Football games, cross country, and band competitions

 Hi, September came flying in in a hurry and we are already almost done with the month. I don't understand where the time goes!

The second Saturday in September was the President's Bowl at Howard Wood Field. It was really fun and a beautiful evening. The band played during the game, and then they performed at halftime. It was fun watching them, and really fun to watch Emma learn all the cheers and how to dork around in the stand with her friends. We watched a really good football game, and the Cavalier beat Lincoln pretty convincingly. I sat with Jim, Barb, Elliott, and Heather and Travis. We had fun bothering Emma, watching the game, and of course, watching the halftime show. It was awesome. 

In other news, some dummy ran into me in the parking lot after work one day. She was just not looking at all, and plowed into my car. Luckily, the damage wasn't too bad. After numerous calls to insurances, and auto body shops, I am in the process of having my car fixed right now. Luckily, my deducible was waived, and I should not have to pay anything out of pocket, and I may get 2 new headlights out of the deal, so it really worked out ok. But, it would have been easier to not have gotten into an accident. So, right now, I have a Nissan car for a rental. 

Elliott has been participating in both Soccer and Cross Country right now. He had his first soccer game a couple weeks ago. They played at Yankton trail park and they played 7-8:45pm. So, we got to watch him play under the lights. It was pretty cool. His team lost 3-2, but they played really well and it was a good game. John missed the game because he was in Redwood Falls for his work retreat. But, he plans to be at the next one. Elliot played goalie the entire game, and he had some really nice saves. He seems to really be enjoying soccer. 

Cross country is another story. He had the three meets again, and luckily Jim and Barb could pick him up and bring him to every meet. I had meetings that night for Festival of Bands, and John doesn't always get off work in time. And it's not the most thrilling thing to race across town to go and see. But, Elliott survived the races, and he posted his best time at the last race, so that was pretty amazing. Elliott says he actually is starting to. like running. So that is really exciting. 

We had our first band competition experience this past weekend. It was a super long day. Emma had to be at the school at 9:00 in the morning to practice. She got a lunch break, and then they practiced some more. And then the busses left for Marshall at 2:00pm. John and I had to help with the props at the school, and then get them all loaded into the trailer. We also left at 2pm with Elliott. Once we got to Marshall, we unpacked the truck (Elliott helped) and then we helped get the props onto the field for the competition. After the show, we had to help get all the props off the field as well. And we had to do this all within 15 minutes or else there would be a penalty. It was a little stressful. After the show, we had to reload the trailer again, and then we could finally sit in the stands and watch the last 2 bands perform. 

Jim and Barb came, and my mom even came for the show. She sat with Jim and Barb and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. Eventually, Elliott joined them in the stands as well. We stayed to watch the awards, and Jefferson got first place in their division, and they also got outstanding percussion, outstanding music, and outstanding show. So, that was all very exciting. Elliott stayed to spend the night in a hotel with Jim and Barb and John and I headed for home at 9:00pm. We stopped at Quick Trip to get some supper and then headed home. Emma had to ride the bus home. 

Emma got home around midnight. We went to pick her up, and then we all happily went to bed. Sunday was a recovery day. It was rainy and cool all day, so we just enjoyed some football games, did some cleaning and laundry, and just bummed around. It was a very exciting, tiring, stressful weekend. It was a great first weekend of band competition, and I can't wait to see how the rest go. 

Elliott's first soccer game 

The new washer and dryer 

Emma ready to perform at halftime 

Marshall Band Competition 

Group photo with the trophy 

Cross Country 

Band Show 

The boys helping with props 

Me helping with props 

Elliott's first day of school 

August 2026

 August brought in first days of school, Labor Day weekend, and some band preview shows. 

Elliott's first day of school was August 26th. He is in 6th grade this year, and it's the first year of school he has had where his big sister is not in the same building as him. I think he is loving not having Emma around to bother him and comment on what he's doing. He seems to like his classes, and is doing well. He is one of the tallest kids at school, and now he is getting to be one of the oldest as well. 

Emma's first day of school was the next day, Thursday August 27th. She did not let us take a first day of school picture, which was a bummer. She was pretty nervous for her first day, but now that she is 4 weeks into school she is crushing it. She almost never has homework, she is keeping pretty good grades in her classes, and she has at least one friend in every class. She especially likes her drawing and band classes. And she really enjoys being in band. I think she will stick with it for the next 3 years, which is really exciting. 

