Our neighborhood has a decent fall festival so I took the kids down today while Tom continued working on the new landscaping!
Katie’s first time bobbing for apples. Or, more accurately, attempting to grab a stem with her teeth. 🙂
The costume contest! Our friend Kayleigh won!
Today was photo day! I honestly didn’t want to pay the outrageous prices for photos, so I planned to sneak some of Owen and his team and Tom snagged one of Katie’s session (it was at 8am and me and Owen didn’t make it for that). Also, I knew Katie would have half her team missing (due to pics being an hour before the game) and we never really got to know any of the kids (like we did with T-ball and baseball) outside the two kids we already knew.
Dancing across the field…
It really wasn’t until after the game when I was looking at all the pics I took that I realized Owen was really handling the ball well. He has improved SO much it’s unbelievable!
So, it was an interesting night to say the least.
It started with deciding at the very last minute to take Katie as well. We hadn’t been going to do that and she was a little bummed but then the mommy guilt got to me and I changed my mind. We had a minor fight with Owen about what costume he was wearing—we bought him Squirtle because he really wanted to be Squirtle…and instead he wanted to wear some random skeleton costume with a mask (they aren’t supposed to wear masks) so we said he needed to wear his new costume.
On our way…
So.
Then.
Every year thus far, Owen has had a sudden onset of shyness or nervousness when we approach the school for the festival but it was never anything bad or lasting—we’d just walk in and he’d be glued to our sides for about three minutes until he saw all the fun going on and saw his friends…and all was forgotten and he had a great time.
Except this year. He COMPLETELY freaked out and wouldn’t even set foot in the building. At first we thought it was just his normal routine, but when we tried to coerce him in, he refused. REFUSED. And got visibly upset. We tried to be nice and loving and that didn’t work. We tried tough love and that didn’t work. After 10 minutes or so, I went in with Katie and Tom stayed in the hallway waiting to see if Owen would come in the building. I talked to his teacher and she tried to get him to come in. Nope. A few of his friends went out to try and get him to come in. Nope. I tried again. Nope. It was absolutely maddening. He had a whole litany of reasons he didn’t want to come in, the biggest of which was he hated his costume, it was stupid, and he knew everyone would laugh at him and he’d be embarrassed. It didn’t matter that everyone who saw him said they loved it (I mean, Pokemon is ALL the rage!) and people had heard about the Squirtle costume and were LOOKING FOR HIM.
He also said there were too many people and they’d all be looking at him. What? The kid who has no problems (anymore) of speaking in a group in front of an assembly? The kid that everyone seems to know and like? The kid who loves people? I was gobsmacked.
It didn’t matter what anyone said. He was NOT coming in and he was in full meltdown mode.
In the midst of this, I was with Katie playing the games and getting her face painted and she was having an absolute blast. (The face painter was Miss Anne, the assistant in Katie’s classroom that she also had last year and is a friend of ours.)
Putting her name on her treat bag!
Picking a sucker for a prize! (Bonus: notice that they reused my signs from last year?!)
With our neighbor, Jackson (first grade).
Getting her picture taken.
Then Tom texted me to say he was DONE because he had just had to chase Owen down because he ran off. What the hell?! So we went out again for me to try talking to Owen—at this point he was actually in the building quite a ways so I thought I would have more luck, but nope, he was still refusing to come in to the festival. And when I tried to coerce him in again, he literally turned and ran away down the hall. Some older kids saw his costume and came up and told him how awesome it was. Nope, still not moving. Still thought his costume was embarrassing. By this point I was just done (he’d been out there for almost an hour) and told him we were done—he was either going in or we were both going to sit in the car until daddy and Katie were done. Which is exactly what we ended up doing. 🙁
So, Tom had switched places with me and had taken Katie in to the cafeteria to dance…where she had even more fun! It would have been even more fun if we were all there together. Ugh.
A bunch of snippets of Katie dancing…and frolicking!
So, overall, Katie had an absolute blast, Tom and I had fun when we were each with Katie, and the rest was a hot failed mess dealing with Owen. We have NO idea where this all came from or why it was so traumatizing for him. Of course, now we’re worried that something else more serious is going on that we don’t know about or he hasn’t told us about…
We thought we’d try some one-on-one time to see if it helped Owen’s behavior at all (he seems to say Tom loves Katie more, which obviously has no basis in reality, but…KIDS). They had fun.
Since I had to take Katie in for her field trip in the morning, I also took Owen. Since we still had some time before school started (and kids can’t be in the classrooms without a teacher or parent), I stayed in his room with him. I took the time to look around and take some more room pictures.
Owen wanted me to see if I could pick out his drawing without looking for his name.
I guessed it on my second try! My first guess was the bottom row, second picture (white) and his response was “Mom, it’s missing arms. I never forget the arms.” 🙂 It’s him helping Katie (notice the yellow pony tails?).
Two panoramics of his classroom.
The weekly reading chart. It’s so complex it needs a key!
This is the original chart.
Just a few glue sticks. 🙂
These signs are in the hallways and stairwells.
Before Owen’s lesson, his instructor came and told us he was going to be testing Owen to see how he’d do on a swim team. He’s trying to get a local team together and he thought Owen was ready. As far as Owen knew, he was just practicing. 🙂
After, the instructor told us he thought he was definitely ready…so he’ll let us know if and when he gets a team together. (They have a team right now but it’s 30-45 minutes away from home so we’re not about to do that.)
