Planetarium

Ali's Brownie troop had an outing to the UWM planetarium on Friday. They had a half a day of school so they got out about 11:45. Then they all left from Riverside to UWM. Kris was worried about parking since anyone who knows the east side and the UWM area knows that parking is a premium. They got totally lucky when they got there since it must have been class change time. Kris and the other leader managed to get parking spots right as someone else was pulling out in a public lot right next to the physics building.

From what I heard it sounded like the activities were very fun. However, there were some behavior issues with a couple of the girls and the professor who was running the program decided to cut things short. It was really too bad, because it sounded like a fun time. The good thing is that at least Alison wasn't the one being disruptive.

Fun Fair

We had our last Riverside Fun Fair last weekend. As usual I helped out. Sarah helped as well, which was nice of her I think. She could have spent the day at home, with a friend, or watching TV, but she decided to volunteer her time to help out her old school. Alison had fun at all the games. Both Sarah and Ali got a bunch of prizes playing games, and Ali got a tummy-ache from eating all kinds of candy. It’ll be sad not to go there next year, but then again who knows. Maybe we’ll show up to partake in the fun again and see some old friends.

Talent Show

The annual Riverside talent (variety) show is coming up in a week or so and Alison is hard at work honing her act. Since this is her last year at Riverside and she has never done it before she was determined to come up with something to do in the show. She wanted to do a dance with some friends, but after we heard about what it was, we put the kibosh on it. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it was totally unrealistic for a couple of 2nd graders. So Ali decided she would try and do a dance routine by herself. She has been working on some basic moves in her Rec Department dance class so she thought she would expand on it a little. Her routine is about 1:20 long and pretty basic. She is working hard at making sure she knows her steps and adding a few things here and there. Hopefully come showtime everything will go off OK.

Honor Roll

I came home from work yesterday and found out the Sarah made the honor roll at North for the first semester with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Kris and I got invited to a breakfast later this month to celebrate. Unfortunately, if we both go, there will be no one to get Ali off to school in the morning. We’re not quite sure how we’ll work that out yet. Regardless, we are very proud of Sarah and the hard work she has been putting in to get her grades as high as they are. Way to go Sarah!

Sunday Drive

Last Sunday, Kris and I decided to take a drive down to the east side. She is taking her scout troop to the UWM planetarium Friday afternoon for a program and badge, and had no idea where it actually was. Since we had nothing better to do, I decided to show her where it was and go over the best route to get there. It took me back to my college days. I had astronomy 101 there my freshman year and if my memory serves right, I got a B+ for the class. I probably should have gotten an A, I remember it being a piece of cake class to pad my GPA at the time. Anyway, after I pointed out to her where it was, where to go into the building, and where to look for parking (for those not familiar, east side parking around UWM totally sucks, and with winter parking rules it is even worse!) I decided to drive the girls around the east side a bit pointing out some of the huge mansions on Newberry Ave. And around Lake Park. Then we thought we’d take a drive past the Pizza Man rubble. That was a big deal to them since they had seen all the stories on the news about the fire and the building engulfed in flames. We drove down North Ave. And I pointed out where Kris and I met, Judges Irish Pub. Boy, what a dump that place is! But back in the day, I wasn’t picky, they had cheap beer, plus I knew all the bartenders and bouncers so I often got free beer. We then went down St. Marys Hill by the North Avenue water tower. I was telling the girls about how that was where I used to go sledding in college when we got a big snowstorm since I had just taken them girls sledding for the first time in Germantown. There is also a picture of my dad as a little kid, I would guess maybe 2 or 3 years old, sitting on a hill that I learned a couple of years ago was on St. Marys hill. I told the girls that was where grandpa’s picture was taken and Ali especially thought that was pretty cool. After an hour or so we headed back home, but it was a nice trip down memory lane. Maybe we’ll drive back this summer when we can go by Bradford Beach. Hopefully the MMSD won’t have dumped any raw sewage into the lake yet, but I am not going to count on it.

Blog Update

As I was sitting here wondering what to write next I realized I haven't updated the look of my blog in quite some time. When I went to look thru my files, i realized when I reinstalled everything on my laptop, I neglected to transfer all my HH files and spooky fonts. What a drag! So I'll be spending the weekend looking for everything that I had previously so I can update things. Check back later and let me know what you think.

