Fall little things and big things

Lots and lots going on this fall! Above: a bike ride Neil and I took a couple weeks ago when the leaves were really at their peak.

Some pics of Abigail getting ready for homecoming--she looked (and looks!) so beautiful! No pics with her date by her request, since they broke up a couple weeks ago. 



While Abigail was at homecoming, we hosted a big party for Juliet's friends at our house (which then expanded to Isaac's friends too). It was a fun night--lots of bonfire time and backyard night games. Of course, the only pics I got were Luke setting up...

...and Isaac cleaning up (burning the last of the firewood. It's a thing). 

I'm not even going to try to keep these in order since the process of transferring photos from my phone jumbles everything! 

Launching rockets with the Activity Days kids (Neil was in charge of this one and it was so fun!). 

One of our friends turned 60 and designed his own party, which was seriously SO fun! He invited whole families instead of just couples and we had a 5k color run, sumo wrestling, tons of backyard games and yummy food, and wound up with everyone throwing pies at him. A very unique party and one that we all really enjoyed (we have some extremely competitive adults when it comes to duck duck goose and Dizzy Izzy). 

This is the time of year when I have to limit myself to only taking one picture per run because it's just SO gorgeous. One Friday the weather was particularly gorgeous so I ran a half-marathon after I dropped Matty off at preschool and the clouds were so good while I was waiting at the roundabout that I had to take an extra photo!

And then my other allotted photo. I made myself wait 8 miles to get this one because I knew it would be so good! I totally plan my routes this time of year based on leaves. 



Case in point: 

Then I make everyone go back with me on Sunday walks. 

Oh gosh I just love fall running.



This is the time of year when I always get a home improvement itch! This year it was our exterior siding...

PS notice the moss on the sunroom roof? In a classic case of project creep, we just signed the paperwork today for a new roof. Sometimes I get started on a project and I'm like WELL THIS WHOLE PLACE IS JUST FALLING APART ISN'T IT?! Kind of like when you start cleaning something and realize how gross everything is and how you thought your house was clean but you're actually living in squalor with hand smudges on your walls and dusty baseboards. (Note: my walls are smudged and my baseboards are dusty.) 



We paused to take our kids to the ward trunk or treat and then looked at the forecast when we got home and were like, oh dang, we better finish the last 45 minutes worth of painting. 

I'm realizing I uploaded the photos that still have ladder marks in them, so please rest assured that we did go back and paint those spots. ;-) And we have bedraggled fake spiderwebs everywhere since it was the day before Halloween when I took these. 

Love this color!! The wood siding is Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore (same color as our kitchen island) and the stone is Avorio White limewash by Romabio. We added the raised beds last year and I limewashed the stone the year before that. Next year's project is converting the sunroom--hopefully!



Another quick little project--stripping out all the caulk in our main floor shower and hanging new doors. Relatively easy update and it makes such a difference! (I took a photo of the process but apparently nothing of the finished version...)

Lots of morning tea around here (Matthew is partial to Trader Joe's harvest blend and I love Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice) and this is my favorite cup yet. 

The little boys and I waited for four hours for their first round of Covid vaccines--we got them the day after they were approved!! Such a relief. 

Cute Matty in some of cousin Caleb's clothes that they passed on to us!! Such a fun box to open. 

Juliet had her end of season banquet for cross-country!

And started getting in some good cross-training days...

Lukey working on our Halloween week calendar

Cheering on some cute friends in the school musical (Isaac was home with a fever, poor kid, so Nathan happily took his ticket). 



Lots and lots of walks with Matty. 

And hitting the playground with friends every time we had good weather and could squeeze in an hour! 

Matty's hair is a whole thing right now. Sometimes he rubs it up in his hands to make it super crazy...

...and then sometimes he asks for us to style it "like that mean boy in Harry Potter" (Draco Malfoy). He is currently really into the Draco hairstyle and wants his hair like this for every Sunday. 

Not sure why I took this but it is a pretty typical thing--I usually try to fit in some strength work in the mornings while Matty is home because he is really into the various Peloton instructors (if I do a class with Andy, you know that Matthew picked the class that day). Matthew will often do the class with me or just sit here and comment things like "Mom, you're getting pretty strong, but you're supposed to be going faster." 

"Hey Mom, do I look like a really cool guy?" 

And to take us out, here is Neil rocking a fever and "helping" to put away groceries. I came in from the car to find this and started laughing so hard as I realized that if Neil were to ever get drunk, he would probably do exactly this. Haha! Kind of sad though because this is the one that took us all down the week of Thanksgiving and you can see that I was SET on butter for that butterific holiday. (Good sale, gotta stock up.) 

 

birthdays in quarantine

Abigail turned 15, and Nathan turned 7!!

On Abigail's birthday we biked over to her favorite restaurant to pick up takeout, then went over and ate it by the high school in the little front garden outside the freshman cafeteria. The last time Abigail was there, she was hanging out and eating with her friends, so it was pretty bittersweet (especially the part where she cupped her hands around her face and looked through the glass to see that the monitor displaying the day's menu was still on...).




I have a lot of feelings about these two birthdays, mostly because both kids have been talking for months about their birthday plans. Big parties, Kings Island with friends/family (even though yikes Neil and I were planning to be at DisneyLand by ourselves on Abigail's birthday...). But they were both great sports about it and we managed to make things pretty celebratory, I think. And Abigail's started (online) driver's ed!

