Fall is here!

My blog assistant has been a bit tired the past few weeks so we are a week behind, but never fear!  I'll get you all caught up on the Life of Jordan!  Last weekend was busy and fun.  Mom ran in her second half marathon on the 22nd and had a great time all the way around.  She loved the pre-race packet pick up expo.  Their was so much stuff to see and buy.  She was able to stock up on a few running basics (jackets, shirts etc.) that she had been needing and in the process, spent enough money to earn a "Potty Privilege" pass.  This pass earned her the use of special potties on race day that had heat, running water and flushing toilets!  She didn't end up actually using it, but it was nice to know it was there.  Her most favorite purchase by far though was her zombie apocalypse shirt.  She snapped that up without even thinking twice.

Race day was an early, early one for mom.  She was out the door by 5 AM to pick up her friend Margy, who had talked mom into this in the first place.  It ended up being a beautiful day for a run and mom discovered how much easier it is to run with a friend.  She was feeling no pain and even knocked 10 minutes off her last half marathon time.  Woot- woot!

My day, however, was not quite so successful.  My soccer team, while we didn't lose, tied and did not look very good at it.  The only reason we scored is because the ball bounced off Hannah's back and into the opposing goal.  Not because we did anything special.  Oh well- the snacks were good!

That evening, we all headed down for the Rockies baseball game and met some of dad's co-workers.  As usual, I ate my way through the game and had an extra good time because my favorite co-worker, Mr. Franco, was there too.  He ran the 1/2 marathon that morning too so he and mom swapped war stories.  We finally got home about 10:30 and everyone collapsed into bed.

On Sunday, we were up and at it early.  We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the high country for our second annual "Fall Aspirin Drive".  I just love the "aspirins" and it was another beautiful day.  The colors were gorgeous and the only damper on the day was that these beautiful colors mean snow isn't far behind....

Sunday night started Dad's incredibly busy week.  He put together a supplier conference for his work and had to meet some of the attendees that were coming in from Norway for dinner.  At 9:00 at night.  Not a good way to start the week especially since the same thing happened Monday night as well.  Needless to say, dad was a tired puppy this week.

Nana D and Mr. Walker rolled into town on Friday afternoon for a weekend of fun and adventure.  We started off with a rousing game of Operation.  Personally, I think Nana and Mr. look pretty flexible for being grandparents.  While we were busy with that, mom and dad headed out for a date night.  They are kind of lame because they never really know what to do with themselves- they went out to dinner and then wandered around the mall for awhile.  Woo-hoo!

On Saturday, mom had to work for a bit, so Nana and Mr. were in charge of getting me ready for my soccer game.  Thankfully, it was right at the park behind our house, so it wasn't too bad.  We lost yet again 0-3 but we did look a little better today so maybe a win will happen before the end of the season.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Wildlife Experience......

 And then Mr. Walker and I worked on building the Lego dinosaur that he brought me....

Mom also happened to notice that all of the Walker clan was wearing the same shoes.  The family that shoes together.......

Before all of our Saturday fun, we had to bid Dad farewell as he left for yet another business trip.  This time it is a 12 day jaunt to Norway.  This trip may be more tolerable for him though since he bought a "break away bike" for all his travels.  This bike breaks down into pieces, comes with its own case and then goes back together in a jiffy.  He got in a great ride and took in some beautiful scenery around Oslo.

Sunday was a quiet day for mom and me.  I watched a lot of movies, we went grocery shopping and shopping for Halloween decorations.  We spent the afternoon putting up the decorations and wrapping up our weekend.  We were all in bed early to make sure mom wasn't crabby for the upcoming "single mom" slog.  She has the week all planned out with lots of stops at the Whole Foods salad and hot food bar for dinner.  It should be a banner week!

Quite the Week

Mom and I had quite the fun filled week while dad was busy working away in Washington D.C.  He left Monday morning so mom thought it would be a good idea for me to have a friend over Monday after school because she had big plans to start painting the living room.  I had my friend Camryn over but mom got nothing done mainly because we kept asking her for stuff every two minutes.  By the time Cami went home at 6:30, mom was exhausted and had nothing to show for it!

Tuesday was soccer practice and chicken nuggets for dinner.

Wednesday is mom's short day so she came home and baked some Cake Pops for us to decorate.  I have been begging mom for a Cake Pop maker for months and now that she has a real job with a real income, she went crazy and bought a Cake Pop pan.  They were not nearly as easy as the commercial promised and not as pretty but we sure had fun and man, they tasted good!  I see lots of Cake Pops in our future.

Thursday was Girl Scouts and Ms. Chris (the other leader) and mom got smart and had us all meet at the park.  They thought we would be able to get our willies out and actually be calm enough to listen for a bit.  That wasn't quite the case but we had fun anyway.  We earned our "Keeping the Earth Beautiful" petal and "Respecting Authority" petal.  Ms. Chris and mom aren't sure how we earned the "Respecting Authority" patch as we listened to them for precisely zero seconds.

Friday was a dinner out and relax on the couch kind of night.

Saturday, I had my second soccer game of the season.  The Pink Jets are not looking so good this season.  We lost again 0-4 and none of looked like we knew where we were.  It was not pretty.
In the afternoon, mom worked on her painting project that she had to put off and then we went to my school's Fall Festival.  I won a whole bunch of prizes at the carnival games but the best prize was the 6 pack of cupcakes I won in the cake walk!  They are awesome and I'm not really sharing them.
I also spent a lot of time swinging with dad.....

Sunday, mom finally finished her little painting project and in the afternoon, we headed down to the Nature and Science Museum to watch the IMAX movie "Space Junk".  It was a beautiful day here and we are gearing up for the week ahead- hope everyone has a good one!

