Movin and Marchin on the Mississippi

Clinton Middle School band competed in the Movin and Marchin on the Mississippi competition on Saturday. Since they are a middle school band they can only compete in parades. The high school bands compete in both field and parade competition. Last year Clinton combined the two middle school bands to create one band. They are awesome. In my opinion they actually looked and sounded better than some of the high school bands. Of course, Clinton has awesome Middle School band directors. The cool thing about this competition for Sarah was that she was able to see a couple of her good friends that had moved away during the summer. Ronald is now at Bellevue, but he wasn't marching due to an injury. Sheryl is now at East Central. Sarah loved seeing her friends. The day ended with the announcement that the Clinton Middle School received 1st place. They have taken 1st for the past two years. Sarah's class is leaving the younger kids some big footsteps to follow in. That is okay though since the


high school has a long tradition of excellence with the marching band. Sarah still has 3 more parades this month before her middle school career is over. They will march in the homecoming parade October 4th, The celebration of Music October 21st and the Mardi Gras parade October 29th. It seems like just yesterday that she was in elementary school and now she is in her last year of middle school. 4 years of high school and it will be time to send her off into the real world.

A beautiful fall morning

Sarah had a marching band competition in Bellevue Saturday morning. Just before we left in the morning a close friend called. She had wanted to go with us to the parade but needed to spend some time watching her niece play volleyball. She had just received a call that her niece was injured and wouldn't be able to play. So any way Darlene is able to go with us to Bellevue for the morning. We arrived about 45 minutes before the parade started. We decided to take a nice walk along the river front. What a beautiful view of the Mighty Mississippi River. Kristen was able to see a Lock and Dam and was lucky enough to see a boat go through the locks. After a while we found our seat for the parade and I was able to take this picture of Kristen sitting on the wall. The day was cool enough in the morning that we needed to wear jackets but by the end of the parade it was warming up nicely. After checking with Sarah and seeing one of her old friends (who transfered to another school and was competing for a different school) we left for home. On the way we stopped at a really neat little craft shop. I found darling pilgrim bears and Christmas bears for almost nothing. Just before we get to Clinton, Kurt calls and will need to be picked up in about 10 minutes. We couldn't have timed things better and arrived at the high school practice field just as he put the gator away. We went out for a quick lunch and then home to rest and scrap for the afternoon. Couldn't have asked for a nicer and more relaxing day.

Friday Nights

How do we spend our Friday night's in September and October? Kurt and Sarah are at all of the Clinton High School Football games and Kristen and I do our best to make it to all of the home games. In this picture Sarah and Kurt talk with an official before the start of the game. Even though this was the third game of the season, it was the first one at home. Usually it is so hot for the first several games, but this year I think we had record colds. The cheerleaders held their annual cheer camp early this year. I think that they hoping for warmer weather for the girls, but that back fired on them.

In this picture you see all of the junior cheerleaders coming out before the varsity game. Kristen was at the end of the first row.

The final picture is of our little cheerleader at the top of the stunt. She was so excited to get to be the top of the pyramid this time around. Usually because of the girls size they end up on the bottom. Kristen is in the group at the front of the picture.

Also take the time to check out a couple of videos that were on YouTube of Clinton Football.

Clinton Band 9-14

Clinton High School - Ready to Play 9-14

Clinton High School Touchdown

Reading Adventures

Every year I have taken the girls down to Reading Adventures at the Mississippi Fair Grounds. This is a great time for the family. All kids 12 and under receive a free book and they even get to pick out just the right book. There are also celebrity readers, a puppet show, crafts, a scavenger hunt, reading bingo, and inflatable rides to name a few of the activities. The best part is it all free. This year we went down with a friend and her two small children. Even though Sarah is now to old for the free book and some of the activities she enjoyed helping out with the younger kids.


Kristen had a blast doing the crafts and other activities. She really enjoyed having a friend closer to her age instead of just having to hang around with her big sister. She was thrilled to pick out a Nancy Drew book for her book. I was thrilled also as Nancy Drew was one of my favorite series of books when I was her age. To see more pictures click on the link for the family photo album on the left hand side.

