Let's DIVE into parades!

 This weekend is the Liberty Fall Festival. There is a parade, lots and lots of vendor booths, good food, and rides. Lucy marched in the parade and it brought me back to my teenage years and all the parades I marched in every summer. The day was a perfect 70 degrees with a slight breeze and we had a great time. 

Lucy is at the end of this row, I didn't get a fast enough picture of her!

This was incredibly delicious!

Lucy has also started diving practice with the club swim team. Women's Diving season doesn't start until November 8th, but she is getting some much needed practice in now. We drive to Independence for her practices on Thursdays, but it's only a short 25 minute drive. It's fun to see her improve so quickly. The coach really spends time on the basics so they have a good base to build on. 

The coach's sons come to practice and dive off the board, they are pretty good!  Here you can see one of his sons on the board while the coach talks to Lucy. 

Blue Mountain by Martine Leavitt

Martine Leavitt wrote one of my most favorite books, Keturah and Lord Death. I've read other books by her as well and they are all very different from each other. This one was a gift from my sister because she knows that we like big horn sheep. This is a short story from the viewpoint of Tuk, a big horn sheep. He is born on the mountain and then as he grows he becomes obsessed with finding new grazing land free from predators of all kinds. 

I really enjoyed his point of view and the interactions within the herd. A great little story!

Recommend: Yes!

Marching ON!

 Last Friday our first home football game at Liberty North High School was planned. However, the other team, Staley High School, had a positive COVID team member so they cancelled the game. The marching band still wanted to perform as well as the dance team and the cheerleaders so everyone came to the stadium for an evening of performing. 

The stadium is quite a bit bigger than Worland!  They have a turf field (as does the middle school) and a jumbotron. There were 40 cheerleaders and 20 dance team members!  The band performed their pre-game show and also their half time show. The half time show was focused on the U.S.A. and they had various posters of different famous sites in the country. We were all happy to see some bison!  A bit of Wyoming in Missouri!

View of the Jumbotron with the school in the background

The band during the performance. Lucy is playing the crash cymbals in the very back. 

Some of the  many cheerleaders

The dance team

Peter is continuing his running season, today he ran here in Liberty at Stocksdale Park. It is a very large and beautiful park that I need to go walking around soon!  Everything is incredibly green and there are so many trees!  

Running and reading

 I finally made it to the library!  The public library system here is very large and is called the Mid-Continent Public Library System. It has over 30 locations. There are two branches that are equidistant from me and I like them both. It was very relaxing to browse through the stacks, something I haven't done in quite some time. I took home a few!

Peter is running cross country at Heritage Middle School. He's had two meets already. Each middle school wears the jersey of the high school they will attend so it's hard to know which middle school everyone is from. The meets are very large!  6th graders are not allowed to run, so it's just 7th and 8th graders. They have a B team and an A team. Peter runs on the B team. The first meet was here in Liberty at one of the other middle schools.  He came in 12th in the B race. 

The second meet was Independence, 25 minutes away, at Fort Osage Middle School. It had many  more schools participating. 

I went for a run this morning on the streets around our house. It's very hilly and so you really get a workout!  It is never silent outside. The insects, frogs, and birds are always singing, buzzing, and chirping 24 hours a day!  

Sunkissed by Kasie West

 Teen fiction. I have a wonderful sister who surprises me by sending me books.  I recently moved states and states away and one day as I came home found a package on my doorstep with three books inside. I love coming home to packages! 

Kasie West writes teen romance novels. I acknowledge that these can be trite and formulaic, but they still have an appeal to many a teen girl. I've read several of West's books and they are entertaining, clean, and cute. I liked this one, but if you'd like a better one by her try By Your Side.

Avery and her family spend their summers camping, this year they are at a camp that has many amenities but Wi-Fi is not among them. Avery and her sister are not amused, but as they meet the camp employees and find some cute boys among them that changes. This book isn't just about flirting, although there is plenty of that, Avery finds out how to step out of her comfort zone and try things that have scared her in the past. She finds her voice (literally and figuratively) and by the end of the summer the lack of Wi-Fi is not among her least favorite things. 

Recommend: yes

First flights and dance nights

 Labor Day weekend was full of fun, not much labor for us. The kids were invited to a barn dance where they learned a bunch of line dancing and had a lot of fun!

We left from the dance to the airport and took a red eye flight to Los Angeles for Audrey and John's son, Oliver, blessing. It was Peter's first time on an airplane. The flight there was not as fun as the flight back since it was in the middle of the night.

We had a lovely weekend with John and Audrey and I loved seeing the sisters together for a couple days.

Once we were home we found a new treat--frozen custard!  I had the Key Lime Pie and it was delish!

Stick bugs and rain

 Life here in the Midwest is wet!  I had never thought of Missouri and rain in the same sentence, that was reserved for the Pacific Northwest. The rain storms here are not mere sprinkles.  The windshield wipers cannot keep up with how much water is descending!  A good side effect of the rain is the cicadas calm down a bit and aren't as noisy. 

Last week as I was feeling a bit discouraged with all that moving entails and missing my Wyoming people we all piled in the car and drove an hour north into the beautiful farmland and visited Adam-Ondi-Ahman. It is incredibly peaceful there and beautiful and full of crawling creatures too!  This cool stick bug hopped off our car and did a little dance for us!  

As we were walking down the paths Brian went ahead to break the spider webs that were across the path, Lucy almost walked into one with a nice juicy spider sitting in the middle!  

We were able to talk with one of the missionary couples that lives and works there. It was at sunset and the whole place was amazing to see and just what all our spirits needed!