Cirque du Soleil and Universal Studios

Emory and Ellie had a four day weekend so we headed off for some fun in Orlando.

We set off for Orlando right after school on Thursday afternoon to take Emory and Ellie to see Cirque du Soleil for the first time.  Dan and I saw it for our first time ten years ago but were excited to share it with the kids.  They absolutely loved it!

We had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's in Downtown Disney before the show started at 9pm.  There were lots of fun Halloween decorations, including this large pumpkin Mickey Mouse.

The next morning we got up and headed over to Universal Studios and Universal's Islands of Adventure for the day. 

Emory enjoyed trying on the wigs in one of the shops.  Maybe we should get one of these for Halloween next year?

Ellie looked super cute in the furry pink top hat! 

Emory had lots of fun being silly with the props around the park. 

The best part of the day for Ellie was that she was tall enough to ride the "big" roller coasters for the first time ever.  We got our Universal passes back in February and each time we have visited she hasn't been tall enough to ride the Hulk coaster or the Dueling Dragons coaster with Emory.  This time she wore tennis shoes rather than flip flops(and we stuffed a couple of napkins in her heels!.) With all of that she was just tall enough!  Yea!!! She must have looked much taller on this particular day because they didn't measure her on either coaster and they have each time that we have tried to get her on in the past.  She loved both coasters and had so much fun.  Dueling Dragons which is a hanging coaster is her favorite!

Ellie's Field Trip to the Corn Maze

Ellie's 2nd grade class went on their first field trip of the year last week.  It was to a local sod farm turned corn maze for the season.  The kids got to navigate their way through a huge maze of corn by answering questions correctly.

There were lots of fun fall decorations like tractors, scarecrowns and even a couple of pumpkin patches.

Here is Ellie with her whole class with their teacher, Ms. Mayall.  This year there are only 15 kids in her class and it is wonderful to have such a small class!

The kids had fun crawling around in a large box full of dried corn kernels.

 

The neatest part of the whole trip was something that they called the "corn popper".  It was like a big bounce house with no sides.  It kind of looked like a big air pillow that was about 50 feet long and 20 feet wide.  The kids had so much fun bouncing all over it and sliding down the sides.

Ellie scored a goal!

Ellie scored her first goal of the season on October 16th!  Way to go Ellie!!!

Ellie's Fairness Award

At Mill Creek Elementary, each month the children participate in a program called Character Counts!  The character trait that was taught for the month of September was Fairness.  At the end of the month, each class votes on one student from their classroom who they feel represents this character trait.  Ellie's class voted for her to receive the award for Fairness!

She was very excited about this award.  Not only because it's an honor to have your class vote for you to get the award but because you get to attend a special assembly that your parents are invited to attend and they serve cake at the end! 

Congratulations, Ellie!

Emory is VP!!!

We are so proud of Emory who was elected the Vice President of the Student Council at Mill Creek Elementary on Friday!  Due to a few videotaping glitches earlier in the week he had to give his speech again and this time it was live.  He  must have done great because so many people have called and texted me to tell me that their child said it was the best speech ever. 

Way to go Emory!  You Rock!!!

We Love You!!!

Happy Fall!

It's been a long hot summer here in Florida and we are so ready for Fall. We don't get the beautiful change in colors of the leaves that you get up north, but I did notice a little color on the orange tree in our yard last week and it was a few of the oranges starting to turn.  I guess that will just have to do!

On Wednesday night Ellie and I baked sugar cookies, cut them out with leaf cookie cutters and decorated them as fall leaves for her class to enjoy on the first day of Fall.  It was lots of fun!

Happy Fall!

Emory for VP!

It's election time at Mill Creek and Emory is running for the position of Vice President of the Student Council.  The Student Council is made up of all 5th graders at his school.  There's quite a lot of competition this year for each position on the Council because each class was allowed to nominate two people per position.  With eight 5th grade classes, that adds up to 16 people running per position! 

 

Emory has to give a one minute speech (can't be too long when you've got so many speeches to hear!) today that will be videoed and played for all of the 5th graders on Friday morning.  Last night, Emory and I wrote his speech after Dan gave him a great idea for it.  Emory's going to sing part of his speech to a tune of a song that is popular with his peers right now titled "I'm Not Afraid" by Eminem.  We changed the words to pertain to Mill Creek and his position as VP and it turned out really well.  I'm so proud of his courage to get up there and do something like this!  On Friday morning after all of the speeches are heard, elections will begin and they will announce the winners on the afternoon announcements at the end of the day. 

Good Luck, Emory!!!

First Weekend of Soccer

The fall soccer season started this past Saturday for Emory and Ellie.  With temperatures in the 90s it felt more like the summer, especially by 12:15pm when Emory's game finally started.

Ellie is playing with her team from last season and Coach Bryan.  This year they chose the Stingrays as the name of their team.  They had a great game on Saturday and easily won.

Emory is part of the Creeks Academy and has a new team and coach this season.  They played well as a team for their first game and won 3-2.

Visiting the Smith's at the River House

We had a lot of fun on Labor Day weekend, when we went with our friends the Solms family out on their boat.  We were all invited to visit some other friends, the Smiths, at their house on the St. Johns River. 

Ellie really enjoyed spending time with Rose.  The girls were in kindergarten and first grade together and this year Rose is attending a private school so they don't get to see as much of each other as they used to.  They had so much fun jumping off the dock over and over and over again.

Emory and Mack took part in as many water sports all day long as possible!  They went tubing, jet skiing and they both went kneeboarding for the first time.   Hopefully I'll get a picture of Emory doing that soon and be able to add it to this post. 

Dan put on the water skis again after many years and was able to get up after just a couple of tries.  It was a fun day in the sun for all and we're so happy to have great friends like the Solms and Smiths!

Cutting the Grass

The past few weeks, Emory has been really helpful around the house.  It could be because he's growing up and ready to take on more responsibility or it could just be because he wants to earn more time during the week playing XBox, but either way we like it!

A couple of Saturday's ago Dan was out cutting the grass and I thought that I would see if Emory would be willing to help out with this chore too.  He's never shown any interest when I've asked before but today he surprised me and said he would give it a try.  Since he's never touched the lawn mower in his life, he got a little instruction from Dan and then he was off and mowing.

The self-propelled mower kind of pulled him along behind it at first through the extra tall grass but after a couple of passes he actually must have started to have fun because he didn't quit - and was even smiling while he did it. Now he's found out that a couple of his friends get paid to cut the grass so I'm sure he'll be negotiating his rate!