GIVE ME A C

Many years ago we started taking Sarah to cheerleading camp and it has finally become Kristen's turn. They had camp from 1-4 on Saturday and then will receive thier t-shirts before the game on Friday the 14 and then strut their stuff between the sophomore and varsity contest on Friday night. This will put 3 of the 4 Flathers family members on the sidelines. I get to watch the game by myself.

Labor Day fun.

This morning just as I was getting ready to go grocery shopping for the next two weeks, my cousin's wife called and wanted to know what we were doing. They were going to be in the McCausland day's parade and wanted to know if the girls would like to ride in the float along. The float was to commerate the fact that there were 6 generations of Holst on the family farm. Of course the girls jumped at the chance to see their second cousins Aviana and Brielle. We quickly got ready and headed to McCausland. A small town about 15 minutes away from us. When we arrived we helped to decorate the tractor and wagon. Kevin was driving the old Oliver. This was one of the older tractors on the farm and I am not sure but don't believe that it is used much anymore. Jessica's sister also brought her children down so there were 5 girls who rode in the wagon with Jessica. Brielle was to young and chose instead to watch the parade with Grandma and myself

One of the earlier floats was the veterans. My uncle Gary was in this float.















Here comes Kevin with the tractor and wagon.














All of the girls waving












Sarah and Jessica waving from the back of the wagon. Even though it was warm, a good time was had by all. It also was nice to see my aunt and uncle and get to talk to them for awhile.

What was supposed to be a boring lazy day at home, ended up with a little excitement and a chance to see a few cousins.

Thanks for calling Jessica.

Family Fun

Last night we went to my sister-in-law's home for supper. It was a great time. The 4 kids really enjoy playing together. Of course it helps that the younger are close in age. There is just about a year between each kid, with Kristen being the youngest. Sarah is only 4 years older than Zach so she is still not to old for them. After supper we went out and had a fun time competing in a whiffle ball game. The kids played the adults. The little neighbor girl came over so this made the teams uneven. The kids team consisted of Sarah 13, Zach 10, Austin 8, Kristen 7 and the neighbor girl who is about 5 or 6. The adult team was Kurt, his sister Ardith, her husband Carl and of course myself. A good time was had by all, including the neighbor's who came out to "cheer" us on. It reminded me so much of the family picnics we used to have every summer where all of the kids would get together and play softball. It didn't matter what the ages were, everyone played and no one needed to play inside or with game boys. It was a much simpler time then.

Saturday Fun

Last Saturday, the 25th I was able to take both of the girls down to Scrapaganza for the Mommy and Me class. This is a great time for all. Sarah does the 12 x 12 Mommy project and Kristen does both the 8 x 8 Me layout and the me project. The girls always have a great time with this. We then met Dad at Chick fil a for lunch. We all love this fast food place, I think because it is different from the usual fast food place. Kurt took Kristen home with him and spent the afternoon and evening bonding with her. Sarah stayed with me. At 2:00 we went back to Scrapaganza for a Memory Cube class. This is a very fun and easy project. Would be great for a small gift. May have to make this for Christmas. (Grandma if you are reading pretend to be surprised) Just as we were finishing up our cubes, Darlene called and wanted to meet us for supper. She came over and picked us up. We had about 1 1/2 hours before our next stop on the day started. We decided to go to Fuddruckers. When we got there we were very disappointed to discover that they had closed for good. We ended up at Ruby Tuesdays. After supper we made it back to Scrapaganza right at 6:00. Sarah had decided to join me for a fun night of cropping. Before we started cropping we made these really cute little books out of the plastic name tag holders. Since we did a paradise theme, I guess Kurt needs to take us somewhere where we can get pictures for this little book. (like maybe Hawaii, guess I will have to tag along with Sarah and the rest of the high school band in 2009)

After this we spent the rest of the night scraping. I was working on the Disney album. I am almost done with volume 2 and then just have to work on the third volume to finish it up. Sarah was working on several different pages including making an album of the cats. It was a wonderful day of bonding and older girl time. Tomorrow Kurt and I will switch girls and do things with the other child.