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Category Archives: Owen

Last day of school!

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Last day of kindergarten and third grade!! 😳 and 😭

Owen agreed to let us walk him to the bus stop since it was the last day of school.

Katie’s turn:

My last day of freedom!

Papa and grannie bought the kids balloons to celebrate when they got off the bus!

Before—a kindergartner and third grader:

After—a first grader and fourth grader:

First day and last day:

My view for five hours today.

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Water park, Day 1: Opening Day

👍🏻 Pros?

💦Two miles from home.
💦Lots for the kids to do.
💦It took Katie five minutes to find a friend.
💦The kids are both old enough to go out on their own.

👎🏻 Cons?

💦 Lots of people.
💦 The lounge chairs are not comfortable.
💦 Not nearly as relaxing as the Lorton Valley pool.

I took one of the very last seats in the shade and kept busy doing work (gotta love being able to run most of my business from a phone) for five hours while the kiddies played.

Field day with Owen!

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Amazingly, Owen wanted me to volunteer for field day…so I jumped at it! The original Field Day got postponed due to rain—it had stormed the night before and the fields were under water so they postponed it a day. It was a beautiful day—but the fields were still a little wet. They had changed up how they did field day, so instead of actually having to run some of the events, we just got to follow along with the class and kind of help out here and there. It was perfect!

 

The kids picked their own reward for “not bothering me” when I’m working.

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So last month when I was in the middle of crazy work mode trying to do umpteen things at once, I needed a way to try and keep the kids from bothering me ALL. THE. TIME. I mean yes, I still had to be around for them, but they are old enough to understand “Mom is working, you don’t need to interrupt me every 13 seconds with something stupid.” The final straw came when, one day, I was trying to watch a training video and the kids were playing near me and kept asking me things which meant I had to stop the video then rewind it—over and over. And Owen finally asked me why the lady kept repeating herself! And I had to tell them that she was NOT repeating herself—I just had to keep replaying it because they kept interrupting me.

So I came up with the Family Reward. I set a sales goal for the month and told them that if I (we!) met that goal, we got to go on a reward that they picked. So every time I was working or told them I was busy working they would know that I was working toward the FAMILY GOAL and they shouldn’t bother me. They picked McDonald’s, bowling, and video games by dad’s work. Fine, great, easy peasy. And within the first 10 minutes of showing them the page I had printed and tacked to the wall, Katie was interrupting to ask me something and Owen shushed her, pointed to the sign, and said “MOM IS WORKING!” 🙂

I managed to reach my goal before the end of the month and they made us crazy wanting to go RIGHT THEN AND THERE. But we could obviously only go on the weekends and then we had company so it didn’t work out right away. So this weekend was the first real chance we had. So it was off to base for their reward for “helping mom reach her sales goal” in April by “not bothering mom when she’s working.”

The fancy pants bowling alley lets you take a photo and put it on your scoreboard!

Katie wanted them to be judges.

I came in last place. But I didn’t get to use the bumpers. And it takes me a full game to get warmed up and we only played one game. Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

She wanted to play basketball and I begrudgingly let her—it was her reward, after all (they each for $5 in quarters for the games). And holy crap can she throw! I was helping her out, but she was making baskets! It was something to behold.

They had a great time and we are glad we did it. After, we went out and got lunch for us (we weren’t wasting calories on McDonald’s)…

HOLY SHIT WE’RE AWAKE NOW!!

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It had been storming all night—lots of thunder and lightning—with some being extremely loud (close). Then about 6:20am I was awoken by THE. LOUDEST. NOISE. I’ve ever heard in my LIFE. It literally jolted me out of bed and instantly set my heart racing. Obviously it was a bolt of lightning but I didn’t think much about it other than Wow, that must have been pretty close. I knew Katie would be in our room pretty quickly so waited for her. Yep, within a minute. So while we were cuddling (and I was trying to fall back to sleep), Owen came up to ask if we’d looked outside. Well, no…I was in bed. He excitedly said we had to look at the tree. So I got up and looked out our second-story window and…

Well then. That would certainly explain the super loud crazy lightning strike we heard! YIKES!

Then Tom came up and we ooohed and aaahed and then we thought “Hmmm. Maybe we should check our electronics.”

Yeah. Most everything in the living room was dead. The amazing 55″ Pioneer plasma TV that Dad and Lin had handed down to us nine years ago (that they don’t make anymore). The 2-year-old Yamaha receiver. The lifetimed TiVo. The new-in-January Roku HD. The Xfinity cable box. The cable card.

