Biztown

gaming with the family

I only have 2 more days left of my session off. Next session will be insane. The most online classes I've ever taught is 3. Now I'm teaching 5 and working on two developments. I'm getting paid extra for the extra classes (so Erik is happy) but I'll be busy :(. Erik suggested I give up some of my exercise classes but let's not be crazy here. I go to Bible study Monday morning, Tuesday yoga, Wednesday spinning, Thursday body blitz, and Friday zumba. I really can't give up any of that.

Magna-tiles

Matthew's favorite toy is magna-tiles. These are magnetic tiles that can be connected to build houses or any structure you want. His speech therapist brings them every week and he absolutely loves them. In more important news I prayed the sinner's prayer with Matthew. I hope he understood but it is hard to tell with 5 year olds. 

Sarah tested for her yellow belt with a stripe. She did a great job at her test. She really likes tae kwon do and is good at it.I'm glad she is following in my footsteps!

Sarah and her new belt

 We had a few cooler days so we sat by the fire, drank hot chocolate, and played uno. Uno is a great game because Matthew can play as well. I love our fireplace! So I don't mind winter too much since I can cozy up to the fire.

playing uno

Boo at the zoo - Frogwarts

 My Mom came down to visit and celebrate her birthday. The kids were very excited to see Nana. We celebrated her birthday by Erik and I going out on a date for sushi ;). Then she took the kids to school so I could volunteer for Jenna's Biztown. JA Biztown is a field trip the 5th graders take to act like adults for the day! They each have jobs, errands to run (they even have a fake kid to take to soccer practice), and they do shopping. Jenna was the editor for the newspaper which was the perfect job for her. She corrected everyone's grammar and had to read all the editorials and choose the best ones. She rated them all and the best editorial was put in the newspaper.

Happy Birthday Nana

JA Biztown - two of the businesses

 Jenna really loved being editor of JA Biztown.

Jenna as editor

Fall Hike

In other news:

• Our book club is finishing up Dragonspell by Donita Paul. This book is C.S. Lewis-like in its allegory to Christ. Maybe a little more obvious actually. It tackles questions about why there is suffering in the world and other such questions people struggle with. It's a great book. 
• Matthew's last football game is this Sunday. He likes it but doesn't love it. He and Sarah just started gymnastics at the Y. They both seem to like it quite a bit.
• Sarah and Jenna are now taking a cooking class at the Y. They both like cooking so this should be a fun class. 
• Jenna is taking tennis lessons with Grace. She is pretty good at tennis but is often hard on herself. She is doing really well on the saxophone. 
• 72 points on quiddler online

Fall Sales

Last Saturday Red Barrel Crafts had our first craft show. It was rainy, windy, and cold. And we didn't sell anything except two signs to Jen's neighbor. Because the weather was so bad not many people came to the craft show. In fact, as I was thinking about it there were probably only about 10 people who were not Jen's friends who stopped by our booth. So not a good turn out. Which is why we didn't sell and it turned into a craft fail :(. We are not giving up yet though. There is another craft show in December and we are hoping to do better than we did at this show!

Our booth

 On Friday the elementary school had its annual walk-a-thon. This was Jenna's last year - so I walked with her. I've walked with the kids every year and it is always fun! This year the weather was perfect.

Sarah's second grade class

Jenna and some of her friends on the walk-a-thon

 On the evening of the walk-a-thon Jenna's troop sold jewelry they made to donate money to Race for the Cure. Two girls in our troop lost their mothers to breast cancer. So the girls decided for their bronze award to create this jewelry to sell. They did a great job! We raised about $600!

My co-leader photo bombing

Carcassone - Matthew is playing too!

Some of my fall signs

 So I have a wonderful husband! I have been working on developing this new course that will use the raspberry pi for a semester long course project. I developed several projects using pygame, and a few with other applications but one that took a long time was getting my led to light up. I don't know why I had so many issues with this but my wonderful husband stayed up until 1am and figured out that the led light was put in backwards. There is an anode and cathode. Who knew?

it works!

Now I have 3 raspberry pis. Each one of them I've used for different applications. I have one I set up as a remote server for one of my onsite classes. My newest pi is the pi 2. It is awesome compared to the B model. I know you can put windows 10 on it but I didn't want to do it quite yet. So many possibilities!!

In other news:

1. Our book club is reading Dragonspell. This is a young adult book by a Christian author. Jenna already read it and loves that we are reading something she read before us.
2. Sarah is reading Harry Potter. I'm so proud of her! She is halfway through the book.She is doing really well in school too and making some good friends. 
3. Jenna quit playing viola and started choir instead. She didn't want to have to practice two instruments. So now she is just practicing saxophone. She is doing really well and has been practicing "Happy Birthday" to play for Nana.
4. Matthew's best friend at school is Ally Erdy. In fact, he said he will marry Ally Erdy, have 4 children, two girls and two boys, live in a 4 story house that will be bigger than his camper and be a "fixer" when he grows up. He wants to fix lights but I'm sure he will fix other things as well. He is hilarious and talks nonstop. I don't know why I was ever worried about him not talking enough.....
5. My session off is ending soon and next session will be insane. I'm teaching 4 classes next session plus developing two and doing two live lectures. I might possibly go insane. I may also have to travel to Houston - we will see.