Sliding into September

SEPTEMBER SUN:  Another page on the calendar turned.  September has arrived, and so far, it has been lovely. We've continued to get our daily Statue of Liberty climb training walks in. Poor Laika and Kirby are going to be all ready, and they don't get to go to NYC. :(

I glanced out the window this afternoon and found the kids had set up the slip and slide all by themselves. Unfortunately, it was set up so that they'd slide right into an old tree stump, so Christian helped them relocated it further up the hill. 

Annabelle, in her familiar 'jump right in' style took to it like a fish to water. 

Initially, CJ was a little more tentative, and wasn't making it very far down the slide.

So Christian was kind enough to show him how it's done.

CJ had plenty of good runs after that.

DRAFTY: Sunday afternoon the Number One Cause for Concern in our household, at least for Christian and me, was drafting our fantasy football teams. The draft was at 3, and we logged in a little before.  As we were getting cued up for the activity, CJ kept peppering us with a steady stream of in depth questions about world politics - everything from monarchies to dictators , and so on.  He does this about 5 hours a day, on average, actually.

I was trying to concentrate and finally told him to "STOP for the love of God, because something much more important is going on. We're drafting our fantasy football teams."

He questioned, "So you wouldn't care if a nuke hit us right now?"

I told him, "Not if I got to draft Adrian Peterson."

I didn't get Peterson.  Guess that means I have to go back to worrying about getting nuked by North Korea. Sigh.

Speaking of football, we had fun Saturday with the return of college football.  Rick and Kennedy went to the new and improved Husky stadium for the season opener. Though, we didn't go, we sent a part of us with them - in the form of HuskyCakes.

I adapted my very favorite (strawberry) cupcake recipe, using organic blackberries picked from our alley. That turned the cupcakes a nice shade of Husky purple.  I topped them with a buttercream frosting recipe I improvised, and topped them with a little (edible) gold spray. Cute and oh-so-tasty!

One of the boys' tailgating neighbors requested the recipe, so I emailed it to her while they were pre-func-ing it. Turns out the woman was a member of the 2009 national championship UW women's softball team. 

OCTOPUS DELIGHT:  Yesterday Annabelle dug into her craft drawer, found some Sculpey, whipped out an octopus and a small friend for it, and then she drew a cute portrait of it.

A MINOR: This evening we used up a Groupon we had for cut-rate tickets to an Everett AquaSox game. They're the Mariners' Single A affiliate. 

It was a 4:05 start time, and we were in our seats about 5 minutes before the first pitch. 

Pretty little park, with a nice view of the Cascades and all the between inning cheesiness you would expect from the "Frog Squad" (the AquaSox have a frog as a mascot). 

A highlight of the afternoon was the kids going onto the field and singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the 7th inning stretch. Hopefully video to come tomorrow.