Catching Up

I had decided the blog post to break this month+ long silence would just be short, bullet point blurbs of all the stuff that has been happening lately.

I sat down and wrote one bullet point (Timm's computer monitor bit the dust so I went out and bought a brand new laptop. Thank you, Dave Ramsey, for changing my financial life so I can do stuff like that"). I went down to the next line and couldn't think of anything else to write.

Yet somehow I am feeling completely overwhelmed with stuff lately.

But the stuff that is overwhelming me is pretty boring and it would require lots of typing if I were to share it all with you. Suffice it to say God is working. And so is Satan. And like so often is the case, it's hard to tell which one is which.

Moving on...

This is one thing that we have been up to:

family portraits with my friend Amy at Tuco Topo Photography

This is something else:

Annual trip to the pumpkin patch at Iron's Fruit Farm

And this too:

Our first ever trip to HallZOOween (the Halloween festival at the zoo)

 This was a good day:

Just hanging out at Mt Airy Forest, taking a hike through the woods, and feeding slices of bread to the fish in the pond, enjoying the fall colors and beautiful weather.

Oh, and we can't leave out this:

Trick or Treating!

I have to talk about Halloween... Iris had been talking for the past month or more about being a pirate for Halloween. I already had in mind an adorable DIY pirate costume for her. I just needed to get a few pieces from the thrift store. I only recently decided to dress Asher up as Luke Skywalker since his hair is unbelievably shaggy. But I figured it would be fairly simple to pull of a DIY costume for him, too. The Saturday before Halloween, we are in the car on our way to the thrift store to get all the components for awesome homemade pirate and jedi when Iris informs me she'd rather be a fairy princess. Whaa? Since it was last minute, I figured she could just wear a fancy dress she already has plus wings and a crown. The result was sort of a mess... if she'd been wearing a pointy hat instead of the crown she could have passed for a witch! Oh, well. She was just happy to be wearing wings. Asher, on the other hand, was a dashing and adorable Luke. He was completely uncooperative and refused to stand still for a decent photo, but he got all kinds of compliments from strangers! I was proud of what I pulled off for only $6. If I had taken a photo of the shirt before I transformed it into his tunic, I would post a whole blog entirely devoted to making his costume!

Aside from the varying degrees of success with the kids' homemade costumes, I feel like I ruined trick or treating for my kids. I have a cold, and I haven't been sleeping well and Halloween night I was at my worst. I had zero patience and really didn't feel like walking around outside with my uncooperative jedi. By the time we were done for the night, I immediately ushered the kids up the stairs and into bed without even going through all their loot together. So, out of guilt, my kids ate tons of candy today. And they probably will tomorrow, too.