Famille Du Pentium

Today is Skokie AYSO’s “Soccerfest”, a tournament that caps the eight-week fall soccer season.  Aaron will be playing three games, each one consisting of two 15-minute halves (no quarters) with a five minute break in between each half.  Then he’ll have a 45 minute break between each game.

He won’t play with his regular season team.  Teams will be randomly set when he checks in (in about 15 minutes from now), and he’ll play with the same team throughout the day.

I’ll take the camera and hopefully post pics after it’s all done.

UPDATE: Pictures have been uploaded, available HERE.  Enjoy!

There is a family geneology site up now.  At the moment, it’s just Dolnick, Spevakow, and Hoffman family information.  Eventually I might get a data file from a Humphries family member and upload it.

If anyone wants to access it, either leave me a comment, or send me an email, or use the link on the homepage to request an account.

http://www.dolnick.com

Aaron is done with JV soccer, and the AYSO regular season is over.  Tomorrow is a final practice / clinic (to help work those skills) and then Sunday is the big city-wide tournament.  After that, five months of no soccer.  AYSO starts again in April, and JV boys doesn’t run again until next fall.

Ethan and Justin are both still in young athletes, going once a week to learn more Special Olypics stuff.  We had a lot of fun at the Special Olympics in Normal this summer, and looking forward to it again next year.  They’re also both in a swim class on Thursdays.

Ethan is taking a cooking class after school.  He picked two extra-curricular activities (besides AYSO) – intramural soccer, and cooking.  He says after the last class, he’ll cook us all dinner.  I, for one, am looking forward to it.

All this will be over with by mid-November, then we have Thanksgiving and then the “winter holidays”.  Then a few months of rest, and it all starts over again in the spring.

Even before Ike churns through the midwest, we are getting hit by a fairly substantial storm from the west that is flooding most of Chicago. 

We’re OK for now.  We took about an inch of water in the basement, but it was a fairly small section of floor and I was able to bail us out with the shop-vac.   For now, we’re holding dry.  The street outside our house, however, is now known as Lake Trumbull, part of a chain of lakes including Lake Lee and Lake St. Louis.  I just moved our cars to high ground, a few blocks away.

Now, we’ve just got to prepare for the after-effects of Ike.  Gustav dumped three inches of rain in six hours on Chicago.  We’re hoping for the best, my shop-vac is ready 🙂

Just a quick note, as we’re really busy with the start of the school year:  Aaron tried out and made the McCracken Middle School Junior Varsity soccer team.  You can follow the Hornets schedule and standings here.  More later. 

Last Sunday, we (Aaron and Mike) went to the Lincolnwood (IL) summer carnival.  I must say it was a bit of a disappointment this year… the rides are getting kind of weary, they don’t have much to ride, and the games are just getting ridiculously expensive. 

That said, for the short time we were there, Aaron took two rides, we ate lunch, played a couple games, and then left.  

If that narrative hasn’t piqued your interest yet, you’re out of luck, because the pictures are gone.

Last month was Aaron’s fifth grade graduation.  The school district doesn’t actually call it a “graduation”, they feel it’s “inappropriate” to graduate fifth graders, so they call it a “reception”.  But he did complete five years of education at Middleton Elementary School, and he’s now officially a Junior High School student. 

Pics of the “reception”, which looked oddly like a graduation ceremony, were here but are now gone.

We spent last Saturday at the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field, watching the NL Central-leading Cubs play the Pittsburg Pirates.  Unfortunately, they lost the game, but came back the next day and won.  Pictures are gone, which included views from our seats, the family, and a couple from dinner at Bakers Square afterwards.

Just a quick post – family update:  Aaron is now riding a bike! 

I, like my father before me, have spent many hours behind Aaron, holding his bike steady and running while he pedals down the sidewalk.  But this week, something clicked and he took off on his own.   

We are of course all very proud of Aaron, and I’m sure we’ll soon never see him again  

Aaron’s award winning band performed last week at McCracken Middle School.  Aaron is First Seat Trombone; in most of the videos below you will see him somewhat in the center, either beside or behind the tuba player (depending on the perspective of the video).  These videos were Microsoft format; you would have had to have a compatible Microsoft AVI player installed in order to view them, but now they’re gone.