2010 Synopsis

It has been quite some time since I have updated the Hahnted House. I apologize, but things around here have been quite busy and I haven’t had much time to actually sit and type out the family news, and when I have had time, I have just been too tired. So I finally have 30 minutes where I am wide awake and no one is pulling me to do anything, so here is a summary of what has happened since the start of 2010.

We rang in the new year by watching the ball drop on TV. Kris had to work, so she was in bed, but I let the girls stay up. They enjoy watching the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, plus there was some kid who was performing that both the girls like named Justin Beiber.

Then on the second we went up to Two Rivers to visit Kris’ birth mom. We couldn’t stay long though, because that night, both the girls were going over to a friend’s for a sleepover party. Ali was invited to sleepover for her friend’s birthday, and Sarah was helping her friend organize and run the party. Then the next day we had to get everyone ready to go back to school on Monday the 4th.

January 6th was the makeup date for the girl scout powderpuff derby. Unfortunately, I didn’t polish her axles well enough, so her car didn’t win. She ended up in 13th place out of about 50 girls. I figured at the very least she would win an award for the most unique car. How many other alligator cars have you ever seen? Well she didn’t win that either. The winner, which was voted on t by the girls themselves, went to someone who had painted her car pink and purple. I hate to say we were robbed, but we were robbed. Next year if they have another one, I am not going to be cute with a design and just go for all out speed.

I had to get together the Reflections projects from Riverside to submit to the state level of judging. After seeing last year’s entries, I steered Alison toward entering a video project. I thought she had a very good idea, and after she had all of her things complete, I helped her put her video together. Only when I was checking everything met the requirements did I realize that she (we) had violated the rules, and she couldn’t have it submitted to the state competition. I should have read through things completely before she put all of her work into it, so that was my fault. I was frantically trying to help her put something together by the deadline, but in the end, I didn’t think we should submit it since I did most of the work on it for her. I feel bad that we couldn’t submit her project, but next year if we do it at Shady Lane, I will make sure that we read all the rules prior to starting.

On the 9th, Ali made her first reconciliation at St. Anthony’s. We had worked with her for a few weeks getting her ready and she was nervous for a few days beforehand, but when it came time for her, she went right up, waited her turn, and did it with no prodding, or apprehension. We had about a two and a half hour break before we had to head out to the Milwaukee Admirals game for girl scout cookie kick off. It was fun for the girls and I have to say, I really like watching hockey in person. We upgraded our seats for the nose bleed ones we got through the girl scout council and we were 12 rows off the ice. We even got to see a gloves off throw down about three minutes into the game. Oh yeah, there was also a Disney Channel actor there signing autographs. Harper from Wizards of Waverly Place. I forget her real name, but we learned from last year. We hung out in the concourse waiting. We had a pretty good idea of where she was going to be signing autographs, so we were about 20 people back in line when it came time to meet her. Last year we missed the opening puck drop and we didn’t want that to happen again. The girls liked seeing a famous actor in person and the really liked the game, so it was worth it.

We got some bad news about a week ago. Kris uncle passed away. I think he was 80, but he had suffered a stroke about 10 years ago and had been wheel chair bound and living in a nursing home ever since. I couldn’t get off of work, so Kris had to go alone. She took her dad by herself because her mom was sick and wasn’t able to go.

It is also yearbook time for riverside, which means that I had to get order forms out and distributed through school and start putting the layout together. That is one good thing about moving to Shady Lane next year, I won’t be responsible for doing the yearbook. At least I think I won’t. We have heard that the Shady Lane PTA is in need of volunteers so I am sure I’ll volunteer to help out with something, but I am going to try not to do the yearbook.

Last weekend we had the Riverside girl scouts’ sledding outing. We don’t really have any big sledding hills around here so I have never taken the girls sledding. However, there is a park a couple of miles away that has a sledding hill, which is where we went. Alison had a blast, and so did Sarah once she got used to it. Sarah only went because Ali was and it was a scout event, but she didn’t have any friends there with her. Afterward, Alison asked if we could go sledding again. Hopefully the next time it won’t be raining when we go.

So there, that is a brief synopsis of what has happened in the last month. Now that things have calmed down a bit I’ll try to keep a little more up to date. Maybe I’ll even let Sarah make a few entries. Maybe some pictures as I have time.