Jack had his flag football tournament on Saturday. He was Christmas-level excited about it and even woke up extra early the morning of the tournament. His team this year has been really good and they went undefeated all season. Unfortunately, their best player was out of town, and just enough of his team showed up that they didn't need to forfeit but there weren't any substitutes either. The first game was really exciting. His team played excellently, even without many of their best players, and they ended up winning in overtime. Their next game was the semi-finals against one of the best teams, and they lost. Jack was devasted, but we had some good talks about practice (his team didn't really practice at all this season and just let their best players carry them), and about actionable goals vs dreams (he kept saying his goal was to win the tournament, but there wasn't really any action going into that). Even though he was sad they didn't win, Jack played a great game and it was fun to watch. On the way home I had a great idea for Jack to get some daily practice by strapping some flags around savvy, and then having Jack try to pull her flags while Jared and I toss her fetch ball back and forth to each other😂 This has actually been more effective and fun than expected so we may be keeping it up until next season to see if it really improves Jack's game. It's great exercise for Savvy too and just an all-around good time.
Other things this week....i'm kind of blanking honestly. Oh! Jared got sucked into prime day and wanted to finish all our Christmas shopping for the kids. I honestly wasn't ready for this, but knew Jared would buy all the gifts for them on prime day regardless, so I would need to figure out what I wanted for them if I was going to have input. We scrambled a good list together and I think succeeded in buying enough for the kids' Christmas. I'll end up being grateful when Black Friday rolls around and most of our shopping is done.
I think that's about it for this week! Our house is decorated for Halloween and I am pulling up Halloween shows and movies as needed. I wish I could get it together enough to host some neighbors before daylight savings hits us, but with this hurricane weather and wanting to figure out family pictures, that may have to wait. We are hosting our primary class this week if the weather holds up. I'm still feeling really grateful that we are not preparing for a move this fall. I need to hold onto gratitude for that. I'm loving having space for seasonal activities this year, even if there isn't enough space for ALL the activities and hosting, etc. It may take another few seasons but we'll get around to meeting more neighbors. Now for some pictures from our week:
^^The patio furniture that was formerly on our front porch is now living on our back patio, so we are in the market for some new front porch furniture (especially since we have an unobstructed valley view this year we'd like to enjoy, as it will definitely be blocked by new homes sometime next year). Before looking into all the Prime Day/end of summer clearance sales, I went to check out my favorite antique mall to see if they had anything great and cheap in their outdoor section. Nope. It was all mediocre and expensive so we ended up ordering a little porch set on Prime day after all.
^^Alice is still young enough that I'm really only catching about half of Jack's football games and spending the other half helping Alice stay entertained, but each season I am able to watch a little more, and that's a lot of fun.
^^We put up the carved wood mirror and brass candle sconces I thrifted years ago in our entryway. It is PERFECT for Halloween. Eventually I will need to replace the old wooden table with something ultra-modern and possibly acrylic to balance it all out. But I am LOVING this corner for spooky season.
We had our first backyard fall gathering over the weekend. It was a spontaneous evening with cousins, pizza, and s'mores. It's the backyard gathering I've dreamed of for years. I need to remember that October is the best time for backyard hosting--the sun starts setting sooner, the temperatures aren't as hot. It was really a perfect time to enjoy an evening together and watch the sun set. Here are some pictures from our week:
^^Sunday fall morning apple-cinnamon oatmeal on the patio. Dreams do come true
^^Jack had some much-needed wins this week. He started a short after-school martial arts club he is loving. He started a before-school chess club he is also loving. And he was awarded student of the month in his class! When he got home from school we took off for pizza and donuts to celebrate Jack.
^^In home design land, our entryway is coming together! That window has the best view in the house of my favorite mountain, so in the winter when it's too cold to be outside I like to eat breakfast looking out the window. I've always wanted a breakfast nook banquette and this was the unsuspecting best spot for it. I would've preferred a patterned banquette, but wasn't willing to pay the price for a custom banquette, and this one fit the dimensions for really cheap. I will eventually get a more modern table to balance out the heaviness of the gothic wood mirror i thrifted for $5 in Washington. I think I will do one or two simple gingham pillows. And the rug is too big for the space but it's the general feel I'm going for. It may take another year to get this corner finished, but for now it's functional and it makes me happy--especially that gothic mirror at Halloween time (I'll get it hung next week). Ten years down the road I picture the walls and staircase painted a moody color, but that's a future project.
