Saturday

Cole and Heather finished their Hunter Safety course today.  The course had met on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-9 for the past 2 weeks. They had their written exam on Thursday evening, and today was the "hands on" part of the exam at the shooting range in Orleans. They first had to complete some field exercises during a walk through the woods. They had to practice safe fire arm handling and carrying. The instructors had set up scenarios in the woods with fake animals  and the students had to identify "safe to shoot" or "not safe to shoot" situations. 

Then, back at the firing range, they were observed following instructions to safely handle, load, and fire at a target.

 In this picture, below, Heather is obscured by the stocky fella in orange. 

 After passing the written exam and field excercises with flying colors, Heather shows off her test paper, target, and orange card (which they are required to have to obtain a license.)

 Cole also passed with flying colors!

 Then, after a quick costume change in the car, off to Heather's soccer game! What a change in weather from last week. At 42 degrees it seemed strange to think that last week I was dripping with sweat just sitting and watching Heather's and Wayne's games.

Can't Let Go of Summer

Autumn is turning out to be hotter than our summer. 86 degrees today. Heather had her friend Kelby over and I offered to take them to Shadow Lake beach. The peach and parking lot were packed, so I took them to Stuart and Emily's camp instead.

 It was warm but breezy at the lake. There were a couple of paddle boarders and a handful of kayakers enjoying the afternoon, but no motor boats so it was peaceful.

 Heather and Kelby swam, skipped rocks, and found a couple of water guns to shoot each other with.

Meanwhile, Cole has gone to the East Side to have lunch with members of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and then on to the Haskel Opera house to see their concert.  This experience is called the "Green Room Project" Wayne participated in it a few years ago. You can relive that post by clicking here.

Wayne - Soccer

Yesterday Lake Region played against Montpelier. Lake Region won 1-0.

Heather had a game in the morning, but my camera settings were way off, so no good photos of her right now. I will try again next time!⚽

Time Warp

Same person. Same place. Different time.

Cole playing soccer at Glover School at age 4 and at age 13.

September, So Far

This post is mostly about September events, but the first day of school was actually August 28th. 

 During the 2nd week of school, Cole's 8th grade class went to Nature's Classroom at the Sargent Center in southern New Hampshire. 

 At Nature's Classroom, the students do a lot of team building activities and science projects. 

 Cole, wearing a green dress, learns about doing laundry the old time way.

Then on September 8th, Wayne turned 16. Where have the years gone?

 He requested Parker Pie pizza...

 ...and raspberry pie.

 Meanwhile, soccer season has begun. Wayne is on the Lake Region JV team but has been invited to some varsity practices and has played in a varsity scrimmage. Cole is on the Glover middle school team.  On game days, players are required to dress up to represent their school.

 Don't they look handsome?

 Because of my new job, working until 5:00 I won't get to see many of Cole's after school sport events this year.  It makes me sad to think that I will miss that part of his last year of middle school. 

 I will be able to catch a few of Wayne's high school games. I made it to this home game against Lamoille in time to see the 2nd half. Wayne will also have some Saturday games.

 Lucky for me, in addition to soccer, Cole is participating in a handful of middle school Cross Country meets on Saturdays. He ran in a meet today at U32 on East Montpelier. 

 The start of the race.

 Finishing the race.  His time was 9:09 (it was a 1.7 mile race) and he was 7th out of 144 middle school boys. Results are listed here on Athletic.net

Heather has also started soccer but I haven't taken pictures yet. She is also enrolled in a Hunter Safety course which will meet on Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of weeks, ending on a Saturday at the shooting range in Orleans. 

In the meantime, Patches helps her with a homework project.

Blueberries and Crystal

It's not often, anymore, that I get to spend an afternoon with all 3 kids at once. Today we went to Blueberry Meadows and picked tons of blueberries and then stopped at Crystal Lake for a picnic and swim.  They don't like to have their picture taken tho.

I see lots of blueberry desserts in our near future!

Northeast Kingdom Running Camp

Cole has just returned from a week at Lyndon State College, where he attended the Northeast Kingdom Running Camp. His track and field coach, Frank Daigneault arranged for Cole to attend the camp on scholarship!

  

Cole said they stuck to a rigid schedule, which included 2 runs per day (one of them being very early in the morning) guest speakers including Olympians, yoga, pool, and weight training activities, all the food they could eat, a dance one evening, and performances in the Alexander Twilight Theatre. On one of the days, called Lake Day, they had a 7 mile run around Willoughby Lake and spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach.

Morning run.  (Cole sent me these photos from the NKRC facebook page.) 

 In the afternoons, they would take a bus to different locations in the area to run back roads and trails.

 The afternoon runs always ended in a cold creek soak.

 Approximately 300 runners attended the camp this week. Cole was one of only 3 Vermonters at this session. In the evenings, the counselors and coaches would put on skits in the theater. On the last night, there was an awards ceremony called "the Paper Plate Awards."

 Cole won the award for "lack of forethought" which seems very fitting . 

 He won it because he always forgot to bring his swimming trunks for the afternoon run creek soaks.

 Also, on one evening in the theatre, Frank Daigneault and former Glover School phys. ed. teacher Peter Auclair (who both work at LSCin the summer), had Cole come up on stage where they gave him a "care" package including a LSC t-shirt and a mechanical sock mokey that danced and played music - apparently Cole was forced to do a little dance onstage with the sock monkey to a cheering crowd.  I was shown a video clip on a phone belonging to one of the counselors.  If I am ever able to get a hold of it, I will post it here.

 On the very last morning of camp, all 300 or so campers woke up early for a 6:00am "Graduation Run" up Burke Mountain. Below, Cole crosses the finish line.

 Some snapshots of Cole with new friends.