Welcome to our Wingert World: August 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

Birthday Girl

If you're on top of our family's bdays, you know Claire's is not until Oct. So, on Sat, she got to celebrate it in Aug for the first time! Chad's parents are leaving this week for 4 or so months in CA, so they decided to do Claire's presents early.

She had a lot of fun opening them-- I'm sure it took Gma a lot of time to prepare! She was excited to find a Pixie Hollow card and a gift card for Justice and a cute shirt... plus a bunch of little things like coins and gummy bears.

And even a Claire-style bday cake-- chocolate chip cake for the rest of us and angel food cake for her.

We'll miss Don and Anita while they are gone, but we're very excited that this is working out for them-- months of living near Nathan and Wendy and their kids, seeing her sibs (live 3 hours-ish away) and seeing Jer and Dani in CO and Anita's brother in Missouri on the way. Plus a bit of sightseeing.

Storm Week

This past week was interesting. First week of school. Our first earthquake and a bit of a hurricane. Nothing serious here, tho.

Earthquake was Tuesday afternoon. I was sitting in a quiet house since Micah had just gone to bed. Felt shaking and heard things rattling in the house. Nothing broke or even was dislodged.

Chad felt it at school-- he was on the phone with someone on the other side of MD who also felt it. Katie felt it in computer class at school, but Jenna and Claire didn't even know it had happened.

Hurricane Irene was a lot of talk for the last half of the week. Everyone wondering how bad it was going to be. Some places definitely did get wind and rain (our pastor's daughter near Baltimore had a tree uprooted in their yard; if it had fallen the other way it would have hit their daughter's bedroom), but here we just had some rain and a lot of clouds. The clouds on Sat were interesting to watch. I think we ended up with less than 1.5 inches rain.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Olive Garden!

Chad took Katie out on a date last night (that's all he does lately-- date pretty girls :). He borrowed a friend's big red truck and took Katie to Olive Garden and Dairy Queen. That's livin'!

School! 2011-2012

Jenna's heading off to 4th grade with Miss Murphy, same teacher she had for 3rd grade! We're very excited that she can have Daneen 2 years in a row-- great teacher.

Claire's ready for 2nd grade with Mrs. Swacina, an older teacher in her 2nd year at Grace. Her husband helped started Tri-State Fellowship, the church next door to Grace. And he was the director at Cedar Ridge Children's Home many years ago. Margaret taught at Cedar Ridge (a school for "troubled" boys with major behavior problems) for many years. Surely she can handle Claire. :)

See Claire's cute sparkley shoes and floweredy backpack?

And Katie's off for her 8th grade year, last year in middle school!

Maybe you can't see it, but there's a Smart board at the front of Jenna's room (in most (all?) of the rooms at Grace, actually). Fun, interactive technology. Jenna said they use there's almost half of the day. When they come in each morning, they go up and "pop" the balloon with their name on it-- that's the way they are taking attendance this year.

Each of the girls had a great first day of school!

Hagerstown Airport

On Sunday, Chad and I went out to dinner (gift card at a great steakhouse restaurant). Took Micah with us, and he was great. We also went to Kohls-- he got a kick out of seeing me come out of the dressing room with different shirts on. :) Then we went to the airport in Hagerstown to watch a big plane take off. We parked on the side of the road, with just a field between us and the end of the runway. Watched the plane take off for Myrtle Beach. It was fun (Micah esp liked standing on the car), but not as exciting as we'd hoped. The plane was fairly high by the time it went over us.

Claire's Date

Claire and Daddy went on a date last Sat. Fun last fling before school. :)

This was at Potterfield Pool in Hagerstown. I didn't even know this existed. Hunted online for a place nearby where they could go on a waterslide, and found this. They loved it! Helped that hardly anyone was there.

Claire runs on water...

After the pool, they went to the carnival that was in Williamsport. Ate hotdogs and rode the ferris wheel. First time for Claire-- she was a little nervous at first. Can you tell?

She loved it!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Hershey Park

We went to Hershey Park with Chad's parents last Wed. Weather was nice-- place was crowded-- rides were fun. Some long lines, tho!

These 3 got in on the biggest roller coasters-- Jenna wanted to, but she found out she's a bit too short for the biggest ones. She, however, did get to do the Comet and Wildcat.

This is the Farenheit. Sorry, you can't see the top. It starts out going straight up, there on the left. Then it goes more than straight down.

Claire had no desire for roller coasters, so she and Micah rode the kiddie rides, together much of the time. This is a mini pirate ship.

We enjoyed the sea lion in this show-- very smart! Fun to see it swim, hop onto the stage, and climb onto the box-- all with a ball balanced on its nose. At one point, the trainer had the sea lion bark to her, and then she replied to it. Claire was so amazed-- "Does she know sea lion language??"