Marine Corps Birthday Swim Challenge.... Completed!

 The pool here does a Marine Corps Birthday Swim Challenge every year at Birthday time.  The challenge is to swim the number of (100 meter) laps that the Corps is celebrating.  This is the 241st birthday, so you had to swim 241 laps, and you had to do it between Oct 10 and Nov 10. I planned to swim 12 laps 5 days each week to get it done.

Well, this year there was a bit of an extra challenge. The pool heater broke. And the water was cold.  And getting colder.  It was 76 degrees the first week, which is when I learned about the broken heater and the complexity of getting it fixed.  Realizing that the pool was not going to get warmer any time soon, I had to decide if I was going to try to get it done as fast as possible, or call it quits.

I decided I was going to get it done till the temp went below 73.  The Lord smiled upon me and it held steady at 74 degrees the entire second week, and I swam like I never had before.  Coff, coff.... Despite the doctor telling me I ought to cut back because my shoulder probably has an overuse injury.  Motrin was my friend.  I got it done on Saturday of the second week.

The top 25 get a free T Shirt and bragging rights.  I was finisher #8.  Whoo-hoo!

Me at the pool, ready to swim my last 20 laps, and not excited about getting in the cold water.

Here is my lap count sheet.  I just want to be able to look back and say, yeah I did that!

Homecoming Parade

 We may have a small High School, but they do a cute parade at Homecoming.  The girls were very excited about it and due to construction, it came right past our house.  The girls had a blanket and chairs set out well ahead of time and were all ready. They even had loot bags for the goodies that were tossed.

Callie was insistent that Levi got to join us. The neighbor girls hung out with us as well.

My cutie-patootie, showing her school spirit, and her newly lost tooth. 

Here it comes!  Led by the JROTC Color Guard. 

8th Grade float.  Their theme was "The Little Mermaid".  (The gal in pink is Marian's friend Angel.  We think she's awesome!) 

The Girl Scouts.

And the Senior Class had the coolest float!  An X-Wing! And Darth Vader. 

You gotta admit, that's pretty fantastic!

I did it!

I wanted to announce that I have voted!  Yep.  It took a bit to get it downloaded and printed out and get appropriate envelopes.  And it took a while to sit down and decipher the legal-speak on the amendments and stuff that I was voting on.  But I got it done and turned in at the post office well before the deadline.  Whew!  And now I can ignore all the political garbage (even more) on the news because it no longer applies to me at all.

6th Grade STEM Night

 The school hosted a STEM Night for the 6th graders.  I was a good mom and went with Callie.  Rylee tagged along for kicks.  It ended up being a fun event.  They had a bunch of items (toilet paper tubes, tape, paper clips, rubber bands, rulers....) and the goal was to make something that shot a large pom pom.  You wanted your invention to shoot the pom pom the furthest.

Callie took it a lot more seriously than Rylee!  We did go through several ideas that were not successful.

Rylee is thinking hard. 

Callie was working hard. 

Surprisingly enough, we proved the theory that sometimes simplicity is best.  We used a TP tube cut down to make a cup for the pom pom and duct taped it to a plastic ruler. It actually lobbed the fuzzy pom pom 17 feet, which was 2 feet farther than anyone else!   

Rylee industriously got to work on her own project. It was vastly entertaining and we had a pretty good time.

A Japanese Lunch!

 My friends Renee invited me out to lunch. I felt very brave, trying something new.  It was a tiny little cafe with maybe 6 tables inside.  There was a minuscule kitchen and they only served the set menu for the day.  Fortunately it was tasty stuff.

The tiny little dishes of vegetable sides.  I don't know why the photo is turned sideways.  And I'm sad you can't see how small the little dishes were.  There was a little salad of noodles, cabbage and apples in mayonnaise.  It was surprisingly delicious.  There was pumpkin square that was mostly just pumpkin, but it was good. And there was a little belle pepper with what tasted like quiche inside.  All was yummy.

See, I gobbled it all up! 

