Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts

Friday, September 30, 2022

September 2022

Welcome to fall, with warm September days and chilly nights. Good for sleeping with the windows open, for sure. The pumpkins in the garden have been harvested and are chilling in the basement waiting for Halloween and the rest of the garden is slowly being cleared out. We already have next year's garden partially planned out. Maybe fewer tomatoes next time...

Also: gettin' mah hairs did while I watched mah stories:


They were disappointed that my hair wasn't long enough for liberty spikes.


Emily and Vanessa spotted me taking their picture before the homecoming game halftime performance:


Rose with the help of her cheer squad cleverly spelling out a message asking Fern to the homecoming dance:



And Mr. Ballard leading a cheer. Remember, it's always a great day to be a Warrior:


This is Rose's last year of cheering at Wash. It's all going so fast! More pictures from the homecoming game:




Friday night lights:


Leaving for the homecoming dance:



Cool siblings pose:


Cynthia picked up an old Fisher Price Little People house and began working on turning it into a haunted house:


After a coat of black primer and a coat of dark grayish brown paint leftover from the ceiling fan, Cynthia started painting around the raised details:



Some Family Dollar skulls were added:



Last coat of weathering paint done and painting in the small details:


Popsicle sticks were used to board up the windows and make window boxes. Dried moss was added, too:




If there was actually a spider on your house that size I think you would hear it before you saw it:


Speaking of haunted houses, the girls picked up a couple of haunted house cookie kits:


We tried eating some of the cookies and stuff used to decorate the houses, but they were not great. Not really intended for eating, just for looks, yo.


Rose and Fern's house is on the right:


We put the finishing touches on the kitchen, adding a glass mosaic backsplash, baseboards, and a range hood. The kitchen looks so friggin' awesome almost like it doesn't even belong in our house.

Working on the backsplash:


Backsplash done, range hood installed, microwave moved into the kitchen:


Baseboards installed:


Now we just have to wait for the window guy to come out and replace the two kitchen windows in October and we will be DONE.

When Halloween stuff started appearing on store shelves we picked up a life-size skeleton, which then began showing up in random places around the house to scare people. This time he's waiting for Rose to come home from work:


Cynthia and I spent a Saturday in Des Moines visiting some of our favorite places. We had lunch at the Drake Diner, which still looks exactly the way it did the first time I went there. The food was awesome:


In my day you wouldn't be caught dead wearing your jammies to school. That's the kind of thing kids used to have nightmares about. Also, if you and your crew all showed up and you're obviously all wearing the same pants. Times have changed:

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Homecoming 2019

Rose got to be in the homecoming parade for the second time (she walked in the parade in elementary, too) and her picture is currently on the homepage masthead of the Washington High School website. How cool is that?


Walking in the parade:




The homecoming bonfire:


And the homecoming game where the Warriors got slaughtered as usual. They're not... great. But it's still fun to go to the games:





Getting ready for the homecoming dance. Too bad her parents weren't going, cuz that would be super awesome:



Rose also went to homecoming at Marion with some of her friends. They went out to get pictures taken first and then dinner:


Yup, that's about it.

Monday, February 25, 2019

Old Man Winter

February is a horrible month, I wouldn't recommend it. After a winter of record snowfall and record low temperatures I think we're about done with this. On the plus side we read lots of books and got stuff done around the house. Rose had her orientation at Wash and registered for classes. It's crazy to realize that she's kind of a real person now and is going into high school. She was just a little kid and then all of a sudden she's growing up. In the fall Emily will be going into middle school which is also difficult to comprehend. She's been the baby for so long, but now she is looking so grown up. Dang kids.

Emily decorated a pizza box for Marco's Pizza at school again this year:


I took this picture during a foggy walk downtown before another soul-crushing snowfall:


And the snow never stops...


And the shoveling...


We tried out an escape room with the Von Thuns and had a blast! We didn't completely solve the Underground Casino within the one-hour time slot, but we gathered up the clues, unlocked the vault, solved most of the puzzles and ended up with a respectable score. Not bad for our first escape room experience and I can't wait to do it again.


To stave off cabin fever and restlessness, I launched into a minor home improvement project. As usual, I didn't think to take a "before" picture, but the wooden ledge along the second floor stairs had forty bajillion coats of paint on it and was kinda jankity. It's been bugging me for a while, so I pulled it off and tossed it, then went to Menard's and bought an oak board to finish and install in its place. First of two coats of stain after cutting it out:


Four coats of semigloss polyurethane:


Before installation:


Finished!


Now if it will warm up a little I need to finish installing the new basement windows...