Alex was off school most of this week as they were having parent/teacher conferences. And may I say, he is doing fantastically. He's got all the skills mastered, reads at a 2nd grade level, and goes to an advanced reading class. And the teachers absolutely love him. We carved pumpkins yesterday; Missy wouldn't touch the pumpkin guts.

It was a rather quiet and homebound weekend. Today I worked on cleaning up the backyard, leaves, sticks, toys, and all. Every fall the backyard gets hazardous due the chewed up nuts and the sticks all over, dang squirrels. I also got the hoses put away since I got the sillcock fixzed yesterday. I was determined to finally get around to fixing the backyard sillcock this weekend, which has been leaking considerably lately, so Saturday early afternoon I shut off the water to the house and started draining the pipes. If all goes well, I told Beth, it shouldn't be more than a few minutes. Well, it was more like 4.5 hours without water service to the house, between water that just wouldn't stop draining, soldering on the sillcock sideways, pulling the new joint apart, running to Ace to get a new coupling, not being sure if the new coupling was soldered on well enough, running back to Ace for another coupling, cutting off the suspect joint, re-soldering a new length on the pipe, and getting everything on straight, all while trying to let the kids help. But all the joints are watertight and the new sillcock does not leak. The kids wanted to go under the house with me so bad but I thought that would be more trouble than it would be worth, so I let them watch from the access. We were supposed to have adate night but Katie couldn't do it tonight, so we took the kids out to supper and that was it. Friday we had everyone over for Bible study and watched the second half of "Facing the Giants." Wednesday, Kids Klub has the first skating night in at least a couple years, maybe since Beth was pregnant with Missy. Anyway, I took the kids out on the floor skating and helped them along most of the evening, moving along the rail. It was basically the first time on skates for either of them, and they did respectably well. They both did OK on the carpet, the floor was harder. Missy didn't want to leave; BIG tears when it was time to go. "I want to stay here and skate some more!!!!!"

Saturday was team John and/or Beth's first geocaching event cache. The Lakes, Legends and Lore Geocaching league had a cache bash starting at the visitor's center in town, and after a get together with snacks and hot dogs, coords for 11 new caches were released and everyone scattered. I had the kids, but Beth was busy. So first off, the batteries in my GPS died, so it was home first to get fresh ones, which probably killed any chance of a FTF. But we did find one in town, then not find one over by Barbee Lake, and did find one in North Webster before the kids were tired of it. We met another cache team in NW and went back to Barbee with them, where we met yet another cacher looking for that one, but everyone came up empty. Then, as I said, the kids were over it so we went home, then to visit Beth at the garage sale at Churchill's she was helping with, then to the Zimmer trail with the kids' bikes and my skates. As always, someone had to go when we were a mile from anywhere, so we all rolled back and dashed to a gas station. Alex continues to ride well with no training wheels, but still wants them back on after a little while. He has a hard time turning, stopping and keeping propped up when stopped. Friday afternoon, Beth and the kids met another mom/kid from Alex's kindergarten class for lunch at a park in town, where Alex got stung on the back of the hand by a yellowjacket. His hand swelled up pretty good but by the time I was home from work he was ok. It didn't hurt anymore, he said, but it did itch. The same kid had invited Alex to his church's Wednesday evening program this week so Alex went there instead of Kids Klub. And I went roller skating at work with some co-workers over lunch twice this week.

Beth and I are both sick. I have been getting there since the cold night in the camper, and Friday I stayed home from work and went to the doctor. Ear infection, got a Z-pack. I skipped Bible study (it was moved to the church) Friday night too. Beth skipped church and movie night Sunday because she was sick.