Physical Fitness Challenge

It's been a long time since I have blogged just one day after an event happening. It must mean I am all caught up and life is getting a little less chaotic...nah.

Back in Junior High I had to participate in the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge for my P.E. class. It was tough. I didn't like it because I was always an overachiever and I could never achieve it. I passed every event except, for the life of me, I could not do even one chin up. Ever. No matter how much I practiced and tried.

Fast forward to today and we have a coop Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge. Just for fun. Instead of trying to meet a set of concrete standards, we will come back again in the spring and try to improve our individual scores.

We started out with warm ups.

Then they did dashes, sit-ups, the dreaded chin-ups and the mile run (for those over 8 years old). At the end they measured how far they could stretch.

Anna couldn't participate because of her broken arm. Okay, who am I kidding, Anna did not participate because she is Anna. She spent most of her time doing this...

And this....

She whined and complained the whole time about everything, but especially her splint. So when we got home I unwrapped the bandage and took the splint off. She had a horrible rash on her arm. No wonder she hated that thing! I left it off for the night and we went to her scheduled doctor appointment today. Per doctor's orders, no more splint needed! 

Baking Day and Other Things

Friday was Baking Day at Mia's school. She had to do everything herself. I did guide her a little bit like when she tried to do both the directions for the full egg and egg white recipes. I explained to her that you had to choose one or the other. I also did stuff that was dangerous or too heavy like pouring the batter in the pans and taking the cake out of the oven.

The day before Charlie was neutered. He absolutely hates the collar and keeps whining and begging us to take it off.

I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of the finished cake!!!  But did get a picture of Mia's friend's entry: Minion bananas!

Since I forgot to take any pictures of the play we went to Saturday I'll just add it in here. We went downtown to see Matilda. It was fabulous. I highly recommend it to kids (Anna was a little young)  and adults. There were more people there without kids than with them!

Art Op Coop

Fall coops have started. We went to our first one Thursday after we dropped Beth off at the airport. Since there wasn't enough time to go home before the coop, we stopped at a nearby park and had a picnic.

Yes, we bring smoothies in glass jars to the park. We're weird that way.

The coop started at the Museum of Outdoor Arts where they had an altered reality exhibit. 

Let's be part of a painting!

Look out below!

There were some very strange works of art.

Mia did not like standing so close to these giant venus fly traps!

The Color of Light exhibit.

The girls used black lights to find hidden pictures on the walls.

The prize for finding all the hidden pictures was a kaleidoscope. Mia later put her finger in the hole in one end and got it stuck. We had to use soap and water to get it out.

We then went outside to see those exhibits. The fountain is colored pink for September and October to help us remember breast cancer awareness. That hits home a lot more for me these days.

The girls thought the fountain was simply A-MAZING.

We then went back in and had our class in Op Art. We traced our hands. Then we drew straight lines from the side and bent them as we went over our hands. This gives the illusion of a hand under the paper.

We colored it to make it pop out even more.

We are excited to attend more coops soon!

Two Birthdays

When we got home we celebrated Becky's birthday. 27!

Isn't it funny how it looks like the cake if for the child? I guess it's just a lot more fun for them to get older!

Then on Wednesday we celebrated Maks. He turned three! Cheeseburgers were his special request and he got to eat off the special plate. 

The girls made a pin the tail on the donkey game.

Everyone won!

 Next Maks opened presents. Paw Patrol!

Cake! 

Congrats Maks! What a handsome, sweet little guy you are!

Little Peanut

Beth and Paige came to visit us for four days this week! She is tiny and really active.

She is already crawling and full of energy. The girls loved her. 

She looks exactly like Beth did in size, coloring and body shape. But she has Greg's face.

Sleeping is not on her radar. She'd rather be exhausted with her head down but still part of the party!

It's going to be too long to wait to see her again until Thanksgiving!

The Ride Home

Last Friday we started the drive home from California. Every one had to repeat after me, "If I mention driving to California again say No Way!". I just can't seem to remember this all by myself so I need some help.

We recently studied Ancient Egypt for history. So I thought it would be great to stop by The Luxor on the way home. But this whole trip we kept forgetting about Charlie. As we are driving we suddenly realize that we cannot leave Charlie in the car on a 102 degree day while we have lunch and browse through Ancient Egypt. So we gave it 30 minutes. Dan walked Charlie around outside and got him some exercise and I took the girls in to marvel.

 I didn't have any change for the fountain. Did Ancient Egyptians throw gold coins in fountains anyway? But that didn't stop the girls. They fished coins out, made wishes, and threw them back in.  I think that nullifies their wishes so I'm pretty sure that means we won't be buying a horse any time soon.

Letters of the hieroglyphic alphabet lit up a few at a time on this obelisk. I was surprised at how many of them the girls remembered from our studies. But we couldn't remember enough to figure out if there was some sort of message. 

That night we stopped for the night in Utah and took the girls to a McDonald's play space to run off some energy. Anna started crying after falling and said her arm hurt. We put some ice on it and she seemed okay. In the car the next day she wasn't really using her arm at all so I took her to urgent care when we got home. The diagnosis: buckle fracture of the elbow. She has to wear this splint for a week. Mia wants one too. Reminds me of Madeline and her appendix.

Charlie never made a peep the whole ride home as he sat in his crate - much better than me.  What a trooper.

Did I mentioned our DVD player broke as we left the house for the drive home?  Ugh... Repeat after me, never never again.