Mid-November Catch-Up

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve experienced…

Henry’s Symbol Breakfast at Old Trail School. A big part of the development program among the 4-5 year olds is the use of their symbol. Because the kids aren’t yet reading, they each choose a symbol to represent them, and they use the symbol in many ways during the school day. Henry’s symbol is a set of binoculars, and we made a special sweatshirt for him.

Recently Lydia informed us that she doesn’t get as much play time on the playground on Fridays because she’s “busy solving everybody’s problems.”

We finished the Summit Metro Parks Fall Hiking Spree, discovered a number of really neat hiking trails in the area, and we each earned our hiking sticks. And one of my new favorite follows on Facebook is Summit Metro Parks with their sharing of many good professional and amateur nature photographers.

Henry’s fifth Birthday came, and we now officially have a pair of five-year-olds in the house.

We didn’t have a Halloween Party last year ‘cause we were at Disney, but we returned to the tradition this year, and we had a blast doing it. Jenn’s Minion cake was my personal favorite part of the party.

We watched as Haley played her last home match at Bowling Green. It was fun to see her play here and there over the past four years. It'll be something The Nuggets remember for a long time.

Last home match for a great @bgsuwsoccer captain, @haleyparkinson. #soccer A photo posted by @rggates on Oct 25, 2015 at 10:16am PDT

And between interacting with Old Trail or Buckeyes fans during games, I've been having fun with Instagram & Twitter. Here are some fun ones...

A photo posted by @rggates on Oct 8, 2015 at 5:41pm PDT A photo posted by @rggates on Sep 23, 2015 at 5:25am PDT This may be the last nice day of the season for #running. #cvnp #fitbit #mizuno #indiansummer #autumn A photo posted by @rggates on Nov 5, 2015 at 10:52am PST

Henry Turns Four!

Another four year old in the Gates Home!!!

Flashback:

The kids enjoyed receiving presents, and each of them, especially Henry, seemed to be genuinely excited in ways that we hadn't seen at previous Birthdays and Christmases.

Henry got such a cool present that Lincoln needed to add it to his Christmas list right now!

Back at the end of October I went to Chicago for the 2014 AVMA Economic Summit. It was way more technical than any of you would be interested in learning here, but I did take one cool photo during the approach to O'Hare:

#Chicago before sunrise. On my way to the #AVMAEcon Summit.

A photo posted by @rggates on Oct 10, 2014 at 4:48am PDT

Just off the coast, you can see Soldier Field on the left, and just across the road from that is where we stayed with Pete & Moe before they bolted for South Carolina.

Trick-or-Treating was fun this year, too:

Halloween 2013

Our big Halloween/Birthday Party was this past weekend, and it was a lot of fun.  Jenn put *hours* into planning it, the kids were psyched for weeks leading up to it, and aside from the sick buy working its way, one by one, through our family, things came off pretty well.

More Birthday/Halloween

Here are some more photos from the bit Birthday/Halloween Extravaganza, courtesy of Uncle Jeremy & Auntie Em and Grandpa Doug & Grandma Paulette...