Anna in action on the soccer field

Anna has been asking about taking up refereeing for some time. Jude has been doing it for two years now and loves it. And while Anna doesn’t have the same passion for the sport that Jude does she has been playing it for many years now. She is on the team at Ricks and is playing every Monday and Wednesday.

So, on Saturday morning, while Marcy was driving Jude to his refereeing games I drove Anna to her day of training. She was given five minutes of training and then told to shadow with the regular referee (a 13-year-old girl). Anna really enjoyed it and so we signed her up. And she will have her first games refereeing solo this coming Saturday.

Jude practicing tricks in the park

Jude refereed four games yesterday but today was all about practicing his soccer tricks. He spent a lot of time in the park today (several hours) mostly by himself. He broke his record for juggling (884) and he completed a new trick for the first time. And he practiced some of the tricks he had already done before. In the morning we watched Arsenal have a good win and both the Broncos and Packers won so he was a happy camper by the end of the day.

Anna getting ready for her social – western theme

On Friday night Anna had her school social and it sounds like she had a really nice time. She was certainly dressed for it.

Jude doing soccer tricks in the park as the sun goes down

We finally got our house back this week with all the sewer work done and the dirt removed from our basement. Now, we have to decide what we will do exactly with a blank slate to work from. We are thinking of making a few changes.

It was a busy weekend for all of us. Jude refereed four soccer games on Saturday, earning himself $100. Not bad for a day’s work for a 14-year-old. I was Jude’s taxi driver, picking him up and taking him to lunch. Anna cleaned my car, this has become her job since I have been renting it out on Turo (we only need one car most of the time). She also kept busy with Cheer on Saturday and gymnastics on Sunday.

This morning we tried a new church, one that Anna had researched and wanted to try. It was the Unitarian Universalist Church and it was a lovely service. This afternoon we spent a good chunk of time in the basement setting up the washer and dryer on new pedestals that Marcy purchased.

Jude, as always, spent time in the park working on his soccer game. He has been trying to do this “round the world” trick with his left foot for some time and he finally nailed it this afternoon.

Anna shows what a mess our backyard is in

A couple of months ago we had some flooding in our basement. For a couple of years we had noticed some water bubbling out of the basement toilet or shower drain. We have had people out to look at it but no one had a definitive answer as to what was wrong. Then when we had this major flooding we knew we had to take action. We got several opinions and realize we needed to redo our sewer lines which should have been replaced by the builders but were not.

Mud, torn up concrete and big holes in the basement

So, this week they dug up the old sewer lines all the way from the alley to our basement toilet. So, we now have shiny, new 4″ lines that will hopefully last us for decades. Now, we have to decide what to do with our torn-up basement and backyard. We are thinking of using this opportunity to make some changes.

Jude swinging the sledgehammer at our neighbors house

This weekend Jude started refereeing again. They have a big shortage of referees in Colorado right now so Jude can take as much work as he wants. He did three games on Saturday morning.

Anna had Cheer Sunday afternoon and this morning Anna and Jude went across the road to our neighbors house to help demolish a 40-year-old playhouse in their backyard. And football season started so Jude and I spent the afternoon cheering on the Broncos. And they actually looked good.

Near the summit of Gray Wolf Mountain, Mt Evans in the background

On Saturday, it was our 17-year wedding anniversary, and Marcy and I decided we wanted to spend the day in the mountains. I found a trail that I thought would be great, not too crowded on a holiday weekend but also close to Denver and challenging.

Olive had a blast running all over the mountain (Marcy is in the distance)

The Gray Wolf Mountain hike looked like it would fit the bill. It sure did. We got to the trailhead by about 10am and there were only about five cars. This hike started on a well-defined trail that slowly became less defined and then disappeared altogether once you hit treeline. We arrived at the false summit (that we thought was the actual summit) just after 1:30pm. After lunch and a nice, long break it was time to head back. We got back to the car around 5:15pm.

Near Gray Wolf Mountain summit

We only saw six people all day and none after 11am. We had the entire mountain to ourselves. We didn’t quite make the summit but where we stopped had magnificent views and was a comfortable place for lunch.

We didn’t arrive home until almost 6:30pm, so this was the longest time away from the kids while they were at home. They seemed to have a good time and were not that excited to see us. We had a lovely sushi dinner with a good bottle of champagne. It was a memorable anniversary celebration.

Olive has found a new place to keep cool on hot days…in the strawberry patch

The rest of the long weekend was pretty low-key. Marcy did a ton of work getting ready for the workers coming to start on our basement tomorrow morning. They are digging it up to put in new sewer lines replacing the old ones that were not done to code. This should stop our basement from flooding.