Author: Jackie

Halloween

It’s been a busy week, between The Kid’s 12 hour school days and conferences at my school we haven’t seen a lot of each other. It’s Tech Week for The Kid’s current play, so they are there until 7 each night. They usually go out to dinner at the end of the week, but this time he didn’t join them because he had too much homework and a Halloween party on Friday. Responsible as usual.

It’s been a strange time for us with The Kid gone so much. We have always been a close family, spending as little time apart as possible, doing even the most mundane things together. So far, High School seems to be life’s way of easing us into the ’empty nest’ phase.

They must be doing well with play preparations. He doesn’t seem too stressed this time, and he doesn’t have rehearsal this weekend. It’s nice to have all three of us home without a list of things we have to do. I was lucky enough to have a three day weekend.  In exchange for the extra hours the teachers put in for conferences, we get a day off, but it’s due to more than luck that it falls on Halloween (or the nearest school day to it) every year.

The Kid made a good choice for his costume this year. He dressed as Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He wore his costume to school Friday, and texted us halfway through the day to tell us he was photographed for the yearbook. Cool. 🙂 He isn’t going Trick-or-Treating this year, but the kids who come to the door will enjoy getting their candy from The Doc.

It was also nice having a whole day to carve pumpkins. They don’t last, so we can’t do them too far ahead and usually end up scrambling to get them done Halloween day after work/school. It’s also going to be nice to have The Kid home tonight instead of roaming the streets ringing doorbells, and we’ll have time for a leasurely dinner – our usual chili, which we made last weekend and put in the freezer. It’s almost scary how organized we are this year! I hope that doesn’t mean the rest of the year will be a disorganized mess.

Reclaiming the Weekend

 These days most of our weekends slip by with us just doing things we have to do but never have time to do during the week. This weekend, however, we actually managed to fit in a want-tos along with the have-tos – and it was great!

Saturday was the have-to. The Kid, of course, had a pile of homework to do, but no theatre for a change, so we suggested that he get it done Saturday while we did some of our stuff (well, my stuff as it turns out) so that we could have Sunday clear for something fun. We cleared out for my work where we battled printers, among other things, while he attacked his homework. We ended the day with chili, raspberries and meringues and Back to the Future III.

We juggled as many of our have-tos as we could, but there were a couple that couldn’t wait until Monday. First of all, The Kid had to have new jeans. When we finally abandoned shorts a couple of weeks ago, he had two pair. Since then he ripped the knees out of one pair and got paint on the other building sets at school. We accomplished that fairly quickly on our way to my haircut appointment. I hadn’t had a haircut since the first week of August, and it’s been difficult to fit one in, especially since my hairdresser keeps moving farther and farther away, so I didn’t want to miss this one.

But we fit it in, had some lunch and finally moved on to the ‘fun’ part of the day – Anderson Farms. We haven’t been to a corn maze in 8 or 9 years, or a pumpkin patch for at least 4 or 5 and Anderson Farms was definitely a good choice. It’s more like a seasonal amusement park than a simple pumpkin patch. Besides the corn mazes, they have zombie paintball,  food, face painting, a petting zoo, gourd launching, duck races, and loads of other activities and of course, acres of pumpkins (apparently 72 varieties). Everywhere there are nice settings for photos. The weather was perfect – in the seventies and the rain earlier in the week kept the dust down and the ground soft, which was nice on the feet since we walked for miles looking for checkpoints in the mazes. We were so late getting home, we ordered Indian, and then watched Downton while The Kid caught up with his friends on Skype.

Next week promises to be a busy one – especially with all the have-tos that we’ve shuffled onto it, but at least we have this lovely weekend to look back on. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can fit in another one.

Lost and Found

Somewhere along the line I lost the password for this blog. I let it lie – obviously for a few years, but lately I started thinking about it again. It took me a few weeks, but I finally got back into it.

Middle School is a distant memory now. The Kid is in his second year of high school. Life is busy with a high schooler. I don’t know how people do it with more than one kid. We have enough trouble keeping up with our one.

School’s Out For Summer!

Yay!

I finished Thursday and K finished today. The last few days were fun ones for him (even though their field day was rained out). They had a swimming party Friday, then he played handbells at the Sixth Grade Continuation ceremony Friday night, and then they had a picnic this morning.

The weather is warm, the pool is open and tennis lessons start next week. Roll on summer 🙂

And So, To Bed

Last weekend we got around to readying the garden for winter. Most of it anyway. We trimmed and re-tied the grape vines, cut back plants, dug up a few thistles, re-arranged the shed, stacked wood for bonfires – pretty much everything except raking leaves. The majority of the leaves were still on the trees, so it seemed pointless.

The basil was too far gone to dry any more, but I still had loads of thyme for drying. We also moved the asparagus. I hope it doesn’t suffer from the move, but it just wasn’t doing well where we had it.

Kieran dug up his peanut plant and found three peanuts. He’s looking forward to possibly getting more next year 🙂

A Walk In The Sun

This week started cold and rainy, but it’s like it never happened. Today it’s 78/26 degrees and K and and I have the day off. We had lunch at Chipotle where there’s a nice patio a bit away from traffic and we can watch the birds. After that we checked out some library books and a DVD of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for a ‘movie night’ this weekend, then went for a short walk.

Next stop – the kitchen to bake something for tea 🙂

Fall

Every year we take a head up into the mountains to look at Aspens. This year we took a different route. It was interesting to see new places, but not to be as pretty as the one we usually take. We didn’t take many photos, but here is one of them:

Earlier in the week we had a frost warning, so I sent K out to pick the remaining tomatoes. It didn’t frost, btw 🙂

This last one is the view from our bedroom window. The colours in this photo are not even close to what they actually are. The sky is deep blue that contrasts well with the gold of the leaves. The leaves are so bright, they seem to glow. When the morning sun shines on them, they fill the room with golden light.

Picking Up The Thread

September was just not our month. First the car accident, then M’s broken tooth and diving accident and a number of other little things that just piled up on us and sucked the life out of..life.

Here we are halfway through(!) October and things are better. The car is back. M got his tooth fixed – but his nose still hasn’t healed completely.

Nevertheless, I’m going to take another stab at this.