Emma's first preview night was the beginning of August. They had a parent preview night. We had a potluck, a band parent meeting, and then the kids performed their show for us on the football field. It was really fun to watch and gave us a taste of things to come. Emma was obviously enjoying herself, so that was nice to see. 

They also had a clinic toward the end of the month where instructors work with the kids all day, and then they perform at the end of the day at Howard Wood Field. We got to watch 7 different bands perform, and it was a beautiful evening to be sitting in the stands watching bands perform. We are really getting into band and enjoying the ride. 

We decided to keep it pretty low-key for Labor Day weekend since we have been so busy lately. Friday evening, we just enjoyed an evening at home, being outside, and enjoying our own yard. It was great. On Saturday, John took the kids to Izzy's Gym to look at Pokemon cards and other things. They enjoyed it, and even got some free merchandise. 

We also did another Sip N Cycle at work. It was pretty fun, but it was hot again, and some people went a little too hard. 

Also, randomly, we went shopping for a new washer and dryer over Labor Day weekend, and we ended up  finding something we liked and buying it. So, now we have a new washer and dryer, which is wonderful. 

The kids ended up spending a night at the farm because Jim and Barb got a 3D printer, and the kids had a lot of fun printing items with that. They kept that printer running the entire time they were out there. We brought out some supper when we picked up the kids, and that was pretty much our Labor Day weekend. 

August flew by between the fair and school starting. I think we are finally getting into a schedule with school and all the extra things. I am really proud how well the kids are adjusting to school and schedules again. We have had some screen time issues and are working through those, but overall I am a super proud mom and just hope it continues throughout the school year. 

Sip N Cycle Fun 

My chat GPT first day of school photo (haha!)

Enjoying the band

The Roosevelt Clinic!

Turner County Fair 2026

 The Turner County Fair was a little bit different this year. I did not take off as much time from work, and neither did John, so Elliott was left to run the fairgrounds by himself with some supervision from the grandparents. 

On Sunday, we packed up and headed to Parker with the rabbits. We moved into the camper, got the campsites set up, and then checked the bunnies into their pens. After some relaxing, we ate the free BBQ supper, listened to some music, visited with some extended family, and then hung out at the camper for the rest of the evening. 

Monday was the first full day of the fair. I volunteered in the 4-H building in the morning, John judged photography, and both kids hung out at the camper, ate food, and explored the fairgrounds. In the afternoon, Katie came out. We all enjoyed walking the fair together, and then we had the bunny show. Elliott ended up getting Reserve Champion Rabbit overall with Pringles. He was super happy. And he got a purple ribbon on his other bunny. His only other 4-H project was cherry tomatoes, and he got a purple on that project as well. We had a lot of family at the bunny show, and Elliott had his own little cheering section. It was pretty cute. 

In the evening, Barb, Katie and Emma went to the rodeo in the grandstands. It was a little warm, but they had fun. Elliott played bingo with family members and hung out in the bunny barn. John and I headed back to Sioux Falls for Open House at Bethel, and then we both worked the next morning. 

On Tuesday, the kids hung out at the fair, until Emma had to come home for band practice. Elliott also had to come home for a double header baseball night. After the baseball games, it was late, so we spent the night at home. On Wednesday, we headed back to the fair. We spent some time walking around and exploring, and then we worked our shift in the food stand from 11-3pm. After that, I sold ride tickets in the office for a couple of hours, and then I headed back home to work Thursday and Friday. 

Grandma and Grandpa helped keep track of Elliott and kept him fed the rest of the week. They also helped hime take the bunnies home and pack up the camper. 

It was another great fair filled with family, volunteering, bunny shows and too much fair food. Elliott has decided he wants to do 4-H again next year, so we will try to fit that in along with everything else. There was also a barn quilt competition during the fair, so now we all want to make barn quilts this winter. That will be a fun project!

Parent Preview night for the Cavaliers Band 

We got to bother Emma at her instruments 

Getting those driving hours in 

Tall corn for the beginning of August 

Fair Rabbit snuggles 

Barn Quilts 

The Rabbit Show 

Teenager Talk 

Baseball double header

Rides at the fair with friends 

July 2026

 Wow, I am super behind again on blogging. It doesn't help that I feel like I am busier right now than I have ever been in my life. So, life has been crazy. 

July continued to be a busy month. Emma finished up fastpitch softball. She had a good season and had a lot of fun. But, I think she was ready to be done with softball. She transitioned really nicely into band. At the end of July, going into August, Emma had two weeks of band camp. She had 8 hour days, but she loved it. She has met so many good friends, and she is just loving band. It has been great overall. 