^^My girl--Witch Al
^^Alice wanted to go ice skating for her birthday and we finally made it happen.
^^very flattering angles for everyone at our backyard pizza party. Next time I'll attempt a savory smores situation. We also got two baby spruce trees this week. We just needed one for our front yard, but Jared accidentally came home with the wrong kind so we just planted it in the backyard and then grabbed the right one for the front yard. The accidental tree was one of those Seuss-looking evergreens, which I've always wanted, so it was a happy accident. Yay trees!
We made it to another week! By the skin of our teeth. This week was filled with a brutal unresolved cold, pots flares/intense fatigue, UTI/cystitis flares, urgent care visit. Just kind of a bleh/survival fog over last week. Jack is having a hard time being nice to Alice ever since school started, which is tough. At least the kids both seem to be enjoying school. Jack's having a fun football season. We aren't moving this fall for the first time in 3 years! The weather is wonderful. There is a lot to be grateful for.
^^The kids wanted to decorate for Halloween this week. Alice loves the Halloween decor. She loves the costumes, the spooky, all of it. Jack doesn't care for Halloween at all, except the candy part. So I probably shouldn't have encouraged this prank Alice played on Jack snuggling a skeleton into his bed, but I couldn't help myself. He did not appreciate it. Alice really thought he would love it though, so the intentions were good.
In direct defiance of our exhaustion, we planted three trees in our backyard over the weekend! We're novice gardeners, but everything we add makes the backyard feel more layered and complete. Next year we'll probably add a few fruit trees too, and I'd love to do a pumpkin patch if we have the space. Now for some pictures:
^^getting out of the house to try and reduce after-school conflicts😌
^^alice wants to be an astronaut for Halloween. Jack's old costume is big on her but she'll probably change her mind by Halloween anyway.
Alice turned 4 this week! We adore this sweet, spunky, creative lil comedian. Still blogging on my phone so I'll save most of the Alice milestone updates for her journal, but it is so fun to watch her come into her own personality now that she can understand and communicate so well. She always asks me to sit outside the bathroom door when she needs to go potty, so we can trade jokes back and forth. It is fun and sweet and a little sad to see her jokes making more and more sense as the months pass. Humor is such an interesting cultural concept and I can see those connections being made in real time. Now she can guess the answer to my jokes sometimes (they are usually rooted in a simple word play). And sometimes she'll get me with a good one I've never heard before too (mostly her jokes still don't make sense and she's using me as her joke laboratory, but I love that).
Alice just says the darnedest things. Sometimes I notice she'll take a specific phrase from a TV show, but other times it truly seems like she's made up her own lexicon. Today she wanted to put up some Halloween decorations, and she was delighted when I added a big fake spider high up on the wall. She gleefully exclaimed, "Mom, our house is going to look so haunted!" And then later when she was admiring the pumpkins taped to the wall outside her room she said, "It looks haunterific up here!" From the time she first started talking my mom noted that I should keep a microphone on her all the time to capture all the funny things she says. This is still true, and I need to be better about writing all the Aliceisms down--it's just that so many of the things that come out of her mouth are excellent one-liners, that i sometimes don't even register them.
Alice can be incredibly firey (and quite competitive, but I strongly believe this is due to having Jack as her example), but is at her core incredibly considerate and sweet. When I'm sick or otherwise not feeling well, she somehow knows just what I need even when I don't know--sometimes that's drawing the curtains or fluffing an extra pillow behind me. Sometimes it's making me a get-well "soup" out of milk, pepper, and diced carrots. I never quite know what I'm going to get but it's always delightful. Alice still loves making her own creations in the kitchen. These are usually terrifying, so I've been meaning to set aside a drawer or bin at her level filled with ingredients i'm ok with her using together. Homegirl LOVES a spice cabinet.