Other random things...Neil and I are really into long Saturday morning bike rides right now instead of long runs. For some reason it's really nice to bike because we can go so much further and gosh I am SO darn sick of the roads/trails around our house right now--definitely seeing waaaaay too much of them!! Last week we biked up to a reservoir about 11 miles away from our house and went down to the sand and just sat there for awhile listening to the water slap against the shore. It was perfect.




Then we came home and tore apart our deck (which is nice because if I had run 21 miles I would be lying on the floor all day feeling sorry for myself, but with biking I was just kind of tired but could still do stuff).

And like everyone else in the world...lots of baking happening here. This is my new favorite book. So fascinating and that reminds me...I need to go tend to my dough! Here's yesterday's bread, topped with lots of Boursin cheese and smoked salmon. The very very best.

Another week

Welp, here we are--another week down. And as my watch just started beeping at me to remind me, I should be on a plane to San Jose right now, in that alternate COVID-free universe. At least we only have five weeks left of e-Learning!

Things that I am doing to keep myself busy this week (other than the obvious): refinishing our interior (very beautiful solid cherry) doors & keeping up my Duolingo streak. Totally embracing that quarantine cliche of "learn another language!" Except this is really just refreshing a language I already know (French) and a little bit of dabbling in a new-to-me language (Italian), except then I realized you could actually compete and so I started focusing more on French so that I was competitive. A couple weeks ago I took 1st in my league and gosh, it felt like ALL I DID that week was Duolingo. Like we were on a walk and I had an AirPod in and the kids were like "Are you still beating Roderigo?" because apparently I was talking out loud about crushing the guy who kept trying to challenge me for the #1 spot. I spent a couple of evenings in a row just doing Duolingo while watching a movie with the kids/Netflixing with Neil and I won resoundingly, but since then I'm just doing enough to stay in the top 5. ;-) Saving up my energy for taking #1 in the Diamond league, peeps. 

Easter dinner table...this was fun to put together. For journaling purposes, those are my grandmother's silver 50th-anniversary candlesticks (given to her by my mom); the crystal bowl is a wedding gift, I inherited the silver from my dear Aunt Pam after her death, and the platinum-edged china was the thrift store score of a lifetime (last year--found a full 12-setting set with serving platters and bowls and walked out with the whole thing for $60). The china is 80 years old and the silver well over 100. 

Neil is getting a loooot of use out of our guest room/office. I snapped a pic of him lying down to take a conference call (he usually works at his desk with a couple monitors and multiple laptops out, but Abigail was using one of his laptops to do a CAD drawing in Inventor with Luke sitting next to her, completely fascinated. That girl is SO good with CAD already--this is for her engineering class that is concurrent enrollment with one of the local colleges. She turns 15 on Monday). 

(ps I love love his long legs)

And here is the trifle that I made for Easter dinner--yum! Fresh pound cake, pudding, tons of fruit and cream--you really can't go wrong!

I was doing some grading tonight and it was interesting to read my students' weekly project updates. Usually people are complaining about how they hate doing group work online/remotely, and every semester I'm like "guys I promise this is a valuable skill! Just learn it!" and guess what, this semester everyone is like...wow, the skills that we have been learning this semester about online collaboration are SURE HANDY NOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALL REMOTE. So I was thinking about that a bit just before writing this post, and thinking about how much I absolutely hate technology sometimes (I wish my children had never heard of smartphones, or tablets, or Nintendo, or TV, etc. etc.) but on the other hand--I can't even imagine how hard this pandemic would be without it. And I know that people have obviously experienced these types of situations without technology, but gosh, I am just so grateful that I can work remotely, and Neil can work remotely, and our kids can do eLearning (as much as it also drives me crazy I would be way more upset about NOT having it), and that I can stay connected to my friends through FaceTime, and Zoom, and texting, and that I can listen to podcasts and watch Netflix and read the news so easily! In particular, some connections I am really thankful for this week (in no order): 

• the "cool cats and kittens" text thread that is constantly running with five of my good friends here. This is our group of couples that we get together with for game nights, but boy our text thread with just the wives has basically lit up over the last 6 weeks and kinda become a lifeline for me! So darn grateful for those women and the fact that we can vent/commiserate/rejoice together about this craaaazy time. We have a Zoom game night tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it (we spent almost 5 hours just talking on the last one!)
• doing virtual workouts with my dear friend Kelsey who moved to Sacramento about 10 days before the world locked down. On our last run together at the end of February, coronavirus was not even on the radar. This week we started a new 8-week workout challenge together and I love checking in with her every day, even if we can't log hours of talking time on the run!
• similarly--doing virtual baking with Kelsey and Stephanie. Before Kelsey moved, the 3 of us got together to do baking nights (croissants, croquembouche, macaroons, eclairs) and this week we are doing a "challah challenge" all week with a Zoom at the end of it. 
• weekly writers' Zoom group faciliated by my brilliant friend who is a professor of creative writing. Truly therapeutic and I'm so grateful for all the effort she is putting into it!!!

and an in-person connection...Abigail and I had SUCH a good time going to pick up groceries this morning, haha! We were so excited to go somewhere that we took the "scenic route" there and another "scenic route" back, and totally enjoyed the half-hour chilling in the Kroger parking lot while we waited for our order.

(ps please do not worry--I am also having my fair share of COVID breakdowns, hence the lack of blogging for a couple days there)