I get slightly manicky when we have a warm day in November and feel a desperate need to get outside and enjoy it before the weather turns cold again. So we had several impromptu park dates where I rushed the kids out the door as soon as they were home solely because it was 70 degrees outside and we NEEDED to be out in it. And I'm glad I did, even I'd actually rather be lazy and stay home and work on dinner. Outdoor time is important. And it leads to pictures like this:
That's my boy!
I also keep taking pictures of the fall leaves. I'm sorry-- it's probably really boring to look at on my blog, but I just can't help myself. I know all the color will be gone soon and I just need to take it in as best I can before the moment passes!
Carter Mountain all orange, and that burning bush! Be still my heart!
And here's my street, so pretty and colorful!
I haven't just been wandering around looking at leaves. All the little kids got their first covid shot, so that was exciting:
As always, they were VERY brave! The school was smart and had a shave ice truck there so they got to indulge while they waited their 15 minutes. Everyone was happy!
And one Saturday morning while I was at the church crafting (can I just say how much I LOVE doing crafts when someone else provides all the supplies and tells me very specifically what to do??? It's the BEST!), Craig busted out our newest Christmas tree! Usually we decorate the day after Thanksgiving, but I have family here for the holiday and you have to make such a HUGE mess to decorate, we didn't want to do all that while we had company. But if we waited until after they left, we wouldn't have nearly enough time! So we had to start early. Obviously. Craig has been talking about getting a tall skinny tree for our entryway ever since we moved here, so it was exciting to finally actually do it. And it looks great!
And Adam and I hiked Ragged Mountain again! And as you can see, it was gorgeous!
Adam actually took both these pictures, but he was nice and shared them with me. Isn't there a painting that looks a lot like this???
My Japanese maple looks a bit shaggy, but the colors are lovely!
They've been building cool stuff at the other end of the downtown mall, and it made for a fun photo op! (Notice you can see our reflection in the mirrored ceiling above us!)
And I finally got Camille in to see a pediatric ophthalmologist! It turns out that bump on her eyelid is a chalazion, which I had never heard of. But it's basically like a sty, but the infection comes from an oil gland in your eyelid, rather than your eyelashes. It's easily treated with antibiotics, so it's not a big deal but I'm glad we're FINALLY getting it taken care of! She's had that bump since August!
Anyway, driving her back to school and seeing her in the back seat calmly looking out the window as she munched on her sandwich, wearing these glasses to protect her dilated pupils was the highlight of my day. How do kids manage to be so hilarious without even knowing it???
AND speaking of unintentional hilarity, I glanced over at Colton's drawing in church yesterday and got a bit of a shock. It took me a minute to realize he had just failed to guess how to spell the word "future"... (It helped when I saw the rest of his drawings that were about the past and present!)
My children are constantly finding new ways to surprise me!
And we just keep chugging along! Kendra had an opportunity to play with the high school marching band. I think this was a way of trying to "recruit" the middle schoolers into sticking with band? and the fun thing is that the middle school band teacher and the marching band leader are MARRIED so they could coordinate it! How cute is that? Anyway, that day was FREEZING but Craig and I braved the cold and watched her play, which was very fun!
She's right in the middle, wearing a black vest over a yellow sweatshirt
I don't really think the recruitment part of the plan worked, though, because Kendra came home and announced that she had a lot of fun and now wants to join the color guard! You can lead a horse to water...
Three of our kids got to go to Jump! for their church activities, and they had a fabulous time!
Bentley discovers that dunking is more fun with a trampoline
I feel like this sort of sums up Ryder's existence...
Camille walked into the living room the other day and announced, "I gorilla!" and began beating her chest.
I thought the gloves on her feet really sell this. That and the CrAzY eYeS!
I tried to get over my fear of monkeys enough to appreciate this gesture.
And Ryder and Colton finished their baseball season! They were undefeated, which made them very happy! And they had a lot of fun, which made ME very happy! So it was an all-around win!
Yay for the Purple Panthers! (Colton and Ryder, in case you can't find them, are the two with jackets!)
That last game was pretty chilly, so I'm glad the season is done. And I'm really looking forward to sleeping in on Saturdays again! Also of note from the season, Camille became friends with another little sister who had to come to her brother's games:
Emma's parents were very nice, too, and offered to invite us to their homestead where they have chickens and goats, so I'm excited for that! I love other people's farms!!!
AND, Ryder scored a run at that last game and Craig captured it on film, so that was great:
Unfortunately, the team's end-of-year party was held on Sunday at a brewery, so we decided not to attend. This made Ryder extremely mad, so to try and make it up to him, I told him we'd have a family game night instead. Since I generally don't really enjoy playing games, this was a big deal and I tried to make it really fun and not be my normal curmudgeonly self. And, of course, we had a great time so now I have to try and do better more often. {Groan.} But-- really-- yay for family fun!
