Happy 11th Birthday, Lydia!

Lydia celebrated her birthday in November!  It landed on Thanksgiving Day, so Grandma had a turkey cake for her!

It was fun to celebrate her birthday with some of her cousins.  I also took her and two of her friends out on a birthday date.  We ate lunch at Noodles, when to see the musical "Beauty and the Beast" at a community theater, and topped it off with hot chocolate at Starbucks!

Lydia is 54.5 inches tall and weighs 66 pounds. Lydia is having a good 5th grade year.  It has worked out okay for her to start an hour early with a math class at the middle school.  She's not crazy about getting up early, but she almost always gets her homework done at school when her 5th grade class is doing math, so that's a bonus.  She is doing her research project on "dreams".  Why did she pick this topic?  Because she is a very vivid dreamer.  She also does a lot of talking in her sleep!  In her free time, she loves reading, listening to music, playing games on her kindle, and doing artsy stuff.  She says when she grows up she wants to live in Maine and write books.

Lydia joined a kids club at a local church this year and she recently got to go on a fun winter retreat!

Lydia's Volleyball Highlights

We were excited for Lydia's volleyball season this fall.  We expected it to be a more challenging year because 5th and 6th grade play together.  Lydia didn't know anyone on her team, so when we walked into the gym on the first night and saw all these very tall girls on her team - I thought to myself that this would be interesting.  When I picked her up from practice, she reported to me that basically no one on her team had ever played volleyball before and her team was terrible.  And it was true.

The way volleyball works, at this age anyway, is teams play "matches" in a "set" of three.  The first two matches are played to 25, with one team scoring at least 2 more points than their opponent (25-24 would not be a win).  The 3rd match is played to 15 as a tie-breaker if each team has won one match. Usually our teams would play 3 matches regardless.  They were already there, so why not?

Lydia's team WAS terrible.  They won a couple of matches, but lost every set during the regular season. Lydia was probably the most experienced player on the team and a very consistent server, but the team was awful at volleying.  No one at this age is great, but her team just couldn't get their act together at all!

The big day of the tournament came and the brackets were set.  Lydia's team was the worst-seeded team in the lowest bracket.

Then something crazy happened.  They won.

They won their first match.  They won their first set.  They went on to win their set against their next opponent. And what we thought was going to be a short morning drew out into the afternoon.  They found themselves in the championship game against a team that had obliterated them in the regular season. On that day, one of the players served 17 times in a row, because no one could volley it back over the net.  But on tournament day, unfortunately - for the other team - their ringer served the ball out of bounds a couple of times. And Lydia's team won.

What a way to end an otherwise miserable season!  The girls were elated! And they had learned a few lessons along the way.  Like sometimes hard work really does pay off.  Never give up.  And some of life's greatest triumphs come when you've been knocked down.

Brett's Football Highlights

It's taking me a long time to get my pictures and videos together right now because I got a new computer and it doesn't like my files from my phone?

So, here are Brett's flag football highlights from last fall.  He had another fun season playing for the Lumberjacks.  At the area competition placed 2nd, losing to the other Lumberjacks team.  At the state competition, the two Lumberjacks teams were in different divisions.  Brett's team placed 3rd in their division!   It was fun to see Brett's confidence increase from last year, and he had a lot of fun.

 

Fall Break - Door County

Door County is the little peninsula of Wisconsin that stretches into Lake Michigan, forming Green Bay.  It is a popular vacation destination for nature and art enthusiasts.  It's only an hour from Green Bay and, yet, we had never been there!

We decided it was time to go check it out when we looked at our calendar and saw that the kids' fall break from school landed on the same weekend as Bryan's season ticket game.

Door County is beautiful in the fall.  We hit the fall colors at their peak and the weather was just a bit chilly, but no complaining.  Door County is famous for it's cherry orchards and lavender farms.  There are also many vineyards and apple orchards. Consequently, there are lots of quaint places to enjoy a slice of cherry pie or a glass of wine.  But you won't find a single Starbucks.  It's all locally-owned businesses.

Door County is also famous for it's lighthouses.  There are 11 of them, but only 4 of them are publicly accessible.  One of the lighthouses we attempted to visit is just off the shore on a small island.  To tour the lighthouse, you ride in a wagon pulled by a tractor (the water between the shore and the island is very shallow) to the island.  Unfortunately, the day we were there it was very windy and the water was too choppy to run the tractor.  There's my excuse to go back!  We were able to tour and see the two lighthouses at Ridges Sanctuary (a nature center) and the lighthouse in Peninsula State Park.



Washington Island was a fun daytrip.  It is only accessible by ferry - or plane.  We took the ferry.🙂Here there were more cute ice cream shops and restaurants, lavender farms, and opportunities to enjoy nature.  It was fun to talk to the locals about what it's like to live on such a small island that is so remote.  Beyond Washington Island, there is another smaller island (Rock Island) that is a State Park, but the ferry to that island was closed for the season.  Another excuse to go back!

A few other adventures we had while we were there were a theater, an adventure park, and a fish boil. Normally, I probably wouldn't get some of the family excited about going to the theater, but the musical, "Dad's Season Tickets" was a humorous take on what it's like to be in a family of die-hard Packers fans.  What, exactly, is going to happen to those coveted season tickets when he dies?  (All joking aside, we have a whole section in our will.) It was a big hit with the whole family.  The adventure park was what you would expect and the kids had fun.  They even got to drive go-carts for the first time!  Door County is famous for it's fish boils, and a highlight was getting to watch the process before we ate it.

On the last day, we got up early, picked up a couple cherry pies, and drove back down to Green Bay.  We got together with the family to tailgate and enjoy those season tickets!  What a fun trip!