OK, save it. I know I'm late so let's get to it. We had another busy month as the summer wound down and school started up. We just don't do easy months any more. We got the house painted...twice. The siding had finished up, but we only had 2 days to test paint on the siding. So we chose something that looked good on the sample slide. However, when I came home from work on Friday my eyes were assaulted by the brightness of the blue that we chose, and Jada was in tears. After some frantic calls and a lot of extra money, we managed to get the house repainted to a much better color. Although it wasn't before our neighbors started thinking that we were out of our gourds.
That weekend while the house was that radioactive hue, we tried to stay out of the house as much as possible. While watching Ellen limp around the Farmers Market, we realized that we needed to get new shoes for Ellen for the new school year. It was tough to find new ones in her size. We ended up getting a pair of white with pink trim Reeboks (sorry, Papa, but Nike didn't have any in her size) in 11.5. We'll have to start teaching her to tie her own shoes so that we have some more options next time. She's growing so fast. We also had to go get a bunch of new school clothes since none of her pants fit any more. Luckily the Carter's and Osh-Kosh outlets aren't too far away. On Sunday of that same weekend, Ellen wakes up and says she has a sweet note for Phoebe. Then she says, "Dear Phoebe. I love it when you play with me. I love it when you dance with me. I love it when you sing with me. I love you, Phoebe". It was very sweet. I'm not sure what brought it on, but we'll take it.
Phoebe is stacking cups in creative ways. Some facing up, some down on top of that. She also has started singing our good night song with us occasionally. She also makes up other songs for us. She can get up to "S" in the alphabet before jumping back to "H" and starting again, and she spells her name "PHIJK...". So it's coming. She can count up to 16 before she gets lost. She's also started waking up in the middle of the night. It's like she falls out of bed or gets out of bed while sleeping, and gets lost trying to get back in so she starts screaming. One of us has to go in and calm her down, then she goes right back to sleep. She also gets up and turns on the light when she is awake. But unlike Ellen, she doesn't make a noise. She just gets up, turns on her light, grabs a few books from the shelf, and gets back into bed until we come and get her or tell her to turn it off and go to bed.
Ellen started pre-Kindergarten this month. Ellen's first day was a 1 hour session where she just got to get to know her teacher and classmates. She only had about 6 kids in the class. As with last year, she shoved me out the door as soon as she got there. She didn't even want to hold my hand on the way into the building. The second day was a full session, and it also was her 4th straight day without an afternoon nap. That's usually her breaking point. She chose not to nap this weekend, so she is just exhausted. She completely melted down just before bed time when she didn't get to brush her teeth first. Phoebe has been a bit of wreck as well with abbreviated naps and sitting in the car every day. Which is why after a weekend of pained deliberation between Jada and I, as well as some calls to the pre-school, we came to the conclusion that we would move Ellen to the 3-day 4's class. There are 12 kids in that class, and one of them is a friend that Ellen likes to play with. The teachers are the same ones she had last year, so that's a big plus too. The age break-down is similar to the pre-K's, but this way, Phoebe gets a full nap every other day, as does Ellen (should they choose to actually sleep). They both seem to be doing better.
It's now a new season, so we got the kids back into classes at the rec center. Phoebe is back in her art class, and Ellen is taking a ballet class that is just ballet this time. Phoebe has laser-like focus in her art class. I'm not sure if she's the oldest, but she can definitely hold her attention longer than the other kids. I haven't witnessed any of the ballet class, but Ellen does enjoy being there. She likes showing off her new moves. She's learned how to jump, I mean, leap higher.
Other highlight's this month were both Jada and Grandma's birthdays. I believe that they both turned 29...again.
They moved the Beaverton Parade (formerly known as Summerfest) to September from July. It was quite chilly in the morning. We met some friends along the route to sit with so the girls had someone to play with. They really had fun chasing down candy and watching the marching bands, playing with bubbles, and sidewalk chalk. Phoebe was enthralled by all the fun things going on. No StarWars guys this year though.
We rode our tandem w/ trailer down to Nike to pick up our ride packets for the Livestrong ride on the 24th. It was a nice little 10 mile warm up for the next day's ride. On the 25th, we finally got to do our Livestrong ride for the Lance Armstrong Foundation aiding Cancer survivorship. We got there early for the 7:30am start time. Since there were only 40 tandems/recumbants/hand-bikes, we got our own special starting corral..AND we got to lead out the procession up the main avenue. I made sure that we were at the very front of the bunch the whole way. at around 7:15, the man himself came out to give his speech up on the bridge over the main entrance of the Nike World HQ where we started. We were more excited to see George Hincapie not too far away from us. Man, it was cold that morning. We were all freezing and joking about while we waited for Lance, George, the "Cannabal" Eddy Merckx, Bob Roll, and Jim Ochwitz to get their head start along with the high money raisers for the ride. He had originally said that he was going to do the 10 mile route, but he went out and ended up doing the 70 mile route just like us...but he did it at around 30 mph. We got into a pace line with 3 other tandems through town, but we lost them as we got out of Beaverton. We did eventually catch up with Lance and boys as they were stopped by the side of the road to pull off some of their extra gear. As we passed by not 5 feet from the great Eddy Merckx, I come up with this gem, "Hey, guys". Not "Hi, Lance", or "thanks, Lance", or "Congratulations, Lance", or "Nice weather we're havin'". Oh no, I said, "hey guys". To which Lance responded, "Hey". But I recovered well enough to see George heading down the road to yell, "Hi, George!". Jada was pretty excited about that too. We used that to give us a lift around Hagg Lake. It really did turn out to be a nice day though. The rest stops were great. One of them had s'mores. We rolled into the finish line at 12:35pm (2 full hours behind Lance and crew) averaging 17.3 mph on the day over 70miles, so we put in a great ride for our final of the season. There was a big party on the Nike campus soccer fields between the Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong buildings. Jada's cheek's hurt from all the smilin'. A good time was had by all.
It was the Bike Commute Challenge this month as well, so I rode my bike to work 16 out of 30 days for a grand total of 360 commuting miles. Adding that to the 180 miles of training rides and the Livestrong ride, and that's a over 500 miles for the month. Jada logged almost 1000 miles on the tandem this year for her first full year of cycling. Our hat's off to her on that too.
Well, that about wraps it up for September.
Journal entry: October 10, 2005