Playing "Watch Your Mouth"
(And Bentley was happy because his new sweatshirt finally arrived!)
After it being so cold last week, the weather warmed up again and we've been getting highs well into the 70s. And I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I've been trying to take the kids to the park and just enjoy it before it dips back down again.
How's this for idyllic?
Everything is just so pretty right now! How was autumn ever not my favorite season?
I rolled out of bed Tuesday morning and hurried to the polls to vote. (I can't believe Virginia is considered a swing state again after being so blue for so long!) Then as soon as I was home, I carried all my dining room chairs down to the basement, grabbed Craig's drill, and began taking them apart. I think I got one finished before the kids found me and wanted a turn with Daddy's power tools.
My "Before" shot. Sort of like photographing a bruise, this picture really doesn't properly show just how dirty these poor chairs were...
It took about five minutes to pop those cushions off and I figured I was all ready for Adam to come! But then I realized I also needed to take the cushions apart. And it turned out that this meant removing HUNDREDS of staples from each chair. HUNDREDS. That was pretty much all Craig and I did for the rest of the day, was painstakingly pick staples out of each cushion.
The kids helped with that, too. For about five minutes...
Adam arrived and got right to work on the one cushion I'd finished. I tried to pick up my pace since he was clearly working much faster than I was!
He let the kids help, probably in an effort to slow down so I could try to catch up!
And we just worked like that all day!!! At some point I took a break to give my aching hand a rest, and I cleaned the wooden frames of the chairs. They had weird food dribbled down the sides of them so that needed to be fixed! And Craig polished them, too. And Adam did ALL of the actual reupholstering part! I kind of thought I'd be sitting around watching him work (and feeling slightly guilty to not be helping more), I had no idea it would take me just as long to remove all the staples! I think we finished around five, so I quickly threw some dinner together (I managed to have a side dish that Adam could eat, and Kendra had made banana bread for him the day before) and Craig set up the new cushions in the garage and scotch-guarded them.
And in case you think I was exaggerating about how dirty those original covers were:
Eeeeeeewwwwwww........
I was all set to screw the cushions back on the next morning, but I was really busy and then when I finally tried to do it in the afternoon, the screws were going in wonky and I got nervous and just made Craig do it while I was at book club. I came home to these lovely chairs all ready to go:
It's hard to see, but the cushions have a little bit of blue in them, to go with my curtains.
I LOVE my new chairs so much!!! Now I won't be embarrassed to invite people (like Adam and Allen!!!) over for dinner! I need to hurry up and do that before my kids destroy these new ones..!
We've stuck to our new system wherein Craig sits down with each kid and helps them pick out a Halloween costume on the internet. Thank goodness for that. Then my job was to keep them from destroying their costumes before the big day. I let them try everything on ONCE to make sure it all fit (and also as a bribe to get them to practice!). That's when we learned that Camille knows nothing about storm troopers, as she thought this was the perfect storm trooper pose:
But it made her happy and it made me laugh, so it's all good! And speaking of making me laugh...
The rainbow unicorn never gets old!
Ryder's costume came with a mask, but there really wasn't any good way to actually wear the stupid thing-- the elastic it came with couldn't fit around anyone's head. So Craig decided to do makeup on Ryder instead and--- as always-- he did a fantastic job:
Two Face!
One more shot-- I just can't resist!
At the last minute, Bentley decided to wear my giraffe costume
And here's everyone all ready to go for the ward party! (Kendra is a queen, but she didn't want to wear her crown for the Trunk-or-Treat; Colton is the Grim Reaper)
Poor Craig was so stressed about the weather for the trunk-or-treat! Our stake has determined that we're not allowed to eat indoors for church activities right now and it was POURING that day. But the rain cleared up and it all went great! Huzzah!
I do enjoy sitting in my car giving out candy!
We finally let the kids carve their pumpkins Sunday afternoon. Craig mostly helped out as needed while I puttered around in the kitchen. We were sort of in a rush to get to the neighborhood shindig, and I was nervous about my costume...
This year, the women in my neighborhood decided we should all dress up like different iterations of Britney Spears. Unfortunately, by the time I noticed all the texts flying back and forth about this, the only one left was I'm a Slave 4 U Britney... 😳 Obviously, I wasn't going to be donning a bikini (not enough time for the surgery necessary to make THAT work!), but people helped me figure out a few work-arounds and so this was what we ended up with:
Craig got me the mic from school, and Camille graciously loaned me her stuffed animal snake, so, as Craig put it, This costume practically built itself!
All the grown ups
Most of the kids
Owen and Ryder
Queen Kendra and Huntress Eliza
Craig took the little kids trick-or-treating, and I sat by my fire pit in the driveway with Bentley passing out candy. It was a lovely day! And we have more candy than we will ever know what to do with!
