We got Ethan’s senior pictures back!! I of course am too antsy to share them to wait for the official downloads, so these are just some of the proofs. But I think they turned out so well!
He’s so handsome!! (in my humble opinion).
Sorry for the overload, but it’s way too hard to narrow these down for me. 🙂
😍😍😍 I love them all.
In other miscellany, last Saturday Ivan and I signed up to volunteer at the concessions stand at the volleyball tournament. Asher’s team was not actually playing in this tournament (it was a different level)…. which I guess is why it was recommended for parents of Asher’s team to sign up (i.e. we wouldn’t be missing him playing!). We worked from 8:30-10:30.
It was not hard and was… pleasantly fun. I guess. Business was a bit slow. 😅
I got thinking, though, and texted SHU: Why do you never have to volunteer at anything for sports?!?!
I don’t think she’ll mind me calling her out, lol. Her honest answer was basically, I don’t know! They never ask!
Which kind of blows my mind, because our sports here in Wisconsin, THEY ASK. Granted currently the boys are mostly in school sports, where I feel like volunteering makes sense, since there’s not like, an unlimited budget to hire outside help to work at a a concession stand for 2 hours.
But we’ve done the full gamut of competitive sports (private/ club) and we’ve always been asked to volunteer for those, too. Especially swim, which also makes sense, just given the sheer number of bodies needed. (18 people JUST to time the lanes! Not counting everything else that has to happen….)
It just made me wonder if this is a more regional thing? I can’t really think of many ways that the volunteer asks would be totally avoided though, unless the experiences were drastically different or the coaches somehow were expected to do a lot more themselves outside of coaching (for probably not a lot of pay…).
I learned how to make popcorn in a machine. 😉
Ivan figured out how to add the “2 donut deal” as a separate button on the iPad. haha.
Donuts for sale, bought beforehand by another mom volunteer…. (the Concessions Chairperson)….
On Sunday I made chili for the Packer game and this DELICIOUS pumpkin streusel coffee cake. It was new to me and I can highly recommend! It was sooooo good!! Make it.
I have not decorated for Halloween yet, but did sort through my box to check my lights. I always put 2 light up things in our front window, but sadly, found that the purple bat was burned out.
My pumpkin still worked. I went on the hunt for a bat replacement and had an oddly hard time finding the same kind I’ve bought for years.
I ended up settling on this slightly more expensive/ sturdier skeleton head with green eyes that swirl!
Looking forward to putting them up! Halloween decor/ anything spooky usually goes up here on or around October 1st. 🙂
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for an hour long meeting getting cancelled today. 😉
We are rarely asked to volunteer for sports. There is a parent run booster club at our high school that staffs the snack bar etc. I have volunteered at other PTA fundraiser type stuff in the past. But I have not been asked to volunteer for this type of thing even once in my 19+ years as a parent. We are in suburban NY.
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Wow, really?! I know you have a soccer player too.
Some of the things volunteers are asked for soccer are:
-an announcer at the game (reading off the starting line up, announcing the goals)
-a parent to manage the time clock up on the scoreboard and adjust the scores
-a parent to communicate subs in and out during the game TO the announcer so they can announce the subs
-help at the concession stand sometimes.
-there are parent rep volunteers who do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of communicating things to the parents.
– Parents organize placing the order for the senior banners/ and the photo day for those senior soccer photos
– Parents organize “senior night” and someone buys flowers for Parent night, etc.
-A parent committee organizes the end of the season team banquet (food, cake, a little decor).
-The parent reps also help organize a pre-season time picnic.
-Another parent or two organize the ordering of subs/ food for the kids to eat on away game nights when they have to ride the bus from school (leaving school at 3:30 and game not until 7 for Varsity…).
-There’s a parent committee that helps organize food/ snacks for the team for overnight tournament in September.
Among other things I’m probably forgetting! And this is just soccer…. I suppose some of those things could go away, but in my experience, every sport my kids have done has had Parent Night and Senior night, and every team organizes away game food, etc. So I don’t think this unique to Ethan’s school! (I have one in public and one in private and generally same experience at both!).
What’s your team’s secret?!
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WOW!
Yes, some of that we don’t do, like the meals when they will be on the bus. Kids just bring their own food.
There is stuff that comes from the PTA athletic committee and gets paid for that way too like flowers, volunteers at the snack bar. When it comes to the volunteers–they are typically bigger jobs, so you volunteer for the PTA athletic committee for the year, but there are economies of scale like someone calls the florist and gets all the flowers for parents on senior night and senior night for every team is the same week (homecoming) so it’s just one big order (also only 1 parent calling and placing the whole order). But then that is all your volunteering for the school year. You don’t get nickel and dimed all year long.
