This weekend

Yes, I have lots to post, but I want to get these pictures up now, while they're fresh in my mind!  Here's what we've been up to this weekend:

Friday night, we had our first movie night in our basement!  I got "Over the Hedge" from the library, and we had a nice night together, snuggled up on the couches.

Saturday was soccer day.  Megan and Katie had their first games of the season.  Both teams lost (badly), but I know they'll do better.  Katie is playing on her school team now - big stuff!  Megan is still playing on the city rec level, but her teammates are almost all good friends from her school.

Also on Saturday, we baked six loaves of zucchini bread, thanks to the monster-sized zucchinis we found hiding in the girls' garden!  Chris left for Italy in the afternoon.  After the soccer games, I took the girls downtown for the annual Art & Apples Festival in the Rochester Municipal Park.  It's one of the largest art festivals in the state!  We wandered through the tents for a while, but then hunkered down in the kiddy area to do lots of art projects.  They got bit by the art bug!

On Sunday, we went to the DIA after church.  The girls wanted to do more art projects after doing the DIA-sponsored projects at Art & Apples.  They got to watch and try papermaking, and they did Japanese book binding techniques.  We also did plenty of wandering through the galleries, and we enjoyed a delicious lunch there.

Then we drove a few miles down Woodward to the riverfront.  Right in front of the Ren Cen, they were holding Navy Week!

The Navy is bringing lots of ships to ports in the Great Lakes to commemmorate the bicentennial of the war of 1812.  The big draw for us was the USS Brig Niagara, a reconstruction of the ship in the battle in Lake Erie.  We learned about the Niagara when we went to Put-in-Bay and saw the movie in the Commodore Perry monument.  It was so cool to get to go aboard!

After 20 minutes in line, we finally got close enough to see it!

Still in line, but still smiling!

We even got to go below deck.  The ceiling was so low!  The crew lives aboard the ship, and we got to see their bags (to left), hammocks, dining area, kitchen, etc.

Girls trying to shoot a cannon at Canada

Jessi posed all over the ship.  I have about 20 pics like this one, all over the upper and lower decks!

Katie with a mast behind her.  It was impossible to capture how amazing the ship was!

There were two other ships to tour right at the RenCen, but the lines were enormously long.  You had to go through airport-type security to get on these ones.

 Then Jessica had her first soccer practice and game.  She's on the blue team this year, and has a friend from her last year's preschool on her team.  There aren't any goalies at this level - just 3-on-3 running back and forth, scoring each time.


Jessica likes to keep a running count of how many goals she has in the game.  She likes to show her coaches, teammates, the other team, and everyone on the sideline.  Can you see that she has NINE goals at this point?

Her final tally was TEN GOALS today!!  She was a scoring machine!!

After the game, we went out to dinner at Pei Wei, and saved room for dessert at DQ for my soccer superstars!

Whew!  What a weekend!