October's everyday moments

October is possibly my most favorite month. October brings in the season when all my favorite flavors are finally acceptable (pumpkin everything and peppermint soon to follow). It means the holidays are just around the corner. And the weather is perfect.
My two crazy outdoorsy kids took full advantage of the cooler temps and bright sunny days, even having a spontaneous picnic in the front yard on occasion.

We attended an early birthday party for cousin Scarlett. It was a Halloween party, as usual. Sam chose not to participate in the costume portion, and neither Nathanael nor Claire donned their costumes for more than their grand entrance to the party. Nathanael did, however, wear his long enough to secure his win of the best costume prize. Thank goodness, because he was anticipating winning a giant candy bar without anyone even telling him their would be a prize. And it did happen to be a giant candy bar. I guess he had been planning to reign supreme ever since the party last year (when he did not win).

Paul attended the Clemson/Notre Dame game at Death Valley with friends TJ and Katie visiting from Utah. They had paid a pretty penny for those tickets some time previously, so despite the fact that precipitation from a hurricane had stalled out over South Carolina and the whole state was flooding, there was no way they were going to miss that game! Turned out to be a great one! But the kiddos and I were happy to be watching from our comfy seats.

I took the boys for a little mommy-sons time to play putt-putt. They loved each other, they hated each other. It was pretty typical.

Little Clairey gets dragged around all over town from day to day. Thankfully she's a pretty good sport and we squeeze in a few things that are exclusively for her, like story time at the library from time to time. But I think actually she really enjoys the frequent visits we make to her brothers' schools.

The kids had a couple days off from school and, after having Sam's parent-teacher conference, we took a trip to the zoo with friends.

Robin and I took Claire and Tessa to a nearby apple orchard that is supposedly closing down after this year. In my mind, I had envisioned that this would be a fun outing for the girls, but it turned out to mostly just be a photo-op, though I think they may have had fun for a few minutes checking things out. It was an outing, nonetheless.

The first of Sam's many projects for the school year came due. It was the 11th hour. I cranked out a beauty on Pearl Harbor. We got a pretty decent grade (I can't do the actual presentation part...).

I turned 33 and it was the worst birthday in the history of all birthdays. But thankfully I spent every minute of it with my little clowns and they made it better than it would have been without them.

Where does deleted data go, anyway?

Having accidentally erased my phone in October, thus losing all my pictures from August onward, I have no recollection of August or September. Sad, sad, sad. It kills me. All I have to go on are the few pictures from Paul's phone. 

August rolled along with plenty of school work and evening commitments, I'm sure. Nathanael played baseball for the Red Sox and both boys continued their workouts at 4balance 3 days a week. Sundays were spent, as usual, with cousins at Papa and Mema's. 

 

Sometime in August we finally got the news we'd been waiting on for years: Paul's company would be shutting down their Greenville office and everyone would be out of work, unless they chose to relocate with the dying company. Paul took the severance option and his last day was September 30th. Long before his last day, he had multiple companies vying for his employment. He ultimately chose to continue to work for his customer of 3 years located in Marion, VA. When he broke the news to them that he wasn't interested in moving, they said "please, just work for us from home in your pajamas." Who would refuse that?! Claire will miss visiting Dad at his office and getting his attention by dancing in front of his window. It was the cutest darn thing!

The only notable from September is college football. Go Tigers!

 

A new school year

Summer ended and the kids went back to school. This was the first year I was unable to hand deliver both kids to their schools on the first day. Sam and Nathanael have never attended the same school at the same time, but this year was the first time their schools start and end at the same time. Dad took Sam for his first day of his second year at his school, and I took Nathanael to his very first day of public school. I got the usual first day of school pictures on my camera, but am devastated that I inadvertently lost the picture of Nathanael with his teacher (and who knows how many other priceless photos) when I accidentally erased my phone a couple months later. It was such a good picture too.