The end of season dinner is at the local tennis club and families just pay for it (it’s teen friend banquet food so not particularly pricey.
It is expected the team captains’ parents will communicate with the other parents about stuff.
The score board and announcements are run by the athletic department staff (the same guy has been announcing every game for every sport for the last 16 years at least).
My kids go to public school, but our district is tiny, just one school k-12 with 100-120 kids per grade with lots of resources shared across the whole district. So it really functions in many ways more like a private school.
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Those are some very nice photos and I would have a hard time choosing between them as well.
I am definitely going to have to give the pumpkin streusel coffee cake a try. I love making all things pumpkin this time of year and that sounds right up my alley.
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Let me know if you try it! We all loved it and it disappeared fast. 🙂
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I am in the Midwest too. The only thing I have ever been asked to volunteer for in sports (daughter is a club swimmer in 7th grade–there’s no school swim team till 9th grade where we live) is once I served as a timer at a swim meet. And I don’t think I was very good at it lol.
I do get the sense that other parents in suburban areas where we live get asked to do a lot more, though! My daughter is on the city club swim team, and each suburb also has their own club swim team. Our facility is not very nice and the suburban areas have beautiful pools so they end up hosting all the meets! Our city pool has never hosted a meet for the club team. When we go to meets it appears to me that the “host” team parents are always running around doing a lot of volunteering 🙂
Also, my kids aren’t in high school yet so there isn’t senior night and parent night and things like that. For our end-of-season banquet it is just a potluck and each family brings one thing to share. We all Venmo in some cash for the coach’s gift and someone buys a card to stick it in.
My daughter also does theater and the volunteer ask there is similarly minimal–for each play she’s in, I just do one shift of ticket sales at the door and then maybe bring in a baked good to sell at intermission.
Ethan’s senior pics are soooo handsome.
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Awww, Asher looks great in every photo! I totally understand why you have a hard time choosing!
Lots of volunteering opportunities around here, though we do have some trouble getting enough people to raise their hands. (I say this after being on the PTA board for a couple of years.) One of the biggest, thorniest needs for help is with food — for sports practices and games, for tech week during the school play, for special events for the grade levels. I am going to blame residual Covid stuff on this — our school banned homemade stuff during Covid, and it hasn’t really ever come back from that. I think parents really enjoy baking instead of being asked to bring chips or whatever. Although I could be wrong!
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Those pictures are SO GREAT!!! Do you get all of them as a digital download? I’m dreading Angie’s senior photos so much that I don’t think we’re going to do them. Tonight was our homecoming dance, and we took photos- in almost every one of them, Angie was slouching and/or scowling. Or, she likes to look “serious” in photos, and ends up looking extremely depressed. I think out of about 50 photos I took, there were three that were pretty good. So- I’m not sure I want to pay money to go through that for senior photos, and she doesn’t care. We still have to have a studio photo taken, if she wants to be in the yearbook- so we’ll just do that.
I have a confession to make- they ask parents to volunteer for band events, and I just don’t do it. I don’t mean they’re asking me personally and I say no- they just send out a general announcement that they need volunteers. To be honest, if I wanted to volunteer at the football games I would pretty much have to go straight from work and be on duty until the end of the game, and I think I might have a nervous breakdown. They always have enough volunteers, but it’s probably the same people doing it over and over again. I tell myself that they probably enjoy it (???) and also- I know a couple of them don’t work. If I didn’t have a job I would definitely be volunteering. Still- I’m sure there are people who have full time jobs AND volunteer. Ahem, like you! It sounds like your situation is a little different, in that all the parents are expected to pitch in. It does seem like a lot though.
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Love his photos! I’m on the east coast in the mid-Atlantic area, and have elementary and middle schoolers. For swim, parents are required to volunteer 15 hrs/season/family for your children to have a spot on the 200+ children’s (competitive) team of 5-18yos. I think there’s just enough demand in our area to make that requirement.
In other sports, parents are constantly asked to volunteer. Most kids have at least one parent volunteering in some capacity, but some don’t.
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Those are some great pictures!
I am also craving coffee streusel now… good things we’re having a fall mingle potluck at work tomorrow with all kinds of yummy things.
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When you pay 5-figure sports bills (dance and dive) there is no volunteering LOL. But we did vlounteer for club hockey and club swim and all other school sports.
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