An Orchestra Concert, for a Change

We've done band concerts, we've done choir concerts. But it took us to the third child to get a string player. So we're up for years (in theory) of them. I can go for that; the middle school orchestra director is pretty great.

Alison's hiding in the back; you can hear her (she's the bass) but not really see her. Which suits her just fine.

Corn Maze

I was out of town last weekend, Marie was at a debate tournament, Caitlyn was resting up between shows, and so Russell took Alison, Kristen, and some of his students to the local corn maze. From what I heard, it was a gorgeous day and they all had a good time. Bonus: they picked up our pumpkins, so we didn't have to do that later!

 The farm made a whole bunch of designs out of their pumpkins. This was Alison and Kristen's favorite.

Daddy-Daughter Campout 2015

One of the things Russell did when he was called into the bishopric was re-instate the Daddy Daughter Campout. The girls had enjoyed it when we first moved here, and it had fallen off. This year, however, they complained mightily about it (even though he'd gone through the effort to organize it), mostly because their good friends were out of town and wouldn't be there. As it turned out, Russell, Alison, and Kristen were the only ones to show up from our ward. But, it looks like they had a good time, after all. 

Friday night...

And Saturday morning.

New School Year, New Instruments

Alison didn't want to take P.E. and so, when she started middle school, she signed up for orchestra. She knew one thing: she wanted to play the bass. The first weeks of class was a little lame for someone who has been taking piano; it was basic music instruction, mostly. But then, they got their instruments, and Alison got (had?) to bring hers home for the weekend.

It's name is Felix, because it "looks like a Felix."

It's Always Fun to Get Your Face Painted

Especially if you can have someone creative do it.

Cousins!

I told Kristen that when Wayne and Rebecca and Family came through again on their way back to South Dakota, we needed to get pictures of people. So, she did.

It's always fun to see cousins!

Obligatory Swim Lesson Photos

It wasn't the last day of swim lessons; because of rain, they get to go one more day (and it'll be HOT, finally). But, since I have to work on their last day, I thought I'd go and take pictures. Except, I got there and they said "WE DON'T WANT PICTURES". So, I snuck a few. Just because I can.

Weird Al

Okay, so we're not huge fans. But we like him well enough. And so when we saw that he was going to be in Wichita, we kind of jumped at the chance to see him. (Well, the extended discussion was that we weren't going on vacation this year at all and maybe we ought to do something special for the kids. Kristen went to the Kratt brothers. We'll take Caitlyn -- and maybe Megan, if she's home  -- to see a musical.) Alison's treat was Weird Al.

Our camera battery died, so all the pictures are courtesy of other people. One of my bosses texted me this, asking if I was there since she saw Russell.

They said he put on a fantastic show, and that they both had a great time. Even though Alison looks a bit nonplussed in this picture.

(Russell stumbled on to a friend, who took this one for us.)

And, of course, they picked up swag.

Fireworks! (Part 1)

Every year, Bradley Fair does a series of jazz concerts, which we have (at times) tried to get to (with various levels of success). We discovered a couple of years ago that they put on a great fireworks show. And discovered this year that they do it even when the 4th doesn't fall on a Thursday. So, we decided to go.

Well, Alison and Kristen decided that they wanted to come with. Caitlyn and Marie were much too teenagery.

We got there pretty close to when it started, so we didn't have a lot of time to hang out. We did have enough time to take some silly pictures though.

And the show was really good, too. (Except for the people in front of us brought their dog. Silly people.)

It was a fun evening.

Fishing

Every year the local paper sponsors a fishing clinic at the local nature center. It was initially supposed to be last week, but it got "rained" out. (It wasn't raining, but it could have so they canceled it.) It was rescheduled for yesterday, and since Russell and Caitlyn were at camp, I got to take Alison and Kristen.

It was hot -- 95 -- and Alison ended up getting dehydrated (she never does drink enough water) and she gave up after 40 minutes of nothing happening. Kristen, however, had a fantastic time!

Oh: and Kristen and I made the story in the paper. It's pretty great.

The Many Silly Faces of Alison

We finally got around to taking Alison's 11-year-old pictures (they're 11 1/2 year old pictures now), and as we were going through choosing, I noticed that Alison makes some pretty silly faces when she gets her pictures taken.

Here's a few of them:

What a girl!

And More Riverfest! (Part 2: Thursday)

We headed back Thursday, primarily to get Cajun food for dinner. Yum! (We didn't take pictures of that this year.) And then, we headed to the river, nominally to go paddle boating.

It was, unfortunately, a bit of a bust. They had all the paddleboats tethered to ropes and made you paddle up the river a ways and back as a "test" before letting you go on your own on the river. I understand the reasoning: because of the rain, the river is pretty high this year. However, they were a bit sexist: Russell and Kristen got let off the tether pretty quickly, while Alison, Marie, and I went a good ways up and back and they never gave us the okay. Alison was quite mad.

We did manage to take a couple of pictures.

So, as a consolation prize, we let them play in the fountain. (We'd noticed on Wednesday that the cops weren't enforcing the "no playing in the fountain" rule.)

Marie and I were sensible and didn't get wet.

And that's about all we did. We only had an hour and a half to spend, and we spent it well!