A few things Alice has mentioned wanting to be when she grows up: astronaut, ballerina, singer, doctor, princess, teacher. Can't wait to see which direction she goes. She's doing great at preschool lately and has recently really taken to the letter sounds and is sounding some words out. I wouldn't be surprised if this next year she starts doing some beginner reading.
She recently transitioned from her crib (I know, I know, I'm just a chicken) to a big girl bed. She is doing pretty well! She does come to our room at some point most nights, but one of us will walk her back to her room and she goes back to sleep without a fuss. This is a big upgrade from Jack's transition out of his crib so I'll take it. We added white Christmas lights to her room and hung a pink tent canopy above her bed. It is the coziest place to be.
I could go on about Alice forever, but it's getting late so I'll get to the pictures:
^^Signature sheepdog bangs. She's getting a trim next week--i asked if she wanted to grow her bngs out but she passionately declined.
^^on her birthday she chose her own birthday outfit for school--a sparkly black dress, hello Kitty Halloween socks, and black loafers. 10/10 birthday outfit.
^^She asked to go ice skating for her birthday, but the public skate hours didn't line up with our schedule on her birthday so we ended up having Alice go on a date with Grandma and Grandpa, and then we had chik-fil-a and opened/played with presents at home. We'll go skating next week. She had a blast with the presents anyway.
Not many jack pictures this week, but he's thriving as well (except for attitude after school, but what are you gonna do). His flag football team is undefeated this season, which is a first for him and fun to watch. He loves to be involved and has requested to be signed up for battle of the books, chess club, reflections, and martial arts...all within this last week. That one's going to keep us busy!
I'm annoyed. I wrote a long post detailing our adventures in Sundance for a medical conference Jared went to. But the phone blogging is temperamental and after an hour of typing it out and adding pictures, it got deleted. I need my computer fixed!
Ok to make short(er) of it, we had a fun weekend in Sundance. Also exhausting and painful, but it's a trip with kids so what do you expect? We had the best apple crumble with fresh whipped cream I've ever tasted. We took a scenic ski lift ride up the mountain and nobody tried to climb out! We visited the Sundance swimming pool which was just stunning in the mountain setting.
Also I took a solo hike to Stewart Falls where I ended up slipping at the very end and banging my lower leg on a rock so badly that I couldn't bear weight. As I crawled to the nearby stream to try and clean it up and figure out how I was going to get back, the biggest moose I've ever seen appeared right across the stream from me. You've never seen an injured hiker hobble away so quickly! That was painful on the leg, but on the bright side, when I scrambled around the corner, there was the waterfall. So at least I got to see that. I knew I needed to figure out a way to get back to our cabin before dusk/more moose arrived, so I grabbed a nearby long stick and made it into a walking stick/crutch. Without it I couldn't have hiked back on my own. As I started hopping back down the trail, I frantic little boy came sobbing out of the woods toward me and told me he was lost and couldn't find his family. I knew I wasn't the right person to be able to help him so I found two women who could take him from there and call trail patrol. It was the weirdest hike I've ever been on. The leg was really painful for two days (probably did some muscle damage), but I'm grateful it feels fine now. Ok, pictures!
^^After I helped the lost little boy find some hikers who could help him find his family. Wondering what was going to happen next on this weird hike (a snake appearing on the trail in front of me is what happened next)
^^We checked out the new Sundance Lodge on our way out and it was very cool. Moody Ralph Lauren mountain hotel vibes.
Everyone is ill. Even Savvy somehow. I'm aware that this happens when school starts, but it still sneaks up on me every year. To be fair, i'm pretty sure none of our maladies this week came from school, but they did keep kids from going to school. No stars for that.
My week began with a painful...lymph node? On the back of my head? Jared thinks it was a response to something viral. A few days later I was down with a UTI. So I was pretty much down and out for a a chunk of the week. We had a fun Labor Day weekend, but both of my kids came off of it with bad colds, and Alice had to stay home from school with a fever. At least no one is throwing up, and hopefully she'll be back to school by the end of this week.