We told Owen the news on the way home and his was his reaction:
The deal was they were Pokémoning and I was taking pictures!
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
Washington Monument
World War II Memorial
Back at MLK.
Walking to the Jefferson Memorial.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
Eleanor Roosevelt at the FDR Memorial
A long line of ducks.
At Katie’s castle, otherwise known as the Jefferson Memorial!
We stopped to take over a gym!
This morning was a horrible morning weather-wise for soccer—it looked gorgeous but the wind was gusting at probably 20-30mph and with temps in the high 40s/low 50s it was cold. I felt so bad for all the kids…but they didn’t really seem to be bothered too much by it. However, I had on a 32° undershirt, a heavy sweatshirt, my winter coat, gloves, and was covered in TWO blankets…and was still freezing. It was even so cold my phone’s battery died so I only got a few pics.
This morning was the first P/T conference of the year. We were a bit early so I took advantage and got some pics.
Overall, Owen is doing awesome. She said he’s advanced in reading, ahead in math, and is probably the most respectful kid in class! She also has no concerns with his spelling—he got 95/100 on sight words (the ones he missed were words like WHERE and WHICH [forgot the h] which are very common)—and he behaves in class. What blew me away is his writing assignment—it was done over a few days, but the handwriting was excellent and the story was involved (it was about one of his xbox games)…and he wrote SIX PAGES! It doesn’t all make perfect sense, of course, and there are some errors but WOW. JUST…WOW.
And then a few pics from around the classroom:
And as I was taking pictures I was telling the teacher why (because I make a Shutterfly book each year) so she told me to hang on and she’d stage the Class Jobs list for me (it needed to be done before class anyway). 🙂
And then I took Katie to the playground for a few minutes since she always begs to go there but we’re usually there during school hours. She says “Mama? You remember the last time we were here and Gramma Jean was swinging with me?” 🙂
Seriously, how does this happen? Owen picked his PJs tonight like he does every night…and I thought footie PJs were an odd choice since it was quite warm today…and then I open Timehop and see this from 6 years ago:
So of course, me being me, I had to do this:
And then this:
Katie’s new favorite thing to do is be traced in the street…or trace someone else.
Owen and Colton
We didn’t win any of the bingo games, but they were giving away free pizzas at the end of the night so both boys got one!
Heading back to class…on the second floor!!
We were at Marshall’s when I got a text from Tom: HOLY SHIT. Of course Marshall’s is a dead zone for sending pics so I didn’t know what was going on. I finally found him and he took me to this:
LOL Holy shit is right. 🙂
It’s just them playing before their swim lessons!
I had a coupon that we needed to use (which I also bought last year but we missed out on) so I was determined to NOT miss it again…so we went today since it was sunny and daddy had the day off! Katie didn’t want to go because she thought it was going to be super buggy like when we went with Grannie in the UP this past summer!
It was interesting because there had just been a huge windy and kinda stormy day so the entire course was literally COVERED with huge acorns! We started to clean them off but it was really a lost cause because each hole had anywhere from 20 to 300 little hazards on it and we were spending more time cleaning than playing! So we just moved the big tree branches and had more fun with the little hazards!!
I got a hole in one here!
And then I decided to record the kids playing one hole—Katie went first:
And then Owen started before I could start recording again…and he got a hole in one! STINKER!
Pouting about who knows what.
Okay. Happy again.
Even with my hole in one, Daddy ended up beating me by 2 strokes (59 to my 61), Owen was third with 67 (which was actually quite impressive, though we were quite generous with counting his strokes), and Katie was last with an unofficial 76 (she pretty much drags the ball to the hole).
Of course we ended the trip with a Pókemon hunt around the campground and marina…which I think they were more excited about. 🙂
The kids didn’t have school today so I wanted to do something fun. There are a lot of fall festivals around but I didn’t want to drive to far…so we went to the same place we went for Owen’s kindergarten field trip and invited friends!
They added rolling tubes since we were last there.
Caitlin braved the tubes before I did.
The boys LOVED it…Katie didn’t want anything to do with it.
Not one picture with either of them actually looking at me!
Owen LOVED the train and spent most of his time here.
And then Katie decided she wanted to go down the slide…with Caitlin.
And this is why I love Caitlin. 🙂
Hayride!
Back at the tubes, Katie decided she wanted to try…with Caitlin.
Then I finally got in the tube and Liam rolled me down! It was much easier getting in than getting out.
My little pumpkins!
And two Then & Nows:
Owen was doing homework so Katie had to get her “homework” book out, too!
This is the first thing I saw when I turned my phone on after my plane landed!! Owen graduated to Shark 2!! He’s been a Shark for just over a year and he tested last week and didn’t quite make it, so of course the week I’m out of town is when he does it! Stinker!
We’ve been promising to take the kids Pókemoning in DC since there are A LOT of crazy things there we can’t get here…so Tom took them this morning.
Katie calls the Jefferson Memorial her castle. 🙂
They took over the Jefferson Memorial—Go, Team Hudson!
Apparently the kids are favorites of Japanese tourists, as Tom said they got stopped twice to take a picture. Also, this might be my new favorite picture of them. :heart:
And then lunchtime!
They. had. a. blast. Owen was even sending me texts telling (and showing) me what he caught. They can’t wait to go back!
Tom sent me these since I couldn’t be there. It’s very odd being on this side of things.
Showing off her hopscotch skills (I asked Tom where she learned that and she said ballet):
Owen’s skills: