Category Archives: Accomplishments

September Accomplishments to Date – School has Started!

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

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I’ll cover what we did over the summer in a variety of posts through the fall, but for now let’s focus on the past 10 days or so.

School started on September 29.  But between the slow uptake and misc. holidays, we don’t have a true full week of school until the week of Sept 25.  What did we do with the extended summer?

  • We went blueberry picking.

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  • We’ve been to the farmer’s market a few twice.  We made our annual trip to Dunkin’ Donuts.
  • The weather has been gorgeous so we’ve spent a lot of time outside.  And, BBQing.
  • I tagged many items for the sale at the end of the month.  Many more to go.
  • We had visiting day and the first day of preschool.  There was some apprehension about the new classroom, but it has evaporated.
  • I’ve caught up on some things that had been getting pushed off all summer.  But, I’m sure it will be at least the end of October before the backlog is cleared.
  • Fall baseball and soccer have started.  We had 3 soccer games.
  • Middle school had picture day.
  • Two went to a Red Sox game with town Little League.

This week the remaining fall activities will start bringing us to our full schedule for this year.

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Summer Spontaneity

27 Thursday Jul 2017

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Well, things have been a bit hit or miss here over the last month.  With summer upon us the kids are home full time.  It’s basically swimming, baseball, and whatever else we come up with to do.

This year I’ve been trying to be a little less scheduled and go with the flow.  Unfortunately that means less blogging.  Fortunately, it means yes to other things.  We’ve spontaneously (i.e., ask and go essentially immediately):

  • Gone to the pool.
  • Gone for ice cream.
  • Gone to McDonald’s.
  • Played with our neighbors.
  • Gone to the farmer’s market.
  • Gotten the screen replaced on my phone (not the best, but we did it super promptly).
  • Played some board games.
  • Played some video games.
  • Watched some movies.
  • Read some books.
  • Gone for a walk.

We’ve also, in a more planned way,

  • Played at the park.  Many times.
  • Gone strawberry picking.  This is about 8 lbs of strawberries, or what remains of them.

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  • Gone to the pool.
  • Taken swimming lessons (Less often than I would have liked as we’ve had issues with temps in the 60s and/or rain/thunderstorms, none of which make for good swimming weather.)

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  • Played baseball games.
  • Been to baseball tryouts.
  • One attended multiple baseball camps.
  • Two attended video game design camp.
  • One attended soccer camp.
  • I gave a pile of stuff that had been sitting in the basement to a neighbor for his yard sale.
  • The builder replaced the siding on one side of the house, a result of a manufacturing issue so the vendor covered costs/supplying materials/etc.
  • We went to the town carnival.
  • Plus the standard grocery shopping, though including the farmer’s market because it’s summer.

In summary, I’ll try to post when I can for the next few weeks, but we’re trying to be out doing which is always the priority.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – It’s all About 5th Grade

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

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While school doesn’t let out until later this week, last week was dominated by 5th grade activities:

  • Graduation ceremony
  • Pool party
  • Singing the National Anthem at opening night for minor league baseball

We also had:

  • The last of the spring baseball activities
  • Two birthday parties
  • One Dr. appointment
  • The last day of preschool for this year

On the house front, our patio installation is almost finished.  We need the sod/seed to take and then the patio will be sealed before we move the cooking and seating onto it.

The patio is about 300 ft² using Pavers by Ideal’s Andover Collection – Oxford grey set stone pattern with GrandStone.

Last Two Week’s Accomplishments – Spring Sports are Done!

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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Yes, soccer and baseball are finished for the spring.  Now, a short respite until summer.  We would have liked to continue baseball for one more week, as our oldest lost in the second round of the playoffs.  But, it was a tight game to finish out their season.

So, this will be the last post for a while that is sports dominated:

  • We had 6 baseball games and 3 baseball practices.
  • We had 6 soccer games and 2 soccer practices.
  • Our oldest went to the 5th grade track meet.
  • Our oldest had a few extra baseball lessons.
  • Our oldest went on the 5th grade camping trip.
  • We had our last Math Morning.
  • I went to a retirement party for the preschool director.
  • I also met the incoming preschool director.
  • We had a preschool play date.
  • I had a doctor appointment.
  • We attended two birthday parties.
  • It finally warmed up so we went to the pool.  Our preschooler spotted a bunny.

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  • The warm weather must have been exhausting because multiple people fell asleep on the floor.
  • We thought a sky scraper had sprouted in town, especially as the first time we saw it, it was a dark and rainy day.  In actuality it is a church steeple wrapped in scaffolding, which is a bit easier to see in this sunny day picture.

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Last Week’s Accomplishments – A Break in the Rain

23 Tuesday May 2017

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It did rain Monday, so that baseball game got bumped to Tuesday.  But, otherwise the week’s schedule played out fully for maybe the first time this spring.

  • Our two older soccer players had travel evaluations.
  • I took the younger two to an animal show at preschool.  Sorry for the blury pictures.  Neither animals nor children were up for staying still.  It’s an armadillo.  Our youngest was particularly fascinated that it could roll up into a ball, softball sized.

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  • We had three soccer games plus four baseball games.  No soccer practices this week between the rain and the concert.  We went to two baseball practices.
  • We missed one baseball game for the 5th grade spring concert.  This wasn’t popular, but school activities take precedence.
  • We went to one playdate and one birthday party.
  • I finally got the car rental associated with the rear ender repair sorted between Commerce and Enterprise.
  • Our oldest had a baseball hitting lesson.
  • I turned in registration for preschool next year.
  • I registered for fall soccer for three and summer soccer camp for one.
  • We went to the BBQ festival.  This is popular every year.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – The Cuisinart Replacement Blade Arrived!

16 Tuesday May 2017

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Unless you have been in hiding, or don’t think about kitchen stuff at all, you probably know that in December Cuisinart recalled about 8 million food processor chopping blades because metal fragments were coming off in people’s food.  You probably also know that they’re getting a lot of bad press because of how long its taking to get people new blades, despite telling them to throw out the old one immediately.

I filed for my replacement blade on December 16, 2016 – three days after the recall went out.  On December 22, I received a form email, thanking me for my patience.  It also said they’d let me know when my blade was on the way.  I received basically the same email again on February 4, 2017.  It also included their much discussed online recipe book (apparently it contains recipes that require the chopping blade), but I haven’t looked at it.

Well, months went by and I didn’t hear from them again until it just showed up on Friday.  I definitely would prefer to have the blade vs another email, but it should be pointed out that they never did alert me that it had been shipped.

Some pictures of the new vs old blade and the lengthy set of instructions (obviously meant to prevent them from being sued by the customer or trash collector that cuts themselves).  Clockwise, its the new blade in its complete packaging, the new blade out of the packaging, the two blades together for comparison, and the old blade packaged for the trash.

I have used the new one and it works fine.  It’s also easier to clean, which is a nice side benefit.  But, it took the full six months to get here.

Other things that happened last week:

  • I managed to get the whole house cleaned, at basically the same time.
  • We hosted a Mother’s Day brunch.
  • The younger boys had their last skating class.
  • I went to the 5th grade camping trip meeting.
  • The contractors came by to adjust the doors.
  • We had 4 baseball games.  We also had more rain and thus rain outs.
  • We had 3 soccer games.
  • We went to soccer and baseball practices.
  • The older boys had bike club.
  • We went to the kindergarten concert.
  • We went to the art show where the 3rd graders’ work was on display.
  • We went to a high school baseball game.

Last Two Week’s Accomplishments – Another One Bites the Dust

09 Tuesday May 2017

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This past week we parted with quite a few pairs of pants, including this one.  There were also a few socks, but mostly pants.  Frankly, I’m surprised this pair lasted the winter.  Gymboree athletic pants have not held up well for us in the past.  Thankfully its spring.

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  • We’ve only had 5 baseball games so far.  4 have been rained out.
  • We’ve had 3 baseball clinics.
  • The baseball players went to the opening day parade.  I made a banner for their team.
  • Soccer games were also affected.  Over two weeks we had 4 and 2 were cancelled.
  • Only 1 soccer practice was cancelled.

The rain policy for both baseball and soccer is age dependent.  It’s also often hard to get enough kids to play a rescheduled game.  I’m not sure how many of these games will end up getting rescheduled.

  • The 5th → 6th grade transition has begun.
    • I went to two meetings at the middle school.
    • We registered for middle school classes (foreign language & music choices).
  • I went to meetings at both the elementary school and preschool.
  • We had two weeks of bike club and skating.
  • We had 1 doctor’s appointment.
  • We had 1 playdate.
  • We went to 1 birthday party.
  • I got out the next bin of clothing for the baby to see what we had for summer / next size.  Turns out we’re in good shape for everything except tops so I’ve been doing a little shopping to fill in that hole.  It’s been tricky finding non-pink (all the bottoms are pink) onesie tops with sleeves, but we’ve managed.

 

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Launch!

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

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It was school vacation week so on Friday I took the boys to Launch (part of a group event).  This was planned well in advance, but it was a rainy day too.  The place seemed packed, but I’d never been there before so I’m not sure.  We jumped for 1.5 hours then had pizza and drinks for lunch.  Eventually, the boys found the arcade and the younger ones were definitely more interested in that vs more jumping.

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  • I took my car in to get the bumper replaced from the accident.  They gave me a loaner car.  I got my car back in three days, which really isn’t too bad.
  • The oldest went to four baseball practices.  Games start this week.
  • We also had skating and soccer.
  • The preschooler went to a birthday party.
  • I went through the boys’ closets and moved along anything that had gotten too small.  It doesn’t look like we need much for this summer, which is great.
  • We went to the shoe store to have all their feet checked.  Only the oldest needed new shoes.
  • We tried on all the swimwear.  Turns out we only need new items for the oldest and youngest.  We may also need a few water shoes, but those haven’t been checked yet.
  • I went through the next size hand-me-down box to see what girl options I have for this summer.  There are some gaps there so I’ll be looking for a few items.
  • I did most of the rest of the summer activity signups.  Two left.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Patriot’s Day 2017

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

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Holiday weekend here so the posts have been a bit off.  Patriots Day is a local holiday, probably best known elsewhere as the day of the Boston Marathon.

In other news:

  • We had our final indoor swimming and adventure classes of the year.
  • Two had skating class.
  • We had three baseball practices, two soccer practices, and three soccer games.
  • I attended the preschool family breakfast.
  • Two went to a birthday party.
  • I had a Mom’s night out!
  • We had a more relaxing than usual four day weekend.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – The Wrong Pasta

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

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This is hardly an accomplishment, though it doesn’t happen every day.

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The sale price was on all Prince pasta.  If we liked Tricolor Penne, I would have tried to see how much I could get off.  As it was, the Elbow Macaroni is two shelves down so the stocker definitely noticed the issue.

In other news:

  • I had three parent-teacher conferences.  All is well.
  • I had a Dr. appointment.  All is well there too.
  • We had the first full day of soccer practices.  The second was cancelled by a torrential rainstorm.  We had our first two soccer games.
  • We had the last 3rd grade math morning of this year.
  • Two boys went to Little League Picture Day.
  • We went to swimming, baseball, adventure, and skating classes.
  • One boy went to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra with school.
  • I filled out three more field trip forms.  It certainly seems like there have been more this year than last.
  • Most of us attended the Preschool Ice Cream Social.  This is a once a year, ice cream for dinner event.  There’s also a very popular clown.
  • I filed the accident paperwork with the insurance company.
  • The adults went to see Logan; definitely not a kids movie.