John and I have really embraced being band parents. John is involved with the Dude crew, so he gets to help build all the props, and I help the dude crew with loading and unloading the truck, and bringing the props onto the field. I have also helped serve some meals, bring food, helped with uniform fittings, on a committee for Festival of Bands, and I might have to chaperone this weekend. It's been insane. It's basically just like everywhere else that needs volunteers, 20% of the parents do 80% of the work. It's fine for now, but we might get burned out eventually. 

Elliott had a great summer as well. He continued playing baseball this summer and then finished up the season in August. His second team had Rory and Jacob on the team, so that was fun to know some other people on the team. His team for the second half of the season wasn't very good, but they all seemed to have fun and have a good season. I think they won 3 games or something like that. But, it was a great summer of learning for Elliott, and I think he. liked it enough to play again next summer. And I did enjoy watching him play all summer. 

John and I volunteered at Lallycooler again this summer. We worked in the beer tent again for a few hours. Lallycooler was at the Canaries Stadium this summer, which was nice for us. I will say it was super hot outside, and the crowd was a lot smaller this year. We enjoyed watching Josh Ross, Gavin DeGraw, Bow Wow, Goodroad Band, and Jason Derulo. I really liked Josh Ross and Gavin DeGraw, and the rest were just ok. We really did enjoy a free music festival, even though we sweated our butts off the entire time. Lallycooler did announce they will not be doing another music festival next year, so that's a bummer.. But it was fun while it lasted. 

Towards the end of July, John and I took a weekend away to the cities. We went to SDSU Night at Target Field on Friday evening. It was a beautiful evening for baseball, and we had a lot of fun at the game. It was one of the most boring baseball games ever though. I think we saw like 6 hits total, and the Twins lost 0-2. So, overall, not very exciting, but we always enjoy a nice summer night at Target Field. We also each got a Twins/SDSU hat and enjoyed some good baseball food. 

After the game, we drove to St. Paul to stay at the St. Paul Hotel again. It was pretty late by the time we got there, and were ready to call it a night. On Saturday, we found a Caribou for breakfast, and then we headed to Stillwater to shop and eat lunch. It was fun to be back in Stillwater, we walked across the bridge into Wisconsin, shopped a little, and then ate lunch at Nacho Mama's. It was delicious. After the partial day in Stillwater, we headed back to St. Paul to head to the Saints Game. The Saints game was super hot and muggy, but we stumbled across a free lunch, complete with burgers, brats, drinks, and salads, We didn't know what it was for, but it was great. After supper, we grabbed a couple beers and enjoyed a baseball game. The Saints won, and we really enjoyed ourselves. We headed back to the hotel for the hight. 

On Sunday, we shopped at Ikea and walked through Mall of America for a while. Then, we headed for home. The kids stayed at Jim and Barb's house while we were gone, and they had a lot of fun just having some summer nights on the farm. 

That was our July in a nutshell. We had a great, busy month of July. It was mostly hot, dry, and muggy. But, we really enjoyed our outdoor activities and tried to enjoy our time outside. 

Helping with uniform fittings 

Cutting up the branch that fell from out tree (lots of storms this summer)

Baseball Elliott

Emma got her restricted license 

Target Field 

Stillwater 

Saints Game 

St. Paul Hotel 

4th of July

 We had a very busy, wild 4th of July week. Both John and I ended up having the week off, which was amazing. But, all kinds of things fell into that week that prevented us from camping as much as we wanted to.

Emma had a softball tournament the weekend before the 4th. Her team went 2-0 the first day, and then on Sunday they went 0-2 and went home. They just didn't pitch or hit very well, which makes it tough to win games. And it was miserably hot outside, so that didn't help matters any. 

After the tournament, we stayed home on Monday as well. Emma had some driving hours with her instructor, and then both kids had games Monday night. I went to Elliott's baseball game, and John went to Emma's game (he helped coach all season). Finally, on Tuesday we got to head to Yankton to go camping. 

Emma decided to sneak a little birthday party into our camping week. So, on Tuesday, we brought 5 extra girls camping with us. We brought Hannah T, Hannah P, and Rachel with us, and then Callie and Chloe met us at the campground. On Tuesday, we had a beautiful day, and Jim brought his boat out, so the kids had a blast tubing and swimming off the boat. Chloe, Callie, and Rachel had never tubed before, so they were pretty nervous, but they loved it. We also had paddle boards and beach swimming, so everyone was having a good time. After the afternoon filled with boating and swimming, we had a supper of burgers and hot dogs and then we played some games and had some chill time at the campsite. 

