The Lindenbergs

As already discussed, Anna bowed out of basketball and finished up with soccer a couple of weeks ago.

Pierce had two season-endings last week. Pierce's last soccer game was a week ago with his celebratory party this last Wednesday night. It was held at a local pizza restaurant (one we had not been to), with the whole team in a good-size party room. Pierce and Anna both ate pizza with zest. So much so, that Nora and I ordered a second pizza for ourselves -Pierce and Anna didn't leave us any. Just as the pizza was brought to our table, Anna got sick to her stomach. All four pieces of recently-eaten pizza came right back out.

Nora quickly spirited her off to the bathroom and some very helpful Moms and restaurant staff cleaned up quickly. We were able to stay while Pierce and the rest of the team received their medals. The coach had something nice to say about every single player. Pierce was "always happy at both practices and games." Interestingly, Anna's stomach was back to its cast-iron nature pretty much before we left the restaurant.

Pierce's last basketball practice/game was last Saturday. After 45 minutes of game play, the team was presented with medals and rounds of applause. Pierce said he enjoyed this season, but was glad that it was over. I think we all feel the same way.

-Eric (Dad)

A couple of weekends ago we had another scouting event. The family-based event was Saturday afternoon and focused on Native Americans. Pierce and Anna, along with the rest of the den, gathered firewood, went on a nature walk, shot (toy) bow-and-arrows, made trail mix, roasted corn and cooked chicken and marshmallows over an open fire (though not all at the same time).

We had beautiful fall weather for the event and the den seemed to have a lot of fun. The corn was fun to watch cook (I was the chef) and was a hit with the adults –not so much the kids. None of the scouts had much of an interest in cooking chicken on skewers over an open fire (it took too long and the end result was just chicken) so we parents did most of that. With the limited number of skewers available, I started wrapping pieces of chicken in foil and placing them among the hot coals. I was feeling pretty clever until when of the scouts asked me why my boot was smoking. Turns out I’d been standing on a hot coal and succeeded in melting the toe off my shoe.

Towards the end of the afternoon we had torched marshmallows just about everywhere. S’mores construction involved lots of kids with flaming sticks and flaming marshmallows. No injuries were reported, but I had visions of us setting the park on fire.

Pierce and Anna weren’t very interested in dinner that evening. Too full of s’mores.

-Eric (Dad)

Anna's been working on the alphabet and letter sounds at school this year. Last week Nora took out some "beginner" books she'd bought for Pierce at about this age. Anna flipped open several of the books and read them aloud to us -no coaching required. She's now starting to sound out words on packaging and in other places she finds it. She seems to be very enthusiastic about the whole process. The only downside is that we have to discourage Pierce from reading words to her when she's trying to figure them out for herself.

-Eric (Dad)

It’s hard to believe, but our big Birthday month is behind us. Pierce and Anna had their official birthday party last Saturday. Course; before we could get to that, we had to make it through both a basketball practice and soccer game for Pierce (those little legs of his were pretty tired).

The party was held at Build-a-Bear at the mall. Pierce and Anna both got to invite three friends. Both kids are getting to be of the age where the parents are dropping of their kids for the party then picking them up afterwards. It still feels very weird to me. Each kid had an “allowance” to spend. They could pick the critter of their choice from about 25 options including bears, puppies, ghosts, penguins and more. Depending on what they picked, they might have money left for a “voice” to be put in, or clothing. Pierce picked a puppy (he named it Lucky) and Anna picked a ghost (“Pic Pic”). The staff was very nice and everyone spent a lot of time hugging their creations.

We walked across the food court to have a custom made cookie cake and to open gifts. Nora’s parents were there to help and managed to coral a table large enough for our little party. The mall was amazingly busy for 3:00 pm on a Saturday afternoon. I know most malls are suffering from lack of traffic, but you wouldn’t know it from this mall.

Sunday was Anna’s last day of soccer and I think we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. After some initial reluctance, she started off pretty well with the substitute coach. They played a number of skills games that involved the kids running and the coach chasing. The wheels fell of this approach when Anna got scared. She spent most of the rest of practice sitting on the sideline talking about how tired her legs were. She did participate in the intra-team scrimmage for a few minutes, but kept bowing back out. Within the last few minutes Anna got the ball and started driving it down field, right up until tripped over the ball. Yup, back to the sidelines again.

The day before Pierce and Anna’s actual birthday, I spent the day at Pierce’s school as part of the Watch DOGS program. It’s a volunteer program for “father figures”, where you spend a day at the school helping out. You assist in several glasses/grades, walk the grounds and halls as an extra set of eyes, and help keep the lunch room monitored. Of course Pierce was thrilled to have me there, and the first class I assisted in was his. I also got to spend some time with 3rd, 4th and 6th graders. I helped out in a computer class, an art class, learned about ancient Egypt and helped a special needs 6th grader take a quiz. It was a very memorable (and enjoyable) experience. The two most important things I learned during my day were:

1. How incredibly hard our teachers work, and
2. I do not like standing on my feet for 6 hours straight.

Pierce and Anna had their annual checkups yesterday (Thursday), Pierce got his first flu shot (not happy), and Anna got 3 immunizations and a flu shot (2 in each shoulder, very unhappy). We took them out to Dairy Queen for dinner and dessert as a reward for being so brave. Both kids are healthy. Pierce is in the 65% for height and 75% for weight. Anna is 75% for height and 85% for weight. Both passed their eye exam and Pierce did fine on his hearing test. Apparently, Anna’s not hearing lower frequencies well. The doctor’s not too concerned; we’ll test again next year. Anna may just not be paying attention very well during the test.

Halloween was fun. Pierce was a vampire and Anna was Wonder Woman. Both kids got to wear their costumes to school. Nora and I helped out with a party at Anna’s school and it was a blast seeing all those little kids in costume. I ran the bean bag toss game and, of course, got very silly. It started with me moving the bucket so that every toss fell in, to ultimately me putting the bucket on my head and racing around the room trying to catch the bean bags. We had fun. Nora was running a craft and ended up a little frustrated. The class was supposed to be decorating a foam picture frame, but many of the smaller kids were not up to the task of gluing, so Nora was a little overpowered.

In preparation for Halloween, I created a video to be projected in our garage that made it look like the Lindenberg family was doing interesting and impossible things (you can view it below).



Nora and I tried to convince Anna to wear tights and/or a shirt under her skimpy costume, but she wasn’t having any of it. This year Nora stayed home to pass out treats, while I took the kids out for Trick or Treating. We figured after 2 or 4 houses, Anna would determine she was cold and ask us to put some more clothes on her. Nope. Again, we forgot how stubborn she is. She trick or treated for well over an hour with claims that her cape kept her warm. Pierce had enough after we did one street, but Anna was gung ho for more. Ultimately, with the temperature dropping, I told her we’d have to stop if she wouldn’t put on warmer clothes. She decided to stop instead. Several times when we passed our house while we were getting candy, there would be 10 to 20 people standing in the driveway watching the show. The day after Halloween, kids and parents at school were complimenting Nora and Pierce on how much they liked it. Very gratifying.

Hard to believe we’re already in November. I suspect I’ll be deep-frying Turkey for Thanksgiving before I know it.

-Eric (Dad)