Field Trips are fun!!

Ryan and Emily both went on a Field Trip this year.  Emily went with her Challenge class and Ryan went with the 8th grade.  In past years, the 8th grade has gone to Kings Dominion.  For some reason, this year they decided that was not where the 8th grade would be going.  They took them on YET ANOTHER field trip to DC.  He was kind of bummed, but had a good time anyway.  Mike or I were not able to go on either field trip, but we have good friends who did go.  They were kind enough to send me pictures!!  :)

 

 

Thank you to Natasha, Jesela's mom, for the great pictures!!!

 

 

Coaching Basketball

Who ever thought I would coach a basketball team?  NOT ME!  I offered to help coach a team and ended up getting roped into coaching it all together.  Emily wanted to give basketball a try this year.  I thought it would be fun to help out her team.  I don't know much about basketball and I know NOTHING about coaching!  So, I begged my friend Holly to come help me.  She did!!  Love her!  She even brought her daughter Emily along with her.  Our team didn't do too well as we were given the less skilled players--on purpose.  We had only two girls who had played before and only two, three at best, who even knew what they were doing--or were even the least bit athletic.  They all had so much spirit and while our team didn't win too many times, Emily really enjoyed it and is planning on trying out for the 7th grade girls basketball team next year.  Now, that should be a better experience.  I know she could do well if she had some guidance.  :)  She was even asked, by two mothers, to join a travel basketball team during the experience.  She must have something there.  :)

Holly coaching the girls for the next play.  L to R - Emily Sponagule (Holly's daughter), Ashley Hammer, Maryahanna Rothgeb, Allie Simmons, Ellie Benson, Emily Washington

I have decided coaching is not for me.  Will stick to volunteering in other ways.  :)  The kids deserve someone who knows what they are doing!

This is not a good picture because it was taken through a frame and I had to reach up to take it.  However, you can see our team.  One girl was missing that night, but she ended up leaving the team anyway.  Irritating.  Front Row-LtoR-______Hensley, Maryahanna Rothgeb  Back Row-L to R-Me, Ellie Benson, Emily Sponagule, Emily Washington, Allie Simmons, Holly Sander.

Hopefully the next basketball pictures I post will be of Emily on her school team next year!!  She played in November and December 2016.

Catching Up!!

I am so sporadic with my blog posting!!  It is crazy!  It seems that sometimes I have all kinds of time to post and other times just no time at all.  I love keeping this blog as I feel it is a photo journal that my kids will always have.  At least I hope they are always able to access it.  I need to figure out how to turn it into a photo album they can hold.  Would be a lot to print out.  :) 


This particular post is going to host a bunch of different things we did over the summer and into the fall. 




Emily's softball season ended.  She very much misses the game and would like to be playing now, but just was not into doing the travel team at this point.  May change her mind in a few years, but I am hoping she will want to try out for the JV softball team in two years when she is eligible.  Softball season ended and her amazing coach, Crystal, arranged for the girls to have a fun afternoon!  They had a picnic and then went to Massanutten (a local resort) for some flipping fun!


 

She does love her softball!!  These were the Shooting Stars.

Hoping the Shooting Stars (Emily's softball team) can have a team again this spring!! 






In July my Dad's Cousin, Martha, hosted a mini reunion.  The Leftwich family was supposed to have their every-two-years reunion at Pennmeryl Farm, but things fell through and it didn't happen.  So Martha and her husband John were gracious enough to host a mini one.  I took this really great group picture and it ended up being really blurry.  I didn't realize I had the manual focus on.  Uggh!  I will make sure that it is on auto focus, or I will at least focus it, before that would happen again.  :) 


We had three generations at this reunion.  My dad's generation is now the oldest.  All of the members of his Dad's family have passed away.  My dad has two sisters, Judy and Kathy.  I have mentioned them in previous posts.  My dad's sister Judy passed away, expectantly, several years ago.  Two of her three children were at this mini reunion.  My dad's cousin's children were there and some of her grandchildren were there.  It was so fantastic!  Below is a picture of my three kids, my brother's two kids, my cousin Shawn's two kids and my cousin Michelle's two kids.  They played together as if they had been able to do that all their lives.  It was so sad when we left.  They didn't want to leave each other!!




Love this picture!  I love that they all had such a great time playing together!  How often do you get to play with your second cousins?

2nd cousins playing cornhole

  

You have seen my postings on Geocaching I know.  So often we don't think about Geocaching.  We love it so much and it is something we do so seldom.  Throughout the summer and fall, this past year, I think we may have gone Geocaching maybe 2 times.  Sad!!  This was one day that we went and we took the dog.  And then there is a picture of one other day we went to one close by our house.  I wish we would think about doing this more often.  We really do love it!

Geocaching in Charlottesville

Sometimes it takes us a while to find one and we will get frustrated.  :)  This was one of those times.

Stopped for ice cream and a little arm wrestling after geocaching

And hanging out with the cows  :)

This was a pretty place to get a cool Cache!  Not sure if Lydia is not wanting to take the picture or if it was too hot or what.  This one was pretty close to our house.  JMU Farm.  I do remember it being pretty hot that day and lots of bugs.

On our way back from Geocaching in Charlottesville, we stopped on Lydia Mountain to take a picture of Lydia in front of the signs.  I did this a long time ago and it was taken with an old phone I had.  The picture quality was not that great.  This quality is not the greatest either, but better than it was.  We go over Lydia Mountain every time we go to Charlottesville through Ruckersville.  We always seem to be on a time table when we are heading over and say "We will stop there on the way back" and then either forget or it is dark when we come back.  We finally remembered to stop on Lydia's Mountain to take a picture!!