The main dish: Teriyaki chicken with what looked (and tasted) like egg salad.  An odd combination, but not yucky.  And fish.  I actually ate it.  Be proud of me.  I ate most of the fish and confirmed that I do NOT, in fact, like it at all.  I confess that I was impressed and surprised that it had no fishy flavor.  But I still couldn't do the texture.  But the rest was good! 

Dessert was a vanilla ice cream parfait.  And that, my friends, is a candied and fried slice of sweet potato.  And it was good!

Levi

And now, for something adorable:

Mandatory Family Fun

I feel like we have been in a rut.  We have been to most of the close-by places and are kind of running out of new things to do, and the kids (and me too) are perfectly happy to do nothing on our days off. I have been feeling like we should be doing more when we do have the opportunity, so I decided we needed to take advantage of Columbus Day and go and DO something.  Dan backed me up on that and we decided to drive 45 minutes south to the Yamaguchi FlowerLand, which is also right next to the Yanai Wellness Center.  I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

The children were not happy.  Actually, two were cooperative, one was indifferent and  unenthusiastic, and two were downright horrid.  They were NOT going to have any fun.  They were going to be angry and miserable no matter what.  It reminded me why we rarely do go out to do stuff.  It is hard to get out with everyone.  It is tough to find things that are interesting for little kids and teens.  It also reminded me that attitude is everything!

I very much wanted to shake a certain child, but I refrained.  I smiled and said encouraging things as we drove down and made them get out and meander around the FlowerLand. I umm-hmmmed sympathized as the complaining and whining became more annoying. I did not throat punch anyone.

 It was pretty and I bet it is gorgeous in the spring. There were also fun things to do tucked all over. Most of the kids managed to enjoy the playground, but only a little.

It was a grueling morning.  We were at the FlowerLand for less than an hour and I considered that a victory.  I made them go to theWellness Center just out of spite for the rotten attitudes, and it had an amazing playground.  Well worth going to, and the four girls had an enjoyable time.  I could see that Joshua had a point though.... at age 7, Rylee was still older than most of the Japanese kids there.

We didn't stay too long, just long enough to find a better attitude.  Then we headed home, with a stop at 7-11 for delicious food and ice cream and we arrived home with smiles and cheery faces.  So, kind- of, sort-of a win.

I took too many pictures to document the historic Leaving of the House, so you can see how much fun we DID NOT have.

 Waiting to pay and go in.

Smelling the flowers, since we are in FlowerLand. 

They wanted a picture on the bridge and then made silly poses that you can't really see. 

The flowers were gorgeous.  You can't see the glorious color here though. 

Delaney, not having fun hopping around the flower. 

Not having fun playing on this. 

Not enjoying the beautiful stream and lovely flowers. 

It was so pretty, and the colors really were vivid. 

Rylee is not having fun on the cargo net.  

Ha ha ha!  Marian is deadpan not having fun on the roller slide! 

Nope, no fun for Callie. 

Rylee did not enjoy it at all either. 

All those rollers do vibrate your bum a bit, so Delaney legitimately was about done after the 5th time down. But she's definitely not smiling here.

Just to see how awful it was, Dan took a trip down the slide himself. 

Little tree-fort in the woods!  Totally NOT fun at all. 

Hiking through the beautiful woods on a glorious Fall day?  Utterly dreadful. 

Having an awful time. 

I just have to comment.... this looks like a lot of fun right? Well it isn't.  It is a ferris wheel, FOR PLANTS.  Not for actual people.  The kids felt so cheated. 

Large grassy area for playing, that can't be fun at all. 

Nope, they did not like it one bit. 

This is the face of indifferent boredom. 

This is the face of a kid who came very close to being beaten. 

Super fun play structure at the Wellness Center.  It may possibly have been a tiny bit fun. 

But not very much fun.  Really, who could enjoy this?! 

Certainly not these girls. 

Okay maybe a little. 

A very very little. 

And only for a little while. 

Rylee does have good roller slide technique. 

And Callie just cheats. 

Dan schooled the kids on the rings and showed them how to do pull ups. 

And we let the GPS guide us home and it sent us by way of some of these little streets.  Good times!