October

By October, Claire was tired of her life revolving around errands, the boys' schools, and things that aren't fun. And she let me know it in no uncertain terms. After telling me, "why does everybody choose you to help? You never have time to play with ME! Everybody ruins our time together, everyday!" I cleared some time to get out her craft supplies.

Claire and I, as well as Robin and Tessa, went to Claire's first show at the Peace Center. We saw The Ugly Duckling which was done without dialogue using giant engineered light suits (giant wearable puppets, with neon lights outlining the figure).

Claire added other people's names to her repertoire of spelling/writing. Other than her own name, "Tessa" is her favorite to write.

On a day off of school, the kids and I took a little adventure. We set out in the morning for Dahlonega, GA to visit the Consolidated Gold Mining Company for some gold panning and an underground tour of the mine. They each came away with a few flecks of gold each in a little vial, and a rock candy.

Next, we headed toward Anna Ruby Falls and found a nice shelter for a picnic. If I'm being honest in my account, their may have been a bit of a breakdown at this point in our adventure. Actually, we had also had a breakdown about 10 minutes into our drive to Dahlonega, but all-in-all it was a fun day.

The hike at Anna Ruby Falls was easy enough. But Claire did eventually get tired, and I carried her a fair amount. The trail was paved, so it wasn't too much of a struggle.

After the hike, the kids had spotted a playground when we were driving in, so we stopped there and they really capped off our trip with a lot of fun.

This girl.

She added a new food to her list of bizarre eats. She decided she likes blue cheese...by the spoonful....straight from the container.

Nathanael checked out a cookbook from the school library. That day happened to be the day Mimi picks him up from school and it happened to be the week of Dad's birthday. Nathanael was determined that he was going to make Dad one of the recipes from the book for his birthday. And he convinced Mimi to help him get started as soon as they got home from school. He was so excited to present his birthday treat to Dad on his birthday.

Aunt Lisa came into town for a weekend and spent the morning with the kids. They got to have breakfast at IHOP complete with hot chocolate and whipped cream.

After breakfast that same morning, Claire was off to Scarlett's birthday party at a horse stable. They got to walk around the farm, seeing goats, cows, petting chickens and then got to ride the horse a couple times each.

For my own birthday, we headed off on our annual apple picking adventure. Unfortunately, this year, based on other families' pictures, I decided we'd check out Grandad's Apples, not realizing that all their fun activities are only available on the weekends and also not realizing how very small the orchard is, therefore being completely picked by late October. It was a big bummer for me, but the kids still found a few things to have fun on and we did manage to find 1 apple for each child to pick, still left hanging on the trees. Literally, we only found 3, and those 3 required quite a bit of searching to find.

I hosted another activity day for Claire and her girls, this time with a pumpkin theme, of course. This time we had Brynn, Brielle, Audrey, and Tessa. We read a couple Halloween books, colored Halloween pictures while they, one at a time, melted crayons on small pumpkins, and made a "pumpkin pie" treat.

For the treat, they all got to smash up their own graham crackers for the crust. Then they took turns mixing up the pumpkin pudding for the "pie". Some liked it, others not so much. But my girl doesn't mess around! She knows how to eat some dessert!

A stroll in downtown Greenville because it was beautiful outside.

Halloween was quite warm this year, which is pretty standard around here. I'm not sure why it's so surprising every year. And I don't know why I continue to buy costumes that they will absolutely roast in.
Per tradition, we once again did grocery store trick-or-treating before dinner. We met up with the Hills and Ludwigs and hit Food Lion and Publix, like usual. It's chaotic and Paul doesn't understand why we do it, but you don't go against tradition, even if it is like herding cats through a crowded supermarket!

Later on, we hit a few streets in the neighborhood until the kids were happy with how heavy their buckets were and were tired of walking. Then we headed home to check out the spoils and ended our October with a sugar high.