November 21 - Austin Book Festival

For my birthday earlier this year, JD gifted me a surprise trip to the Austin Book Festival with my best reading friends,  Jill, Teresa and Jacquelyn. What a weekend! Teresa and I picked up Jill at the airport and we drove to Austin. We checked into our awesome condo in the Rainey Street district of downtown with the most incredible views. We went out for pizza and Jacquelyn soon arrived. 

The next day was a relaxing day at the Fairmont spa. After our treatments, we drove to the Oasis for dinner and THE best sunset view in Texas. Then back to the condo for lots of talking and bonding!

We headed to the Austin Book Festival the next day. It was a gorgeous day and we walked from our condo to the festival, about a mile and half. The festival was set up in front of the capital building. Two roads were closed off and they had multiple tents set up for author talks, book signings, merchandise and books for sale. We bought books, met some authors and perused several tents. We walked around the capital grounds and even went inside the capital briefly (capital bathrooms>port-a-potties). We capped off the afternoon with a late brunch and then headed back to the condo for relax. We found some food trucks nestled in the Rainey Street district for dinner and saw a lot of bachelorette parties. It was great people watching! We finished the evening with wine and ice cream on the roof of our building. Great day!

Jacquelyn headed home the following morning while the rest of us went back to the book festival. We listed to several author talks and even listened to one underground in a capital room. Such a cool experience and it's so interesting hearing authors discuss how they come up with ideas, their writing process etc. We finished off the day with book signings and then walked to the UT campus and did a tour on our own. After walking back to the condo (I think we logged 25k steps that day), we relaxed at the condo and found a cute restaurant for dinner. 

Fantastic trip! Great memories!

18th Floor Condo View

Lake Travis

Book Festival

Texas Capital

UT Campus

Making Memories

November 18 - Region Band Concert

Last month, Luke placed 6th chair trumpet at region band auditions and qualified for the Region Symphonic Band (top band for middle schools in our school district). The RSB took the day off of school on Friday to rehearse music all day together and perform a concert that evening. 

Fun Fact: I asked Luke to try on his black pants all week to make sure they fit. He refused and assured me they did. Thursday night, he finally tried them on and...surprise, surprise. They were several inches too short! Thank goodness for Khols and Target!!

The concert was fantastic and definitely a step up from his normal band at middle school. We are very proud of how hard he's worked with trumpet this year (even though I complain about how expensive this elective is..because it is more expensive than any other activity the kids have done LOL). 

They did several songs, here are links to 2 of them. Enjoy!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/aLCV3B9NyWSPbxLd9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/1nUJMhsqPoHaaBeA8

November 17 - Flair for a Night

Jillian was a Flair for a night at the football game last Saturday. The girls stood on the field with the Flairs while the football players came onto the field, danced in the stands and we got to see several veterans sky dive into the stadium at the beginning of the game. What a cool experience!!

Jillian and Hannah

Jillian and Reese

November 5, 2024 - Mr. Confident

Robotics spotlight! The North Houston BEST competition was last weekend. This is a qualifying event for the regional competition in December (so a very important event). There were 18 teams comprised of 2 middle schools, 15 high schools and 1 home-school team. Our region is piloting a new game software and it's been a challenge to say the least. Due to robot issues, our team didn't even start driving training until a week before the competition (usually they practice for a month). JD and Luke left the house before 7am and drove over an hour to north Houston to meet the rest of the team. There were major issues with the new software across the board, causing a 2H delay. 

Prelims: 4 rounds, 4 different drivers

*Round 1: WIRED could not get the robot to turn on, 0 points

*Round 2: WIRED driver scored a couple points but then flipped the robot ending the run (at this point the team was in 12th and at risk of not making semi's)

Luke and another boy decide to make some adjustments. His teammate took a part off the robot and Luke reprogrammed it.

"Luke, we do not re-write code mid-competition. This is not done." - Mr. Q and Mr. Lin, lead mentors

"I've got it, don't worry." - Luke, cool as a cucumber

(not sure if this was the exact conversation but you get the gist)

*Round 3: WIRED driver (our very own LUKE), does a perfect run and maxes out points, moving the team into 3rd place. GO LUKE!!! 

*Round 4: WIRED driver does a decent job, but highest points are round 3

Semi's & Finals

*every driver does a good job but the highest scorer of the day was Luke!

Final Results:

*Robot Competition - FIRST place!!!

*Marketing Presentation - FIRST place

*Website - FIRST place

*BEST Award (overall award of marketing plus engineering): THIRD place!!

So proud of these kids!

On Friday, I stopped by Starbucks and ran into Mr. Q. 

"Did your son tell you what he did?" - Mr. Q

"I heard he preprogrammed the robot mid-competition." - me

"It's just not done. It hasn't been done in 20+ years. I could not believe his confidence. And he delivered. He's just so confident." - Mr. Q

Congratulations WIRED! Next stop: Dallas in December!

Luke's perfect run: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gJjPB3quvMMa9nkY9

November 1 - Happy Halloween

Book character parade

Halloween! We started off the day with the 2nd grade book character parade at North Pointe. Jillian loves to read Uncle Jay's Garfield comics and decided months ago that she would be Garfield. It was hot and extremely humid, but those kids looked adorable. All of the non-2nd grade students at the school line the hallways and the kids walked down to Thriller. They walked outside so parents could see them in their costumes. So cute!

Jillian's friend Colin and his mom came over after school. The kids had dinner and then we went trick-or-treating together. It was a rainy day but the weather held. The kids made it about an hour or so before heading home and checking out their spoils. 

What did the big kids do? Julia and Mia did makeup at our house and then went trick-or-treating in a friend's neighborhood, while Luke stayed home and handed out candy. Great evening for all!

Halloween 2024