UPitP- The fourth week of August- 24-30

Some bigger things happened this week than usual...Various members of our family had/ experienced one or more of these:  a birthday, got a car, were social, started college, made desserts, had a cross country meet. One of the weeks in August was bound to not be too incredibly mundane. This one was it for us :).

Starting off, Abby started college this week. High school/ college that is. She's taking all of her classes through a local community college so she'll get college credit for them as well as high school credit. She'll not have to set foot in her high school again. She's really excited about that (she may go into the high school if schools are allowed to have fall plays and she decides to be in the play). She's doing all of her classes online and does not need to be online at certain times. Rather, all of her professors post homework/ projects that are due by a certain time/date. The flexibility will be nice because she'll be able to continue working at Donnie's law firm part time. She took the entire week off of work since it was the first week of college and she didn't know what to expect school work- wise. Now she has an idea so she knows she can get some work hours in. On Friday, she took a quiz for one of her classes and received a 95% on it. She said that students can retake the quiz over and over again to get try to get a better grade. I said that a 95% sounds good to me (her high school GPA is good at over a 4.0 and that's what she'll use when she applies to colleges, rendering this year's grades much less meaningless than her past years' grades. Plus CCP (the college program she's in) classes are weighted meaning a 95% turns into a 100% when weight is added). She's off to a good start!

The last of Abby's textbooks for school arrived in the mail- I want to take History of Photography, too!! I guess I will have to settle for reading Abby's book :).

Donnie had a better than average than week due to an exciting event that happened on his birthday. He received word that his Porsche(!) arrived in Ohio and was ready for him to pick up. He bought the car in Pennsylvania early this month, sight unseen. He didn't want a car payment which meant he needed to buy used and wanted to buy past a certain year due to some common and hugely costly problems that Porsches from a certain year and older commonly have. So, he had fewer options when used Porsches became available at dealerships. When he found one that met his criteria, he bought it, even though he had to pay transfer costs. Getting his car was the best possible birthday present! He bought the car for Abby to drive. Since she does not care to drive at all and cared not one bit about what car she'd drive, Donnie decided to buy a car that he wanted- hence the Porshe!! 

This was the first time that Donnie drove the Porsche- I heard it before I saw it (I was upstairs in our bedroom). I heard a loud noise so I looked out a second story window and saw (and heard) the Porsche in our driveway for the first time. 

He likes it a little :).

Alyssa had a cross country meet on Saturday morning. I feel bad complaining since it, you know, happened. BUT, she had to be at the school at 6:15 am to catch the bus to the opposing school, Northmont which is about forty minutes away. Donnie couldn't go to the meet because he had a board meeting in Dayton. I could not convince Abby to get up in time to leave the house by 7:35 so I drove to Northmont by myself to watch the meet. Wasn't sure what to expect- I'm glad I had a mask with me because in addition to social distancing (which is quite easy at an outdoors xc meet), all attendees had to wear a mask. Anyway, Alyssa ran pretty well. Her time was good. She had a lot of energy at the end so she probably could have run the whole race faster but she hasn't had much experience running that specific distance. Her goal is to improve on her time.  After we got home from cross country, Alyssa had a couple of hours before she had to go to the high school for high school orientation. She had to sign up for a date and time and chose Saturday- the weekday times conflicted with cross country practice. One of her friends signed up at the same time and her friend's parents picked Alyssa up and took her to the high school while I picked both girls up when it was over. Orientation went ok- Alyssa is still nervous about starting high school but at least she knows a lot more than she did about the school before orientation. When Alyssa got home from that, she and Abby worked on making a chocolate eclair cake for Donnie's birthday celebration. 

XC country- I guess social distancing happened once the girls from the four schools started running :)

Cross country cutie!

Friday evening, we had friends over for dinner. I was slightly disappointed that the main dish that I made- bourbon peach pork, didn't taste as fantastic as I thought it sounded like it should... That's what I get for trying something new with company. It tasted fine just not fantastic- I'll not spend the big bucks on alcohol (not being a drinker, I rarely buy alcohol and am always shocked at the prices) for the dish again. We had a fun visit with our friends which is all that counted.

I'll likely not buy this again...

... or make this again.

Pasta salad- copy cat DLM Pine Club pasta salad was delicious (somehow just lost the picture) as were the double chocolate cookies.

We entertained in the dining room for the first time since that room had a mini make over.

Sunday, we had Donnie's family over to celebrate his birthday. The girls made the eclair cake for it on Saturday. Sunday morning, before we watched church, Alyssa and I made rice krispie treats and caramel brownies. The house was still picked up from when we had guests over on Friday so, yeah, for minimal clean up before guests came over :). Had a nice visit with Donnie's family and with that, our weekend and week were over.

I somehow didn't get a photo of our finished treats but I did get a picture of the dirty pans. 

I normally make a double batch of brownies but with Jacob not here and others eating healthier than normal, I decided to make a single batch. Couldn't find the right sized pan so I had to use an 11 x 7.  I  like thick brownies so I tried to make the pan smaller.

Sort of worked :).