Things around here...

 Several sports wrapped up recently for the Craft girls. Kate has two friends running in the state cross country meet on Friday. Claudia finished volleyball a week ago and has already started middle school basketball. While Natalie and Maddie played their final soccer games of the fall season this past Saturday. Beyond sports (which is a pretty regular conversation topic in this house) here are some pics of other recent events...

Leading up to homecoming this year, the Union Cross Country team raised almost $12,000 for University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital to benefit pediatric brain cancer research. Each year the cross country team runs the football from Dysart to the high school in La Porte for the start of the homecoming football game. Kate was selected to run the football around the track and into the hands of the evening's referee. 

We visited Hanson's Halloween on a gorgeous fall day to find a few pumpkins and gourds. We even met up with Grandma Craft, Beau and Casey. Together we fed animals, played on the playground, and exhausted ourselves in the fresh air.


Here's Beau and Maddie enjoying some cousin time...

Circling back to homecoming... Here's Kate in her gorgeous homecoming dress we found during a recent trip to Rochester. She looked beautiful and had a wonderful evening with friends from the cross county and basketball teams.


Speaking of gorgeous... This is the tree outside our front window. It is my absolute favorite tree in the entire community. Sadly it has already lost its leaves but we love seeing this beauty every fall.
Rocket is nearing 6 months old and appears to have just as much energy as when he was a baby. Maddie and Rocket are inseparable. 


We are getting ready for Halloween over here, too. There's a spooky shop on Main Street and while Maddie hates to be scared, she is drawn to this place. Whenever the open sign is glowing, Maddie will beg to go in. The shop also has a great big, friendly cat Maddie wishes she could take home.


Despite my better judgement, I offered to chaperone a middle school lock-in at the UNI Wellness Recreation Center. I was solid until about 3 a.m. but the seven girls with me never slowed down. Claudia got to try rock climbing and she made it to the tippy top.


Natalie turned 10 this month! 10 is the age we will allow the girls to get their ears pierced if they so choose and choose Natalie did! She looks great with her freshly pierced earlobes. 



And finally Claudia and I enjoyed a fun afternoon walk along the trail nearby to explore the changing leaves. We also found several very plump, very fuzzy caterpillars. I believe the old wives tale tells us this means winter is coming soon. Here we are being goofballs with our walking sticks on the railroad tracks. No worries, no trains were anywhere near. Also, I just realized my eyes are closed in this photo. Oh well. Ha!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

October things...

Image
It has not been the easiest October on record. Kate had a couple of hospital visits to Rochester but she is somewhat better at the moment. She continues with chemotherapy and has not been back to school for quite some time but she is doing her best to set aside time for online school work between naps, loving on cats, and hanging out with her family. I was able to get the girls to visit their great grandma in western Iowa a few weeks back. Here's Claudia shortly after arriving at great grandma's house. She is very into jewelry and lots of it. Grandma had several questions for her about the number of bracelets and thankfully Claudia loves talking about them. Many she has made, some were gifted to her...it's a lovely hodgepodge of middle school girl goodies. Clearly the girls and I were blessed with height genes from relatives not named great grandma. We spent time relaxing, taking four wheeler rides, eating candy and we also received a visit from my aunt and uncle. Aunt Deb ...
Read more

March Madness 2024...

Let's talk brackets. I love a good competition. I love to win. But when I don't win I can typically move on quite quickly from a loss (unless we are specifically talking about Big Six Swim Offs, but I digress.) We have a family group on ESPN for the men's NCAA basketball tournament and it's "high stakes" with no entry fee, a chocolate rabbit for the winner and most importantly bragging rights. While I've never won, nor have I ever been close to winning, I thought I'd share my rationale for my picks through the first round of play. You should not follow this advice but if you so choose to, don't blame me when you too lose out to a cat with it's own bracket. East Region UConn 1 v Stetson 16: This is a silly way to start because it's a 16 v a 1 seed and clearly we know the very likely outcome of this game. But if I could, I'd choose Stetson cologne over a Huskie dog because Huskies kind of scare me a little. Regardless I am going with the ...
Read more

The dark day of June 27th...

 June 12, 2023 We typically don't share a lot of updates about Kate's health, primarily because she wants to remain "a normal teenager." However, we still get asked how Kate is doing and I started thinking maybe it's okay to share updates now and again. Most people care about her and our family, some others could maybe be labeled as "tragedy junkies," but I'm going to operate under the assumption that most people have the best of intentions.  Today is June 12th and we are quickly approaching the dreaded dark day of June 27th. Have you watched, "Gilmore Girls?" It's a witty, comforting television show from the early 2000's. In it one of the main characters has what is dubbed, "a dark day." This is a day the character dreads each year and in response he goes into hiding from the world with no communication. Well for Kate, and the rest of us to some degree, the dark day of the year is June 27th and that date is closing in on ...
Read more