples and made applesauce with the help of our new (to us) Pampered Chef Apple Peeler Corer Slicer

It was like magic and so satisfactory

We used the Instant Pot and the apple sauce is so great that I have been using it like jelly on my toast!

 

8/15/21

 My sweet Aunt Rita died earlier in the week.  So on Sunday of our crafting weekend, Mary went to pick-up my Dad in Burlington.  Leslie and I crafted for awhile longer, then I left for Dubuque to meet Mary and Dad for the funeral (to be held on Monday).

We met at my Aunt Bernice's house.  This is my Dad's oldest living sister.  I think she is 96 and still lives alone and bakes tons of cakes and cookies.  (see cookies on the table that she sent home with Dad)  She also is mostly blind and her house is immaculate.  Wow!  

Later that night we stopped by to see my Uncle Russ and Aunt Joan.  I don't have to say that Russ is Dad's brother....pretty obvious.  Russ is 93 and recently had lung surgery and is doing great.  I still remember the time I went to their house and their kids took me ice skating for the first time in my life!

Here is the dinner after my Aunt Rita's funeral.  (Rita was my mother's brother's wife.  She gave me my first permanent.  We normally stayed at their house when we went back to Dubuque to visit my Grandmother, once she was living in the nursing home.)  Here are some of our favorite cousins:  Jerry (Rita's daughter) and Jerry (her husband).

(Dad....I will print you copies of these photos)

First Post vaccine visitors! 8/14/21 - 8/15/21

I haven't seen my sister since Thanksgiving weekend 2019.....until today!

She and Leslie came for a crafter's weekend.

Mary and the girls designed t-shirts to be printed using Mary's Cricut when she went home.

Ann received her shirt the next week!  So cute.

Leslie and I mostly sewed, making this wonderfully large carry-all bag.  We also made another Christmas stocking and a cute froggie pillow for Joey (using a former favorite shirt).