On Saturday, October 5th, we took the cross country team to the Leavenworth Invitational 2.5 hours from Sunnyside by school bus. I have wanted to see the wilderness outside of Leavenworth, WA for years, and it did not disappoint! The scenery was rugged, forested, and satisfied all of my deepest dreams of the Evergreen State. The meet was held on the Leavenworth Ski Hill, and the course was all ups and downs. Thankfully there was no coaches race, because it was tiring enough running around keeping track of everyone during the high school races! Jeff and I were standing about halfway up the big ski hill in this picture.
Sunday, October 6th was a perfect day to stay comfy and watch general conference. We were tired out from the meet! We tried listening to conference in the school bus on Saturday, but we lost cell phone reception in the mountains and only listened to 3/4 of one talk. But as Jeff said, it was a Jeffrey R. Holland talk, so it basically counted as five talks. Haha. Since general conference ended, I have been playing catch-up trying to listen to the three sessions we missed while at the meet. It is a powerful wonderful thing to flood my daily life with words of our stellar church leaders.
Back to Leavenworth: all of the prep before and after cross country meets makes the day feel so long and even more exhausting. We have to lug all of the supplies: water wagons, team tents, tarps, folding tables, storage bins, foam rollers for sore muscles, etc. out of their various storage closets deep in the high school and then jigsaw puzzle them all into the under-bus storage area.
Jay, slumped and feeling the early wake-up and heavy water wagon lugging.
At the meet, the kids are basically left to their own devices. Jeff and I jog through and make sure nobody is bleeding every hour or so. They are patient and Amber brings all of the toys. Jay, Rose, and Amber like it best when the entire Condie family comes to meets because they have fun playing with other kids their age.
The Leavenworth cross country course was on this dreamy fairytale woodland trail. I was perfectly content in the tranquility while waiting for our runners to race past.
The gorgeous Leavenworth Ski Hill, looking down at the race start--the course started at the bottom of this hill. It was a great dig-deep-from-the-beginning type of run.
Rose, stick, apple: surviving cross country season one Saturday at a time.
Heading back to the bus after the meet.
The team, lugging all of those heavy supplies and equipment.
General conference boxes: the kids remembered how they watched conference while sitting in cardboard boxes last time, and they decided it was a good tradition to follow. Our family room was packed and trashed with boxes as they kept fetching more tattered boxes from the playroom to expand their box-houses.
Jeff gave Rose's box a try. It was not as comfy as she made it look, haha.
Amber noticed how her frizzy Aurora/sleeping beauty barbie has hair most similar to her own curly frizzy hair, and she is on a major Aurora kick right now.
Amber looks at books a LOT.
The high school made a fall sports pamphlet and look! We are coaches!
Amber's favorite way to finish off a gallon of milk: squeeze Hershey's syrup into the last inch of milk, shake, and chug. Don't forget that sassy hand-on-hip!
It's donut month! Jay and Rose chose 3 day old stale donuts over fresh brownies one night after dinner. To each his own!
Stenciling clothes onto girl outlines--Amber dug out this old fashion paper kit that Rose never used and both girls really got into it for a few days, using up all of the pages in the book to draw and design clothes for each girl in the book.
I went running on Thursday morning (Oct. 10th) since I don't get to run during cross country team workouts--I stand there timing the workout instead. Amber played in the mud while I ran loops around her in our very own "outback" behind our house. Amber got stuck in the mud...
...I had to pause my run to rescue her.
The temperature dropped into the mid-20's overnight, so during my run on Thursday morning, the irrigation water that was left on all night through the freeze was icy!
It was only white and icy along the one strip that was being watered during the freeze. It looked funny surrounded by all that green.
Another white icy irrigation strip.
PROOF: I finally figured out how to make cookies again! After two and a half years of failed cookie baking (they always melted into flat puddles) I finally discovered that the reason they melted so badly was because our oven is cold. Much fiddling and experimentation led me to the optimal temperature for cookie-baking: 15 degrees higher than the recipe calls for. Ta daaaa!
Bedtime multitasking at its finest.
Jay just looked so cozy reading his book with the bright yellow ducky blanket snuggled in a glowy pool of golden sunlight, I had to take a picture.
We got pumpkins! Our friends the Kannelys grow enough pumpkins for the entire ward primary every year. They were nice enough to let us come pick our pumpkins the day before the actual primary pumpkin picking activity because the activity was held during another cross country meet.
On the way home from pumpkin picking, we picked up some reading material.
I have a thing for library selfies and temple selfies. They make me happy, so I keep taking them.
Sometimes Amber's hair is exceptionally springy and tight when she wakes up in the morning.
Amber picked out a book from the large Spanish section of our library, and Jeff read the whole long thing to her. It was hilarious and awesome. I have no clue what Amber got out of it. She asked me to read it to her another day, so she likes something about Spanish books--this isn't the first Spanish book she has chosen from the library!
I came in and found Amber building a tower on herself.
The Queen condescended to come on my thrift store errand as long as she could keep her full royal robes on, veil and all. Maybe I'm getting too good at letting my kids choose their own clothes...
Halloween is coming, and we scored a fancy heavy-duty massive sleeping beauty dress at Goodwill to replace our old flimsy too-small torn to shreds Aurora dress. Amber is in heaven.
I picked up a dragon/alligator hat for Jay while Amber and I were Halloween Goodwill shopping. Somehow it was even funnier when he wore it during piano practice this morning.
That's it for now! A nice abrupt end to our ten day album.
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