Oh! And two UPSs/surge protectors (the damage came in through the HDMI cable so the units didn’t protect against that surge).

Needless to say that is not how we envisioned our morning starting.

And how sad is this? Our master bedroom TV moved down so Tom could troubleshoot.

Our first thought was making an insurance claim because the damages totaled about $3000… But it’s always nerve-wracking making a claim on something that isn’t major (and while this felt major, it wasn’t catastrophic). So we just went about gathering receipts and prepping just in case.

Owen’s Open House

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Owen got to show is a bunch of stuff they’ve been working on…

But first a photobomb.

I am Owen.
Sneaky, kind, helpful
Child of Tom and Jen
Who loves video games
Who needs family and money
Who feels happy
Who gives help
Who fears being alone
Who would like to be a gamer.
I am Owen.

They did a unit on the Oregon Trail.

Look at how little he looked at the start of the year?!

Owen’s belated birthday trip with Gramma Jean!

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Owen loved Katie’s day with Gramma for her birthday and wanted to do it for his, too! Since Gramma was in Florida for his birthday, they did it this trip.

Gramma says:

Owen and I had a belated birthday adventure today; three parks, shopping for picnic lunch goodies and a stop at Dairy Queen for birthday ice cream treat.

Gramma even tried the roller slide!

SURPRISE! Daddy and Katie just happened to show up at Dairy Queen at the same time Owen and Gramma were there—totally unplanned. They sang Happy Birthday to him!

Owen’s first soccer game at the park district!

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The wintery weather didn’t make for a very nice day (we were in winter coats, hats, and gloves) but everyone was excited!

Katie kept busy waiting for the game to start.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a bad start as I decided to take a shortcut across a little grassy area to go look at a park map…and I ended up in inches deep swampy muck. I bet you can imagine how wonderful that felt in 35 weather not 15 minutes into our 1.5 hour stay.

Much to our surprise (honestly), Owen scored TWO goals!! Part of it was due to him getting better…but (honestly) part of it was due to the other team not being quite as good. But it was super exciting—and they ended up winning (I think) 4-1!

Owen really needs a haircut but he has so far refused.

Bingo night at a new school!

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Some background. I was at a PTO meeting awhile back (last year) and they were taking about potential fundraisers and I asked if they’d ever done a bingo night (our favorite event at Halley). They hadn’t, so I gave them the basics, then contacted the Halley PTA for their info so I could pass it on. They were happy to have the head start, and I assumed they’d contact me when they were ready to plan it so I could help…and then I forgot about it. And then at one PTO meeting about two months ago they announced a date for bingo! Well okay then!

We were excited but I honestly wasn’t expecting too much—the flier they sent home didn’t have too much information on it (and of course I was expecting something closer to what I’d given them as an example). There were no pre-paid family deals, they didn’t tell you what any of the prizes were, it said extra bingo cards were $1, it didn’t tell you how much food cost… So we figured it would be a total crap shoot.

We show up about 15 minutes early hoping it’s early enough to find a parking spot and…the lot was basically empty. Oh boy. And there were only about 10 of us waiting outside. Right then I had this feeling it was going to be a failure and I was already feeling horrible that the idea was a bust and I should have been more proactive in helping plan it… And I was worried about everything.

But then they let us in and wow. It was game on. Organized to the Nth degree. Tons of helpers. People selling 50/50 raffle tickets. Food set up in one gym (pizza slices, popcorn, water, and bundt cakes from the delicious local bundt place). A line to pick up your free bingo card and buy more. (It was here I ran into my neighbor who was very surprised when I told her bingo was my idea. She said she’d wished she’d known! I agreed!) The second gym was completely full with tables and chairs and balloons. The bingo screen was projected on two walls (they used Google sheets to keep track of games).

There was a huuuuuge line of prizes.

Runners walking around to check bingos. (They’d give you a ticket if you won, then you’d go up to pick your prize and turn in your ticket to the desk.) Bingo chips instead of daubers.

Crazy kids at the tables. 🙂

And it was fun and lots of people were winning. We weren’t, which of course was a bummer because we were all so close so many times. And then Tom won. And then on the very last card of the night I won, too. Yay!

Before we knew it the night was over. On our way out the PTO president thanked me again for the idea. I apologized for not following up and helping organize and she said not to worry about it—she basically gave them the idea and my notes and they ran with it! Yay!

We took our picture when we got home, though you can’t really see all our spoils (magic rocks, a Woodland sweatshirt, and a gift certificate to a sub place).