Fall

 Now that it is October, it is definitely fall here. The mornings are chilly, but the afternoons have been quite warm. We still have a couple of hot days to look forward to this week (29C/84F), but things cool off to highs as low as 14C/57F soon after that. 

Yesterday we had a lovely fall day, raking leaves in the morning, and eating apple pie in the afternoon.

One of our colleagues has both a one-year-old and an apple tree. We gave her a rocking horse that our kids have outgrown, she gave us a big bag of apples, and yesterday we made a pie. It’s a little hard to tell from the picture, but we could have put about twice as many apples in. We had the apples, but Jeff’s hands were cold from chopping (the apples had been in the refrigerator) and I was impatient so we ended up with a half-full pie. It was delicious though 😊

Work has been busy, neither kid has been sleeping well, and we are pretty exhausted, but we are enjoying life reasonably well anyway. 

Six!

 Today Maren turned six years old.

We had a small party for her. Four of her friends from school were supposed to come and because of a miscommunication we ended up having only three. It was a lot of cake for such a small number of people, but it was definitely a fun time.

It was beautiful weather today, so we were able to have our party outside. It is hard for me to believe that my baby is six years old!

Busy and tired

 I am busy and tired. So today you get a few cute photos 😊❤️

Giraffe Daddy

 Maren is really starting to get creative with her drawings. 

A self-portrait from today:

And an absolutely amazing picture from about a week ago called “Giraffe Daddy”:

It’s my new contact photo for Jeff on my phone, so I see it every time he calls 😄

Firsts

My mom was able to visit for the first time in two years. The last time we saw her was when we were in Oregon in January 2020. Linden was still a baby then and Maren was still a preschooler. My mom was only able to come visit for about a week, but it was so so great for all of us to see her. 

The day that she left (Wednesday) was Maren‘s first day of first grade and Linden‘s first day of day care. After three days of daycare Linden has her first daycare cold, and as of this afternoon has had her first Covid test. 

Jeff and I just finished the first week of fall semester. I am sick with a weird ear thing - my ear is not infected, but there is fluid buildup that isn’t improving and now I have a semi-urgent ENT referral. 

With all this going on we are pretty exhausted. Here’s hoping for the second and third weeks to settle down 🤞🏼