We also had a great campfire where the kids roasted strawberries and Smores. We also ended up playing Imposter around the campfire and that ended up being really fun. There was a lot of laughing, and fun. We stayed up too late, but eventually sent the girls to bed. All 5 girls slept in one tent, and their belongings were in the second tent. Everything went great, until 2:00 am when it started storming and all 5 girls came into the camper. They hung out inside until the storm let up and then they went back to the tent. Nobody got much sleep that night. It was an adventure. 

On Wednesday, we had some breakfast, and then did some more swimming. Elliott also had a rocket that we were launching and having some fun with. The girls also played some Tapple and Catch Phrase, and then the energy level started to get a little low. We ate some fajitas for lunch, and then I took the girls home. I went to Vermillion first to drop off Callie and Chloe, and then back to Sioux Falls to drop off the rest of the girls. Most everyone slept on the way home. 

John and Elliott also came home on Wednesday, and we did some laundry and unpacked the tents and extra supplies we didn't need anymore. Then, we headed to Elliott baseball game, and then slept in our own beds, which was amazing. 

Thursday, we headed to the lake again, just the 4 of us. We spent a lot of the day in Yankton, getting groceries, and running errands. Elliott wanted to go to a card store, so we did that. We also stopped at a pet store and saw cats, birds, mice, and all kinds of other animals. We did a little thrifting, and then we ate supper at Charlie's Pizza. It was amazing. We even played a little more Imposter at Charlie's. 

Friday was very hot. So, we headed to the beach to swim. The kids did some paddle boarding, and John and I blew up our big floatie that had two inner-tubes connected with a cooler in the middle. We enjoyed some floating, and then we played catch with Elliott and swam with him for a a while (Emma went back to the camper after a while). We enjoyed some good food and a fire, and then enjoyed the air conditioning, and another night of storms. 

Saturday was the 4th of July. We ended up going to Vermillion for something different. We went to the National Music Museum, which was pretty cool. We saw a lot of instruments, read a lot of history about music, and Emma bought a harmonica, and Elliott bought a kazoo, and they had a lot of fun with those. Emma learned the beginning part of Piano Man and played it around the fire that night. And Elliott drove us crazy with the kazoo. 

After the museum, we ate some sandwiches at Mr. Smith's which is a pretty well-known place in their Ace hardware. And it was good! We ate them in the park, and then checked out the events going on in the park for the 4th. It was fun. Then, we headed back to the campsite. The kids cooled off in the camper while John and I went on a bike ride. It was still hot, but it was nice to move around. Then, we did some swimming again, cleaned up, and had a nice fire. We also had some fireside music with the harmonic and kazoo. Once it was dark, we walked down to the lake to watch fireworks. There were 11 different places shooting off fireworks. It was pretty cool. We had an amazing 4th. 

Sunday was our clean up and go home day. We were all ready to be home. We packed up, make the. long drive back to Jim and Barb's house and put the camper away. We ate some lunch, and then headed home. We did about 5 loads of laundry, unpacked, and then settled back into our home. 

We had an amazing week off, but we were all ready to be back to our own beds and schedules. Not too much else has been going on. Emma finished her season of softball, and she had two amazing hits to finish the season. I was so proud. Elliott continues to basically live at the farm. But, he has been mowing lawn, helping with landscaping, learning to pump gas, helping can pickles, and more. So, I can't complain. He is learning a lot this summer and getting in some good grandparent time. Emma continues to be busy with band and crafting. 

This past Sunday, we drove to Windom to meet Ryan and Emily and Mom. We had supper with them since we hadn't seen them since Confirmation. It was a nice supper and a nice way to catch up. And we learned that Ryan and Emily are expecting a baby in February, so that is very exciting. 

This weekend is another busy one. I have the Bethel softball tournament on Saturday (90+ degrees outside, can't wait) and then we have the potluck at the parsonage after that. And the Sioux Falls Airshow is going on Saturday and Sunday, so that's exciting. I really enjoy watching that. And we have church and a voter's meeting, so we will keep busy. Summer keeps flying by!

Tubing fun 

Some of Elliott's team 

The girls 

Games in the tent 

4th of July 

Ice cream!