Where I stand, there's no end to the number of things that need to be done. Sunday afternoon I painted the bathroom wall and a piece of trim (MDF) so we could reinstall the towel bar and hooks. The towel bar and one of two hooks had (in separate incidents) become detached from the wall -- taking a bunch of the wall with them. Lovely. About six coats of compound later, we decided we needed a better way to secure the bar and hooks, so we screwed the board to the wall (to three studs) and then attached the towel bar and hooks to that. They aren't going anywhere now!
It looks and feels (in more ways than one) like Fall has arrived. The weather turned chilly this week. We went from six days of 30C+ weather to 18, and then 12. We had to cover our tomatoes overnight for the first time this year.
Our full calendar is another reminder that Fall is here (essentially). We've been super busy this month, and I can't believe it's the 15th already.
Sophia is running in cross country again this year. She's been to a few practices and two of four multi-school meets. She's doing very well, placing 9th last Thursday and 3rd today. Dozens compete (more than 75, I think), so it's quite an accomplishment to place in the top 10!
Sophia and Madeline have been to ringette conditioning camp nine of 12 times already. It ends next week on the 22nd, and then we'll have a week or two break before evaluations begin. (Yay!) Madeline also participated in the Come Try Ringette event last Saturday. Happily, her name was drawn for a new stick so we don't have to buy one for her. Sophia won a stick at the same event last year.
Irish dance lessons started this week for all three girls. This is Georgia's first year and she's very excited to finally have her turn! She's been waiting her whole life. This is Sophia's 7th year and Madeline's 5th. We'll be heading to the dance studio four times a week this year: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Ack! It's Madeline's first year of hard shoe, and she has separate classes for soft shoe and hard shoe. Sophia's soft shoe and hard shoe lessons are back-to-back.
Sophia is also taking piano lessons which is just once a week, thankfully. It hasn't been easy to get her to practice the past three weeks with the fantastic weather we were having and being so busy with ringette camp. I hope we can get her into an acceptable routine with this. She wanted to continue with piano this year, so she needs to put some effort into it! We've already decided this will be her last year in piano as she can participate in band at school next year.
In summary, Georgia has one activity, Madeline has two, and Sophia has three, plus cross-country in September and track in May. Sophia seems to need more organized activities, so I think this is fine for her, but she also has much more homework than ever before -- which is challenging for all of us! I spent a full hour helping her with homework this evening, and we didn't even finish. She'll have to finish it before her 8:00 am cross-country practice tomorrow.
