1. My apologies for the lack of a post last Tuesday. For some reason my trip to DC was unusually exhausting and I fell asleep as soon as I got back to my hotel after work. (Admittedly, that was 9:30 pm and I'd been up since 3:45 am....)
2. I was glad to be home with some very happy faces. M woke us up early on Saturday with news of B's bloody nose. She was delighted to discover I was there :) Saturday basically only included soccer and lunch at Cow Calf Hay, which was just about enough activity for all of us after a busy week with me away.
3. HUGE thank you to my Mom especially for helping with the kids in my absence. I know it is tough and that she has to put up with more nonsense than she ought to during her time with my littles. It is huge for all of us that she can help out. Thanks also to Able and Brent's parents for helping before and after my mom's shift. Brent, as usual, did a great job in my absence and always is so supportive about my work travels, which I greatly appreciate. The next trip isn't until February so everyone will get some time to recover after these two rapid succession trips this fall.
4. Our garden has been particularly wild this summer. As sometimes happens with my gardening, we planted it and then largely ignored it. Sure, we picked the odd herb or flower and sometimes even a few small tomatoes, but it mostly ran wild. On this cool Saturday we tried to rescue it from the chaos a bit before the last freeze. M loves climbing through these two tomato cages to her secret garden, and I love it as well. We picked about 1/2 of the remaining carrots and made them into dinner immediately.
5. We also made homemade Oreo-style cookies. We mostly used the Smitten Kitchen's recipe, but as suggested by my friends at Savory Spice Shop OKC we subbed in a 1/4 of a cup of black onyx cocoa powder for the regular cocoa (alternatively Savory Spice has a very very similar recipe here).
6. Here are our kids at play (you can almost see M behind the mailbox). Can you believe B is actually attempting to climb our tree? Of late, they are going outdoors more and more after school with less pushing. (This also helps them avoid chores that must be done if they stay inside, but it seems like a fair trade off). I love watching them play together and with our neighbors. (Ps. Two of the neighborhood kids randomly joined us for dinner on Monday. That certainly spiced up our evening fun!)
7. And here they are gardening--- no, I pretty much never get them all looking at the camera together. Sunday, they managed to play outside in the backyard, just the three of them, for quite awhile, allowing Brent and I to finish up our painting project safely before bedtime. I loved watching them and observing how E kept trying (sometimes successfully) to insert himself into the mix and then other times stood back holding a badminton racket or something and safely observing.
8. At soccer, E loved playing with these cones he found on the sidelines. Granddaddy was quite surprised at how much fun he had. I would not be surprised it E gets some cones of his own to play with in the future!
9. B was the team hero at soccer on Saturday for a totally different reason. The other team didn't have enough players to field even a 4 person team (6 and under teams here typically play with five players). B, at the request of his coach, turned his jersey inside out and played with the other team for maybe 1/2 of the first quarter. He played his very best and we (and the rest of our team and parents) were so proud of him and so very encouraging. When he came to the bench, I could see he was struggling a little with the situation and luckily the other team had another member show up and he got to switch back and be a super dragonfly again!
10. My December Daily kit from SC arrived and B was very excited to try out the stamps. I loved that he was crafting, but possibly better still was what he did with them. He took the various images and words and built them together in different ways to make sentences composed of a mix of both shapes and words. It was so fun and creative. I loved it!
PS. Happy Birthday today to one of my oldest and dearest friends Tracie and my beloved Grandpa Dotter. You are both awesome!
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