Labor Day was nice. We had dinner at my parents the night before, and the day before that was spent with Jared's parents who were in town. On labor day we invited my family over for lunch and later ended up at our pool for its last open day of the season.
If I had a working computer I'd have more to say, but it's tougher to type it all out on a phone...which is probably for the best anyway😂 So we'll get to the pictures now!
The laptop is still broken, so we'll shoot for another short post this week. Jared finished a big chunk of our front landscaping this week! He put rock in all the planting bed areas, learned how to install a drip system, and put in a few plants. New dad level, unlocked.
We've had some intense storms and winds this week. It has been really cool to watch the lightning from our front porch. I've been troubleshooting how to keep all the patio furniture from flying off down the street. We put an outdoor rug under our back patio seating area, and it isn't faring so well in the wind. We have an intensely heavy stone column on one corner of the rug, and that corner is holding tight. I have another matching stone column we'll have to get on another corner. Then I'm thinking heavy boulders to hold the last two corners until I can get some heavier side tables there. When it isn't windy, we're still really enjoying our backyard spaces.
I had two family wedding receptions to attend over the weekend. It was the best to see so many of my cousins I haven't seen in a long time! Unfortunately I had to miss Jack's football game, and he scored two touchdowns. At least his Grandma and Grandpa Lambert and Uncle Will were in town to see it. We're enjoying the time with them.
Jack seems to be settling into the new school routine a little better this week. Alice is doing well too, except for the random morning last week when she woke up feeling sick and threw up, and then felt absolutely totally fine 3 hours later and ate the biggest meal I've ever seen her eat? It was bizarre. I'm glad it didn't stick around.
I need to bite the bullet and start inviting people over to our backyard. I have promised probably like 8 families that we'd invite them over when our backyard was finished. Of course the backyard started in March and still isn't done, so it's about 6 months worth of casually-extended invites that now I've got to (want to) make good on. It feels overwhelming because it's so many different groups of people and there's still technically a lot of work to be done in the backyard. This is me promising myself to have one backyard hosting date on the calendar by next week! And now for some pictures:
Ack! My beloved laptop is broken. I need to take it in and attempt to get it fixed before writing it off, but for this week we are doing a phone post, which means "short." You're welcome.
^^wow, these are the only pics from this week! Kids must be in school. Wish I had taken some pictures at Jack's first football game, but it was dreadful hot and I wasn't thinking about it. Next week!
School is in session! Jack doesn't adjust great to change, so while he seems to like his classes and be happy to see friends every day, when he is home he is pretty...let's say volatile. This tends to be his anxiety/"things are changing" response. I am keeping the mindset that this is normal for the first few weeks of school, and if I can buckle up and tap into some extra patience for the next few weeks, hopefully we'll start to see him relax into the new routine. In the meantime, LOTS of strategizing on my end. We've got this, team.
Alice started school too. She LOVED having a creative dance class this week. Preschool is 3 days a week for her. She is adjusting well and it's been nice to have tiny pockets of time carved out to start working on the to-do list that's been piling up for months now since Alice gave up her nap at the beginning of the summer. Friday was the loveliest when Jared had his day off, and we could go on an ACTUAL date while Alice was in preschool. We went to Costco because we are really krazy.
Our backyard furniture is up and it has made all the difference! I am outside any chance I can get now. Jared figured out how to install a drip system and finished planting our front garden beds over the weekend. I'm grateful he's taken this on, because our landscape team did a pretty bad job with retaining wall shape and also uneven plant placement, and it sort of hurts my soul to look at it. If I had more time on my hands I probably would've started hissing at everyone and insisted on replanting everything myself and really gotten in there with a measuring tape. But there are too many piled-up higher-priority projects for me this year so I am letting the front landscaping go. Jared's gone full dad-mode and is really into it now anyway.
I spentt a night at a local motel on Friday to have several uninterrupted hours to tackle many of the research projects that have been neglected all summer, and to get a good night's sleep since Alice's anxiety response the first week of school has been to stop sleeping through the night and be up for the day be 5 a.m.🥱 I also needed an introvert battery recharge pretty badly after that summer. My typing thumbs are tired, so here are some pictures from our week now:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)