Marching Band - BOA Atlanta

The McEachern Marching Band performed yesterday at the Georgia Dome for the BOA - Atlanta Super Regional.


Here's Hannah with some signs that she made for the competition.

Our little friend is holding another one of our signs.

The sousaphones practicing before their performance.

Each section was practicing separately in the parking lot.

Getting into position.

Face Off!

Of course most of my pictures feature the sousaphones.

McEachern had a fabulous performance. They have grown so much during the season. They placed 14th out of 34 in the preliminaries, but only the top 12 go on to the finals. We're down to a few more football games and a Veterans Day parade and then the season will come to an abrupt end.

School Pictures

This year I received a portrait CD/digital copies of the kids' school pictures, so here are their 2012 pics.


James - 9th grade
He has gotten so tan from marching band!

Hannah - 6th grade
We paid extra for retouching on Hannah's pictures because she had bug bites all over her face from a Girl Scout camping trip a few days before picture day! She had at least 5 mosquito bites on her face - definitely worth it for the retouching.

More Kitty Trouble

Scout, our gray kitty is one curious cat. Here are some pictures from a recent exploration.

 

Luckily, Scout didn't go much further. I keep telling him that "curiosity killed the cat", but I don't think he's worried about that since he still has all 9 lives left. This is the same cat who climbed up into our ceiling last winter.

Hannah is a Student of PRIDE

This year at Hannah's middle school, they started the "Student of Pride" recognition. This is part of the school's character education and students are recognized quarterly for outstanding behavior.

Two 6th graders were chosen at the end of the first week of school for showing outstanding Leadership, one boy and one girl. That girl was Hannah!

Last week, the first quarter PRIDE students were honored at a special breakfast with the mayor of Powder Springs.

Here is Hannah with Mayor Pat Vaughn.

Hannah shaking hands with principal Dr. Walker.

Mayor Vaughn spoke to the students about character.

Here is a group photo of the first quarter PRIDE students with the mayor and principal.

We are very proud of Hannah, but not at all surprised!

Halloween Painting

Over the summer I purchased some Living Social Vouchers for Corkscrews & Canvas. The vouchers expire next month, so I decided it was time to redeem some of them. I shared one of the vouchers with my good friend, Denise, whose birthday is next week. She LOVES these painting nights as much as I do.


We started by painting the background.

We used white chalk to sketch out the shape of our pumpkin and witch's hat.

Here's Denise working on her hat.

Chalk was used to sketch the hat band.

Here's my nearly finished painting.

Ta-da. My finished piece of art.

 Proud artist

And here we are with our masterpieces.

Family Game Night

Marching Band season has been in full swing for the past month and a half. On average, there is one night, maybe two where we can eat dinner together as a family. We took advantage of one recent free Sunday evening and had a family game night.


The game we played this time was called Ticket to Ride. We got it for Christmas last year and some of the family had played it, but this was the first time we had played it together.

From a description I found online:

Ticket to Ride is a cross-country train adventure in which players collect and play matching train cards to claim railway routes connecting cities throughout North America.
The longer the routes, the more points they earn.

Here's Hannah hiding behind her train car cards.

James with his train pieces.

Chris trying to decide on the best move.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable game. I liked that it wasn't too complicated. On your turn, you can choose 1 of 3 things to do. Whereas in Settlers of Catan that we played last time, you could do several things in a single turn. Because of that, this game moved much faster.

I actually look forward to playing this one again sometime.

Halloween Altered Printer Tray

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I absolutely LOVE decorating the house for Halloween. Unfortunately, I have this unwritten rule that I can't put up holiday decorations if the house is not clean. It's the 3rd day of October and my house is not clean! Therefore, I cannot put up any Halloween decorations yet. Of course, one might think that the simple solution would be to just clean the house. No, instead I decided to make an altered printer tray with a Halloween theme!

I have become quite fascinated with the decorated/altered printer trays. They are so cute! Today I ran into to Michael's and saw a cute little tray that was just calling out to me.

Here's the package from the tray in case you're interested. I've seen several nice ones on Amazon, but I had a 40% off coupon that needed to be used.

I used some old, discontinued Stampin' Up! printed papers and various Halloween stickers that I had on hand. Most of the stickers were from Jolee's Boutique. I just slapped it all together and here's the finished project.

If nothing else, I think this is going to motivate me to clean the house so I can get out the decorations!

North Georgia State Fair

I have gotten so behind on my blogging! I would like to blame it on the broken camera, but I know that's not the case. I still have pictures from before the camera broke that I haven't blogged about.

Anyway...yesterday the kids & I went to the North Georgia State Fair. In our 12 years in Georgia, this is only our second time going. It's larger than the Hamilton County fair that we used to go to when we lived in Indiana, but smaller than the Indiana State Fair.

It was Student day at the fair. From 12:30 - 2pm, students could get in for free and get free rides. James & Hannah looked around at all the rides. They really wanted to do the Fun House, but we didn't find it this year. That was the one thing that they remembered from our previous trip to the fair several years ago. They chose to ride the Himalaya ride.

There they go....

We paid a dollar each to see the "Giant River Rat" which was actually a capybara. I loved the signage.

We found an elephant ear stand.

We were given a choice of powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar on our elephant ear. I insisted on the cinnamon sugar. I have never heard of having powdered sugar on an elephant ear before. That would be a funnel cake!!

Hannah fed some goats.

James wanted to take this bunny home.

"But mom, they are only $20 each?" Like we need another pet at our house.

Hannah fed a snack to this sweet horse.

Hannah wanted to play a game. She chose won that guaranteed she won.

Here she is with her prize.

We only stayed for 2 hours. There was light rain on and off while we were there.