Ganson Family Scrapbook: August 2021

**Pictures loaded backwards, so this goes mostly from the end of August to the beginning:

Homecoming Race in Chester, mid-August. I think Micah ran a 25:46 5k... (by the end of the season, his PR was 21:26.)

Exploring Westminster Park since we were quarantined....

Uh oh!! I had sinus drainage during the first week of CC, which I thought was from something I was allergic to because it started when I went for a walk in the neighborhood for the first time. But on Friday morning, I woke up with no sense of taste or smell. I couldn't get in to get a Covid test anywhere, and there weren't any at-home tests anywhere on the shelves, but Lana Shaw had an extra test... which of course confirmed that I had been going around with Covid all week. Whoops! I'm pretty sure I picked it up during teen group from one of the kids who was starting to get sick. So sadly, our whole family had to miss the second week of CC. :( (3rd week for Micah.) And Micah had to miss a cross-country race at Metrolina. Micah had actually been vaccinated just two weeks before I got it!

Cross Country practice at Winthrop Lake...

First Day of Foundations and Essentials!

We had a REALLY big Essentials class this year:

Abby's Foundations class... (taught by Ms. Leif)

First presentation of the year:

First time we get to take first-day-of-school pictures in front of the new house :)

Shoes optional, evidently:

Abby made the All Right Club!

Reading on the front porch on the rocking chairs we got from Larry Carroll's parents' house after they died...

Matching cousins at Cross Country practice :)

Teen group...

We went to an Immersive Van Gogh exhibit... I thought it was cool; the kids thought it was "okay." :) We learned a lot about Van Gogh and art though!

Painting with textures...

Essentials and Foundations orientation and the first day of classes for Challenge....

Ms. Heather Gould/Challenge I (9th grade)....

Branson, the ladies' man while we pray. :)

The morning Micah went to Challenge, I dropped Abby off to play at her friend Kelsey's house, and brought Kelsey's brother Chris back to our house to play with Caleb... then we all met up at the Foundations/Essentials orientation.

Challenge Classes on their first day!

Ready for school ahead of schedule. :)

We went to O'Charley's for dinner one night. We hadn't been to many sit-down restaurants as a family since Covid had started, but we used to love O'Charley's. We found out the burgers are now really gross and they were so short-staffed that we had to wait a crazy long time to even order or get food.... and then we felt bad even eating there because the waitress was so stressed. It's not much fun eating out since the pandemic. :(

Typical.... not wanting sister to be a part of the picture. :)

So we had a lizard living in our house. We only saw it once every few weeks or so running under the fridge or the oven, but and we couldn't figure out where it was hiding... so Caleb concocted a trap for it using spinach and a cup taped to a yard stick. (It didn't work. But we eventually got the lizard back outside. :))