One day maybe Lydia will live in one of these.  :)

In September, we visited the Pumpkin Patch.  A couple years ago, my brother, Paul, told us about a pumpkin patch he visited while visiting my parents.  It is in Weyers Cave.  They let you fill up a wagon with as many pumpkins and gourds as you can put in there without holding on to the pile (to keep it from falling)--for $25.  This year they changed their price to $30, but it is still a great deal!  We went there last year too.  September was a bit early and it was very warm that day, but September (after the kids birthdays) is the start of fall.  Just wanted to be able to display them as long as we could.  We had a really great time and got a TON of pumpkins!  The bad thing about getting them in September is that by Thanksgiving, some of them have started to rot and had to be thrown away.  On the up-side, you  have so many that it really doesn't matter. 

Lydia Pumpkin posing

Emily did a little gourd dancing.

Not really sure what was happening here.  :)

This is the wagon we get to fill.  I thought I took a picture of it when it was full, but I guess I didn't.

Getting ready to hunt some pumpkins.

Pickin some

The gourd dancing was a little bit out of hand.

More Pumpkin posing.



This is what our door looked like once we washed them all off.  The three little ones in the front became Loki's favorite ones.  He would carry them around everywhere.  He also eventually poked holes in the green gourd by carrying it around with his teeth.  It didn't last too long.

 At the end of the school year last year, Lydia and Emily had a friend move to Hawaii.  Abby (the friend) has a father who is in the military.  She has moved around a lot.  I think I could stand living in Hawaii.  :)  Abby sent the girls a care package back in the fall.  It was so exciting!!  They received a bracelet, hair bow, mini backpack and a shirt!!  They loved receiving it!  They have talked to Abby a couple of times since she moved.  I wish there was something fun we could send to her!!



We need to have something fun we can send from Virginia.  Who knows what that would be.  :)  She lived here for a few years so nothing she has never seen before.

Club 56--Making their mark

I don't believe I have ever been as proud of my girls as I was today.  Lydia and Emily are part of a youth group--at our church--called Club 56.  It is a group of 5th and 6th graders, and another mother and I are the youth leaders.  Ryan was part of this group last year and the year before and now it is the girls turn.  Each year, our youth group preforms a church service for our local Presbyterian retirement community.  Many of the service attendees live in the assisted living portion of the community, but some come from the apartments within the community.  In addition, the residents who are not able to make it to the service because they are feeling sick, etc., the church services are piped into their rooms.  Well, today was the day for our service.

The last two years, Ryan has participated in being one of the ushers.  He has never been comfortable with speaking in front of people so he left the speaking parts to his group members.  Emily felt the same way this year.  She was not interested in speaking in front of anyone.  She felt comfortable with handing out bulletins and collecting the offering.

Because our group is a little smaller this year than it was the last two years, we needed to make sure we had enough kids who were comfortable speaking.  Lydia volunteered to do the Children's Sermon.  Emily agreed to hand out the crackers that were to go with the story Lydia told.  We do a children's sermon and the younger siblings of our group members are the children that come forward.  Lydia read the entire story (found at the bottom of this blog) and Emily handed out the crackers.  Lydia was amazing!  She even wanted to add to her prayer . . . "and all God's Children say . . . " and everyone in the congregation says Amen.  Our Pastor will often say that and she asked if she could add that to the prayer that we picked.  I was so proud of her.  In addition to the Children's Sermon, she also did the greeting.  In the greeting she welcomed everyone and explained who we were and what Club 56 was about.  She also introduced the ushers.  And then, towards the end of the service, she did the Prayer of Thanksgiving and lead the congregation in saying the Lord's Prayer.  She was wonderful!  All the Club 56 kids were wonderful!!  I was just so proud of the way she took this and ran with it.  We had talked about making eye contact, but didn't talk about it much.  I don't know if she forgot to do it or was nervous.  Most likely forgot.  Either way, thought it was good.  She never looked back and never hesitated or seemed nervous.  For 5th and 6th graders--they were all amazing!!

 Emily passing out bulletins with her club mates . . . Ashley, Connor and Megan (Megan used to be on the Crush softball team with Emily)

 Emily giving a bulletin to one of our dads.

 Lydia, delivering the service greeting.

 Lydia reading the Children's Sermon story to the kids.

I was not able to get a very good picture, but this is a picture of Emily passing out the crackers to the kids.  It was part of the story.

Emily passing the offering plates.

The four ushers dropping the offering plates at the front of the church and Lydia giving the prayer of thanksgiving and the lords prayer.

 The hymns and prayers are projected in the front of the church for the congregation  This was during her leading the Lord's Prayer.  I really was saying the prayer while taking this picture.  Can you see her at the pulpit at the bottom?

After the service, we took the kids to Golden Corral for Breakfast/Brunch.  This is tradition.  They had such a great time and enjoyed celebrating what they accomplished.

Here is the bulletin that everyone received in the service and the story that Lydia told during the Children's Sermon.

Here is the link to the service.  If you would like to watch it you can.  It is about 30 minutes, but of course you can skip over parts with kids you don't know.  So very proud of Lydia!!
https://youtu.be/s8Nlb-hFhx4