Pumpkin Daze

Dave found "Pumpkin Daze" on the interwebz.  It is basically want I want to do with my post academic life: a working christmas tree farm that also has attractions.

They have a pedal race car track, slides, tire towers, zip lines, petting zoo, and those giant jumping pillows.

During the fall (maybe just October), they have pumpkins and a craft beer tent.  This is basically my jam.

Nico had a blast, per usual.

The farm is maybe an hour and change from our house (out near Aurora).


Dave and I decided that it is just about as far as one would want to be from Chicago (if one were set on staying in the Chicago area).

Other than that, not much else is going on.  I am teaching this quarter- so Thursdays are kind of a mess (those are the days that I teach).  Dave is starting work for State Net.  That plus the fact that he is still writing for Hero Sports and occasionally Modern Health Care, means that we don't have much free time these days.  And I think it is kind of bullshit to spend the little time you have that is not committed to work or transit to cleaning the house.  Last week, Nico and I spent a couple of hours straightening the living room, dining room, and kitchen and it is basically a mess again. Which just proves the point: housework is bullshit.  I am really regretting subscribing to all those magazines I got with my frequent flyer points.  Every week- it seems like I get 3-4, which wouldnt be so bad, except I usually didnt have time to read last week's magazines.  Luckily, I am starting to get those "Your subscription is about to expire" notices in the mail.  Thankfully!!

 Last week we scooped up one of Nico's good little friends (that lives in our neighborhood) and played at the park for a while.  We discovered a new part of the park, which is basically just a bunch of junk that people have thrown into the words.  But it is cool because there are lots of structures the kids can play on.  So- it was a lot of fun.  Afterwards, the kid's Dad took us over to the North Park Village Garden Club- which I wasn't aware was a thing.  Apparently it is.  You can join the club and get a garden plot.  It's not huge, but its a good size.  It is a lot bigger than the sliver of backyard I have that gets decent sub exposure during the spring and summer.  Seriously, I am not joking, the sliver is about 20 feet long and about 2 feet wide.

Hopefully they will let us into the club.  I hope they do... because I have already requested seed catalogues and it would just be awkward if the garden club was like, "Plot's taken" and "You can't garden here."

Soccer

AYSO Soccer.

Oh, what is there to say?

It is frustrating because "having fun" is the most important thing- at the expense of everything else.  Nico's team is a bit of a mess.  But it's AYSO- so we're all just having fun.  The problem is that the emphasis on "having fun" discounts the fun that can be had by learning how to play a sport well.  By everyone being hyper vigilant about how it is all about having fun, the kids that are trying to learn how to play soccer (read: pass, trap, dribble, defend, and shoot) get penalized by the emphasis on "having fun".

For example, there is a kid on Nico's team that keeps picking the ball up in the run of play.  Like, on purpose, in the middle of the field, picks the ball up when it comes to him.  Now, it is not fair for the other team when this happens, so much of the time, a free kick is awarded whenever this kid picks the ball up.  But because its AYSO and this is just for fun, no one feels all that great about yelling at this kid.  Seriously- this isn't something that happens once or twice a game.  It usually happens 5 or 6 times in a game.  Sometimes the kid runs away with the ball.  But, its all funsies- so no one really gets after the kid.  Because that is not the culture of AYSO.

So what does Nico do?  Nico avoids playing the ball to his own team mate.  I don't blame him.  And I would definitely do the same, if that kid were on my team.  Nico has figured out that his team's chances are better at accomplishing "playing soccer" if he doesn't pass the ball to this kid, because there is a decent chance this kid will pick the ball up with his hands if it is played to him.  So Nico sometimes takes the ball himself.

But what is learned here?
1)  The kid still hasnt learned the rules of the game and that the rules apply to him.
2)  All the kids think it is a great big joke.  Ha ha ha, _____________ picked up the ball again.
3)  Trust no one.

The thing is, that if we could take the kids in AYSO that "get it" it could be really fun.  It is fun to learn to pass and trap the ball.  It is fun to play soccer in a way that starts to approximate how the sport is played.  Its fun to learn how to be an athlete- showing up to practice and games on time, having respect for coaches and the game and the rules.  Its fun working on an identity of "soccer player".

