Hot and Hotter

This is the one hundred and fiftieth blog entry!!  What a nice little history to have of these two great kids.

As predicted as, the temperatures have sky rocketed as the school year has begun.  We are routinely pushing temps in upper eighties and low nineties. Fortunately the kids' schools are air conditioned, so as I loath putting pants on in the morning, they are packing sweatshirts.  At any rate we are still fitting in plenty of outside time around the 'nuisance' of school.  We spent some time last weekend hitting the late season thrift sales and scored some great masks that needed to worn all day long!  Soccer has started up again for both the kids.  Merrick is dominating his league play and picked up four goals last game including a large loop back towards his own goal to clear space and then and end to end run for the shot.--there really weren't any options for passing as the rest of the kids had agglutinated in a center mass.  Sophia's league is so sparse that Merrick was asked to play with the 11-14 year olds to round out the program.  His game is improving and watching the two of them makes it look like they are getting private lessons.  They both had a great work out and learned some great footwork, so I am looking forward to watching them continually develop their respective games.  Merrick was King for a Day at school during the first week and not only did he get a crown but all the other kids drew pictures for him, about him.  It was a pretty good ego stroke and good way to start the school year.  Sophia is happy to be off crutches, which frees up her hands to take hot lunch at school.  She is adjusting to the new building and friends very well.  She has an ice-cream social next week, and Merrick's was last night.  Good temps to gobble ice cream!  Merrick also spent some time working on his fire starting survival skills with a magnifying glass, while Sophia was off playing with a friend.  We found that his ear wax really helped get the fire started!  The coming week brings more soccer and weekend in the woods for some deer stand scouting for the upcoming youth hunt.  Hopefully those survival skills won't be needed, but good to know they have them.

Back at It

School has started and we packed the final week of vacation full of some school stuff and some family stuff.  We did head back to EC for a convention of the families.  Grandprize had a freshly built stage waiting for the kids and a pool filled with sun soaked water.  Merrick was in the water immediately and Jacob quickly added a bass to the pool as well.  We did head home before the holiday Monday to finish up the preparations for school, having stared earlier in the week with "meet the teacher" events.  Both the kids are in differing schools now with Sophia having moved up to a larger building.  I think it will be another great year for both of them, given the excitement both of their teachers showed.  Sophia is going to start the year on crutches, having smacked into a tree near a rope swing. Nothing broken, but badly bruised and will take a couple days to heal up.  Hopefully in time for the coming hunting season that we are all getting excited.  The peach tree also yield its fruit.  That isn't poetic license, we only produced a single peach again this year, but it was quite delicious; the squirrels having eaten the rest.  The two pears are still on their way and looking good.  The brownie pan with ice cream scoops on top was last Monday's dinner.  Forgot to pam the pan and eating them directly was the only way to get them out.