Genevieve Plays Volleyball and Judah has a Birthday

The first month of school was a busy one.  Genevieve made the JV volleyball team and is busy with that 6 days a week. I typically only let the kids choose only one sport a year to play, but she has worked so hard over the summer and seems to derive such pleasure from team sports that I couldn't say no. I certainly gave her a hard time about volleyball not being a "real sport." A sport that you can play and not break a sweat doesn't seem like a sport to me. I am mostly teasing, of course. Volleyball is pretty much the only common American ball sport that I have never played in any capacity.  I even tried Powder Puff football once, but never volleyball. 

Anyway, Genevieve is doing a wonderful job and is very devoted to her team.  After going to her first game and witnessing the team hug in between each play, it only reinforced my previous thoughts.  There's no smiling and hugging in real sports!  

Judah's birthday was on a Saturday.  We had to make a last minute change to our plans and head to Houston just for Saturday. All Judah had wanted for his birthday was to go to a water park. This summer when we went tubing, he saw Schlitterbahn and thought that it looked like the coolest thing ever. We've never taken the children to a real water park before because most of our kids are too scared to go on anything, not to mention that I'm too scared to go on any rides or slides. However Genevieve and Judah are the two daring ones. Genevieve went to Fiesta Texas with a friend for her birthday, and so we decided to do a family trip to Splashtown with Judah. We ended up delaying this by 2 weeks. However, once we were able to go, it was a really fun day. Splashtown is older than Schlitterbahn, smaller and a lot less crowded too.  It turned out Isaac and Drew enjoyed the slides as well more so than they do roller coasters. Hannah, Bobby, and I, the wusses, hung out at the Lazy River or the wave pool for the most part. Judah really wanted me to try one of the big slides, so I picked the least big slide and went down it with him. They said it was the slowest one, but I thought it was awfully fast.  I was done after one go.  

We couldn't take our phones into the water park because it was just going to be a hassle to keep them dry, so we have no photos of that day.  If I was smart I'd have taken some out in the parking lot of us all, but...

In Houston, on his actual birthday.

New gifts!

Judah got a store-bought birthday cake from one of his grandmothers, and did not get the Darth Vader cake that he had asked for. I felt badly about it, but we had family circumstances that played in the mix.  I guess I'll owe him for next year! He had a really good attitude about it and was very patient and sweet.

The rest of the month was filled with eye appointments orthodontist appointments, orientation for school, meeting with old friends who just moved to the area, and getting together with newer friends that will be leaving the area soon.

Judah occasionally does random, weird things.  He had just been told not to write on himself earlier in the day.  We drove to the dentist and got out of the van.  I looked at him and couldn't believe he'd drawn on himself again, on his face!  As we walk toward the office door, I asked him if he realized that everyone was going to see his artistic work.  The shock and panic on his face was comical and he quickly devised a plan to cover up his mistake...a face mask!

His embarrassment was punishment enough.  Luckily, it wasn't permanent marker!