The Season Opener!

We'll just dive right into it here- we had a fairly busy week and mom found her inner Tiger Mom.  

I had soccer practice on Tuesday which makes for a long day anyway and then you add dinner and homework on top of it and it just seems endless.  Mom also picked this day to head to my school to ask my teacher why my reading assignments were so easy.  Mom tends to be fairly lazy in the "check in with teacher/find out if there are any difficulties in the classroom" area of parenting so this was a big deal for her.  So she marched (meekly) into my classroom and demanded ( in a really quiet voice that involved a  lot of "Whatever you think is best Mrs. V!") that I be given harder reading assignments.  Turns out mom was right and that was the direction Mrs. V was taking me anyway, mom just didn't have the patience to wait.

So Wednesday evening was "Back to School" night when the parents visit the classrooms and meet the teachers and find out what we have been doing.  Mom and dad decided Mrs. V knows her stuff and I'm in good hands.  She was using all kinds of big words that mom and dad had to use a dictionary on when they got home.

The rest of the week passed pretty quietly but that was a good thing because I needed my rest for Saturday.

I had my first soccer game of the season.  We are still the Pink Jets and have our full team returning from last with two new additions.  The big change is that we are now on a bigger field, we keep a real score  and we have a goalie and have to play offensive and defensive positions.  We didn't play too bad but I think we need a few more practices to really get the feel of things.  We lost 3-0 but I came close to scoring twice.  I'm getting to be a kind of aggressive player which makes dad very proud.

Waiting for kick off

And we're off!

My very best friend Camryn is on my team this year (which creates all kind of problems in the paying attention to coach part of practice) and so after my game her family and ours headed out to lunch to celebrate the first game.  It was a quick lunch because then Camryn and I had to get ready for a birthday party that afternoon.  It was a "Rock Star" birthday and it was the most awesomest birthday party EVER!  I have not stopped talking about it.  We had to dress up like rock stars and then we got to give each other make overs.  We had crazy colors sprayed in our hair, sparkly eye shadow and lip gloss, I have multiple tatoos and I have spent the last two days rocking out on my key board singing mom songs about coconuts and swimming pools.
We all hit the hay early- it was an exhausting day for us.

Sunday, we slept in until 6:45, dad went for a bike ride, mom made muffins and cleaned the house and we spent the rest of the day relaxing, watching football and enjoying the last few days of warm weather.  It was a great day and we wrapped it up with family movie night on the couch.
Hope everyone has a great week!

Mom's Birthday Extravaganza!!

Ah, yes!  Here we are at our favorite time of the year- Mom's birthday month!  Woo- hoo!  It has been quite exceptional but before we get into that, I'll fill you in on my week.  Not a whole lot to report but I did have my first soccer practice on Tuesday.  It went pretty well but mom doesn't really know because she spent the whole time yapping with the other moms.  She did pay enough attention to watch me trip and fall in the first two feet of our first drill.  We have high hopes for the season.

The rest of the week went VEEEEERRRRRYYYY slowly, probably because mom and dad both took Friday off to get the weekend started early.  After our last camping trip, we decided we needed to get one more in before the season ended here and the only weekend we could swing was Labor Day.  We NEVER go camping on the holidays because all the crazies are out but we bit the bullet, reserved our spot at  a campground and headed out.  We were very pleasantly surprised.  Traffic was nothing, the campground was beautiful (if a little crowded) and the other campers were relatively quiet.

We got to our campsite about noon on Friday, got set up, popped a beer and were sitting on our tooshies by 12:30.  It rocked!

Our campground had a nice little playground which I dragged mom and/or dad to multiple times.  That tire swing was the coolest thing and I got to where I was doing all kinds of balancing, twirling and other things to make mom nervous.

We finally decided to head out to try our hand at fishing again.  We found a kind of pathetic little lake and made a pathetic little attempt to catch something and gave up pretty quick after that.  We headed home for beef stew, hot dogs and s'mores.

On Saturday, we slept in until 7:00!  Dad bought us a camp oven for this trip and he made us some cinnamon muffins for breakfast.  So yummy- hit the spot perfectly!  After sitting around some more (until 1 in the afternoon!) reading magazines, playing dinosaurs and cards, we decided to head out for a drive.  We found a dirt road and took it and it was a great discovery.

The road dead ended at a beautiful hiking trail that headed up into the mountains.  The aspens are just starting to change, the sun was out and it was a great trail.

At the trail head, there was a huge train tunnel that went under the entire mountain and we saw a train come out of it- very noisy but very cool!

We got back to camp about 4, headed back to the playground for awhile and then mom and I headed to a nature talk given by the park ranger on how plants and animals get ready for winter.  Did you know black bears have to eat 20,000 calories a day to get ready for hibernation??

While we were gone, dad was busy whipping up birthday cupcakes for mom in our new camp oven and they were  just about the best birthday cupcakes ever!

Sunday, we slept in until 8!! Can you believe it!  After a leisurely breakfast of pancakes and eggs, I dragged mom to the playground one more time and then we headed home.

Now, you may think Mom's birthday fun would be over by now but no!  As if camping and mountain cupcakes weren't enough, mom had presents waiting for her at home!  I got her a yummy pumpkin candle and a cool doorstop (which we really needed) and dad got her the Joy of Cooking cookbook (which mom has been wanting) and a pasta maker.  We are expecting big things from her!  After that excitement, we headed out for a birthday dinner.

Monday was even more fun but had nothing to do with mom.  Dad and I headed to Elitch Garden's for one last summer hurray.  We rode all the rides, won a bunch of prizes, got soaked, ate chicken fingers and then headed home.  It was a fabulous last weekend of summer and I'm kind of bummed I have to go back to school tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a great week!