But this nonsense?  I don't know everything, but my guess is that this is why people leave AYSO.

Eh.

This guy is reading like a champ lately.

His first grade teacher assigns too much homework, I think.  I mean, I don't think she has much of a choice, it was the same for kindergarten.  I think that there are probably a lot of parents who don't do much with their kids- so the homework becomes necessary, to make sure that those kids can keep up.
But Dave and I do all kinds of things with Nico that aren't homework, but that are adding to his academic skills.  Like, most mornings we have spelling tests in the car.  Its been hard lately, because it is still so dark early, but some days, I can get Nico to read to me in the car.  We do math to divide up the bullets whenever we have a nerf gun fight in the house.

But the homework is just such a beatdown.  She sends home a packet on Mondays with 20 activities for each week.  Sometimes, we only get through half of them.  :(

But I guess maybe I dont have to be worried yet, Nico got his progress report last week and it was all A's.  So, I guess we're not failing him yet. 

Camping

I had originally planned to take Nico camping in August as part of his birthday celebration.  But then Gran's Michigan travel plans changed so we spun the camping trip to October, which was actually better, since I *really* wanted to go in October.

One of the gym owners and his girlfriend (Dan and Kay) have started an adventure business, where they take people on various kinds of adventures and help them get introduced in a relatively safe environment to things like camping, rock climbing, hiking, etc.

I didn't have appropriate gear for myself.  I managed to get Nico a sleeping bag before we went, but ended up borrowing one whose owner said that she thought would not be warm enough.  I was taking my woobie (poncho liner that I stole from JJ) and thought I could layer on enough layers to not be cold.  That was false.  I froze my butt off on the first night- and didnt get much sleep.  Plus Nico peed in his bag- despite me waking him up in the middle of the night to go.  Which, in case you haven't had the pleasure, is horrible.  You have to put all of your stuff on and go out in the cold and do that and come back and get bundled up again.  Not fun.

Kay let me borrow an extra sleeping bag for the second night and it worked like a charm (in that I fell into the sleep of the dead).  It also wasn't as cold, so that helped.

We got to do some hiking and climbing on Saturday.  Turns out, that Nico is a wiz at rock climbing.



So much so, I think I am going to try to find some places to do rock climbing around here.

I didn't do any climbing, but mostly because I didn't like the angle my feet would have had to work with my ankles on the rock.  Also, I don't like 10 people watching me do things.  Anything.  So... I just spectated and cheered for Nico, who was a champ.  The climb involved a decent hike- with not trivial elevation.  It was a good reminder that weightlifting shape is not the same as running from zombies in the woods up a hill shape.  

It was a touch early for fall colors- it had been relatively warm when we got there.  But it was gorgeous.  Cool- so the bugs were not an issue.  It was really cool. 

We tried our hand at fishing on Sunday- which was a beat down.  Someone (whose name rhymes with Rico) cranked the reel on his fishing rod to tightly, so it caused the rod to get jacked up.  And when I tried to fix it, I busted the whole damn thing.  Since we were casting from the shore, we didn't get any bites.  The day we fished was over cast and grey.  Not like below.  

Despite using big juicy night crawlers, there were no bites.  It makes me nervous that I caught my Dad's fishing gene.  Which is unfortunately, since I used to fish like I belonged in the Hansen clan (that runs the Northwestern on The Deadliest Catch).  The good news is that there is a group that does fishing lessons here in the Chicago area.  Am hoping when our finances loosen up a bit, I might get a chance to go out there and do that.  I tried learning from a book.  I literally bought a book to learn how to fish.  I might as well be reading chinese: "When the rainbows go after the spinning charlies, make sure you hit them with the reds and the crawlers before the jimmies get in there." WHAT?  What is happening?

The trip was really fun- I learned how to start a fire and cook over an open fire (although, there were a couple of these there- turns out Mama really wants one!) Also, as if I needed any more things to be snobbish about, camping gear.  So far, the list stands at (in no order)

1) yarn

2) beer

3) stationary+pens

4) athletic gear

5) planners

6) quilting fabric

Where will it end?