Miscellaneous October

While Fall is slowly settling in with a few new leaf colors here and there and cooler temperatures, we're settling in to life as a family with a vengeance. Our family calendar for October is completely crazy, but in a totally good way.

School stuff includes three teacher conferences, two book fairs, Family Reading Night at Claudia's school, a school field trip to Connor Prairie (Jordan), Donuts For Dads (Sam), and a band concert (Claudia).

Social stuff will be two meet and greets with the democrats--one with children and one at a bar without children and we joined a group of families at our God-optional church that does stuff every month and that should be fun because everyone we've met has been really interesting.

It looks like Jordan and Sammy are going to be starting Brownies and will be in the same troop so they'll be meeting either every week or every other week. Fair warning—we'll be selling Girl Scout cookies in February!

The girls have their fall break this month. Sam's is a couple of days and Claudia and Jordan will be out of school for a week and will probably be in Texas for at least part of that (that's October 23-27 for those of you in Texas).

October 22nd, we're going to Chicago to see the awesome Jason and Leah run the Chicago Marathon. Jamie and Sammy went last year and said they had a blast and that Leah's dad, Scott, organized everyone in such a way that they got to see Jason and Leah at various points along the course.

I volunteered at a homeless shelter and orientation is coming up so I'll be doing that. I think Claudia's religious education class is working with the same organization this year, so that's pretty exciting.

And I should have a new job by then (fingers crossed!) and Jamie's started tutoring algebra and trig and he's going to be preparing to take the first actuarial exam that's in November.

And then, of course, there's Halloween. We're already decorating and trying to figure out party food and costumes. So far Jordan's going to be Audrey Hepburn, I'm going to do something with a beehive hairdo (either put chenille bees all over it or go as the urban legend and have spiders coming out of it) and everyone else is undecided.

Miscellaneous Weekend

We had a really nice, low key weekend.

Saturday we had breakfast on the patio with lots of ducks dropping by and then that afternoon, while Jamie worked with a student he's tutoring, I took the girls to the pet store to look at dogs, to Sephora to try on makeup, out for icecream and to the park.

Sunday we volunteered to do the coffee service at our God-optional church and then we ran home, made lunch and salsa and watched the Colts game while the girls went outside and dug up worms, rolled down the hill, and ran around in the strong wind we had that day with the leaves blowing all around. Jamie's pretty fun to watch football with and I learned some new things, but he does look a little tense when I ask him things like, "hey, why is Peyton Manning on the GROUND?!?". After the game, Jamie took the little girls to the park at his and Sam's old apartment so they could play with Sam's friends there and Claudia and I stayed here and played trumpet and clarinet together.

This weekend we're having a sleep over/Meercat manor season premier party for the girlies and the girls want to make a meercat cake for it. Wish us luck!

Claudia reading in a sunny spot:



Breakfast guests:



I was taking pictures of the girls at breakfast on Saturday morning and I was taking a lot of them, just one immediately after another, with the sound on the camera turned off so I wouldn't be *completely* annoying. It was interesting to look at the photos afterwards, and maybe it's just me, but the littles are looking really in tune with one another.















Here are the littles at Sephora:



At the park:

Happy Birthday to Leah!

Leah is our inspirational sister-in-law who is working on her PhD in physics and training to run a marathon. She's very cool and is one of those people you would want to hang out with even if they weren't in your family.

We hope you had a great birthday and that this next year will be fabulous and everything you wish for!

Little bits of Autumn

Bedtime Story

Blankets and candles and Jamie reading us Hank the Cowdog on the patio.

Miscellaneous Monday

Last week Claudia brought home a thing from school about Math Night on September 18th. She did not want to go. I said we were going. She was very upset because it was going to be "embarrassing". I insisted and arranged a babysitter because younger siblings weren't allowed. There were tears. Then while she was at school on Monday, I found out the event was only for 7th and 8th graders so I cancelled the babysitter. Then when I met her bus yesterday (it was raining) and told her we weren't going after all because it wasn't for sixth graders, she told me she wanted to go, the teachers said sixth graders could go and one of her friends was going to be there. So. Jamie ended up taking her (it was Claudia's pick) and I stayed home with Jordan (we read and drew pictures with charcoal--Jordan's working on an imaginary friend series). Here are Jamie and Claudia on their way out the door. They had a great time and apparently, and I'll bet you didn't know this about them, they RULE at 1-2-3 Snap.



Last night, while Jamie and I were watching tv I was taking pictures of him:



After a while, he favored me with his best Jamie Zoolander:



Sunset last night:



Jamie and I had lunch together yesterday. He could only get away for a few minutes so we ate in the car while it rained outside. This is a tree branch through rain and glass:

Friday Night

Last night we decided to shake Pizza/Meercat Manor night up a little so we brought the kids into the kitchen with us. They all three made pizzas and garlic sauce for the pasta, and Jordan and Sam made salad dressing.

After that we ate and had coke floats (it turns out Sammy doesn't like coke floats, she likes rootbeer floats and Jordan just doesn't like the whole float concept at all) and watched the meercats in a rerun (season premier is the 29th and we'll get to see if Socrates survived that snake bite!). After that was over we made a dinosaur cake. The best part about the dinosaur cake is the frosting is so chock full of red dye #40, it tastes *bad*.








We're all reading Hank the Cow Dog (the first one) together so we made it through chapter 2.

Rolling down the hill

Quite a pair

Sammy and Jordan on the way to school this morning.

Foil Animals

Lately it seems Claudia's creating things constantly and with anything she can get her hands on. Last night I found these little animals, made out of bits of aluminum foil, on the coffee table. Unfortunately, the photos don't do them justice.

More duck action

This evening when Claudia went out on the back patio, ducks rushed over to her from across the pond. It's the girl with crispy breakfast buns!

Here are pics of Jamie, Sammy and Claudia feeding the ducks. Jordan opted not to participate this time. There's also a picture of Sam and the heron. Also, here's a video of the feeding of the ducks.