Sam received a post card from his new 4th grade teacher a week or so before school started. It was from the one teacher he DID NOT want to have. He said she was the mean one. Great. As it turned out, it didn't really matter because, in fact, they rotate through all three of the teachers each day for the different subjects. The post card teacher is his homeroom teacher. She also teaches reading. Another teacher does science and social studies. And the third teacher teaches math and spelling. Because there are only 3 gifted classes per grade, several of Sam's friends from last year are in his class this year. It's going to be another year of loads of ridiculous projects for me to complete at the last minute, but Sam has really impressed us so far with how much responsibility he has taken on.

Nathanael was excited to have our neighbor for his first grade teacher. Sam had her for first grade, too, but Nathanael wanted her because he is great buddies with her grandson who visits quite often. Having a familiar teacher was helpful for his transition to a new school. Surprisingly, Nathanael has quite a bit of anxiety about school. For the first few weeks, he would cry every morning and he set a rule that if we came to the school during the day (for lunch or to volunteer), we had to get him an early dismissal. He set this rule after we came to have lunch with him on the second week of school and he had a meltdown when we left. He was struggling so much that we sent him to school with a wallet-sized family photo which he taped to the top of his desk to look at when he was sad. After a short time he didn't need the picture any more. He still holds firmly to his early dismissal rule, but he has adjusted to being at school and has lots of great buddies!

Little bits of summer fun

I like to try to keep some sort of routine during the summer. Sam and Nathanael fight relentlessly. They also tend to lean heavily on electronics for entertainment. Though I don't have the fight in me to keep them off the tv and computer all day, I did continue my requirement from summers past that they complete schoolwork before usage. We also keep busy with fun crafts and activities. The pool was a bigger part of our summer this year than previously, or so it seemed. Having never made use of our neighborhood pool previously, and in fact having given our pool key to our friends, the Dyrhaugs, years ago, we actually went several times this summer. We joked several times about how the Dyrhaugs invited us to our own pool, and had to let us in. We also still went swimming at Mimi's house quite often as well. Claire was, of course, fearless in the pool again and the boys got to be pretty decent little swimmers. And Claire is the darn cutest thing I've ever seen in a bathing suit.

We tried to do several new and different crafty things we had never done before. The first was jolly rancher lollipops. The kids thought this was the best ever! And it was appropriately easy for them to do.

We made grass heads from panty hose. The only problem was we used chia seeds, because I had those in the pantry, and the sprouts couldn't get through the hose. So, I had to do cranial surgery on the heads and their faces drooped quite a bit. But the kids thought they were super cool for a few days and then I threw them away. I'll call that a success.

The boys attended an origami class at the library.

Sam lost another tooth.

Claire stuck a lego up her nose. Thankfully she sneezed it out.  

We enjoyed lots more time with Benny. That little boy is such a great playmate for Nathanael. We wish he lived closer. They had a blast using their imaginations together and trying to catch tiny frogs by Pop Pop's pond.

We went to Chick Fil A on "dress like a cow for free food" day. This was a first for us. We were amazed at how much free food we could get just by taping black construction paper on our shirts. Nathanael was disappointed we didn't dine in.

We enjoyed ice cream cones at Sonic just because they were half-price. Seems like as good an excuse as any. 

Nathanael took several weeks of gymnastics classes. Gymnastics is so perfect for his personality.

One of the local craft stores offered a free summer craft make-and-take series once a week. We attended a few. The kids decorated beach pails just before we made our trip to Savannah. They also decorated cupcakes with absurd amounts of sugar toppings and made parachute cord bracelets. 

The summer reading program prizes at the library were so lame this summer that we opted to do the Barnes & Noble program instead. For reading just a handful of books, both boys got to go to the store and choose a select new book. We will definitely be doing that again next year.

One of our final projects was tye-dying t-shirts. The boys really enjoyed that and have loved wearing their shirts ever since. I was pretty impressed with how the turned out and we had enough dye left to make another batch next year. 

It was a great summer and we were all a bit melancholy as it drew to an end. Those kids drive me crazy, especially all the whining and fighting, but I sure love when our time is our own and we can spend it together.