There are worse things than a lay-off

We all know that, right?
I mean, a summer lay-off would have been nicer. Some of you will remember "The Summer of Ken" from 6 years ago. ("The Fall of Ken" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.)

So as I blog in the next few months, keep in mind that I am a planner and a do-er-in-advance-r.

The Christmas chocolate is already ordered, and our Christmas cards are sitting under my telephone desk. We already booked and pre-paid a condo at our favourite ski hill over Christmas.

What else? I bought myself a new skirt/shirt/sweater outfit at the end of August with no returns on sale items that is very wintery and hasn't seen the light of day yet. Yay! New clothes for me when the snow flies, without spending money in the face of our new budgetary reality!

(And something else has been pre-paid, but I can't mention that one yet.)

So austerity measures have been implemented, but won't be painful for quite some time.

Terry Fox Run and Race

Today was the Terry Fox Run honouring a Canadian hero, as well as the school qualification race for Divisionals.

Carmen had her signature strong finish. She runs a calculated race, and once again qualified for Divisionals as well as setting a new personal best for time.

I've gotta say, the cheering must help.

The kids position themselves at a critical spot along the path and cheer and shout for everyone as they head into their second hill. 

Carmen felt the love as she headed up hill #2.

And here's Chloe coming around the corner into the final stretch right when everyone started to call her name and cheer her in.

Chloe also ran a personal best with no walking whatsoever, and passing 9 runners on the big hill. You can see how good she felt about her run. I need to channel that supportive spirit from the school when I go out myself. What would it be like to run with a smile on my face?

Quilting bee and a little red wagon

Well, we bought the boy a stick shift to drive. Maybe this is no longer a relevant skill, but we threw it at him anyway. (He thinks maybe once he sat in a standard transmission car before we bought this teen-mobile.)

Steven's pretty glad to have driving a standard figured out, and Jaclyn looks forward to learning it next summer so that she can be the cool-girl-who-knows-how-to-drive-a-standard.

Speaking of lost skills, I have fond memories of playing underneath quilts on quilting frames, but it was a first today for Carmen and Chloe. (Note the headbands made from the quilt scraps.) (Excuse me, Chloe's wasn't a head band it was a 'buff'. What???)

Chloe's school teacher is having a baby in a few weeks so Chloe had a few friends over to tie a baby quilt together. None of them had done it before, but they caught on fast.

Plus they had Carmen to help. Carmen learned how to tie a quilt several years ago when Jaclyn was a Miamaid and she did it for a YW activity. (I'm not clear on how Carmen pulled that one off since she wasn't even in YW's yet.)

I think I'll have to slip this photo into the card when they give the baby blanket to their teacher.

Losing my power of concentration.

I'm having a hard time even captioning pictures sitting on the couch while Jon Stewart is on. I used to be able to focus!

Carmen and I spent a couple of days alone together this summer while Chloe went away with a friend. The bike ride day was clearly more fun than the back-to-school shopping day. Ken considers this a win.

Steven has awesome YM's leaders. For camp this year they went to a hunter education facility. (I'm not sure what he'd be hunting with a hand gun.)

Making a 3-minute fire from spark to smoke signal.

The bishop said something to me that led me to believe Steven had chilli dogs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have to say that's possible, considering Ken was eating hot dogs and nachos 3 meals a day when I first met him.

Back-to-school haircuts. Carmen sprung it on me that she wanted a fresh cut at the last minute and I told her fine, but I was busy and she'd have to make the appointment herself, and btw book something for Chloe too. She felt "weird" to make that call herself, but ta-da it wasn't that hard.

Chloe and Carmen led campfire songs at our ward camp on Friday night with all the silly YW's camp songs.

On Monday Carmen and Chloe planned the best-last-day-of-summer which included some time playing with hair.

This picture pretty much says it all about the first school morning today: Chloe totally ready and excited, Carmen still in her pj's and wrapped in a blanket, and Steven tolerating a photo-tradition that was delaying him getting out the door. (Steven didn't actually start classes today, he was involved in a welcome day for the new grade 10's.)

Ken asked me what I was going to do with my time today and I told him I was going grocery shopping all day. He thought I was kidding.

The girls came home and both reported the one school supply they were still lacking was magnets for their lockers. No way I was going to get to that fast enough for them, so they rode their bikes to the $-store, bought craft supplies, and made their own cute magnets. Yay! How I love big kids.