Closing out October!

On Tuesday after school, Matt helped the kids carve their pumpkins!  Mason had a lot of seeds sprouting inside his pumpkin, so many they thought it was worms!  Anna also had a spout in her pumpkin.  Always a first and this year seems to be full of them!

Mason's pumpkin.

Anna's pumpkin.

And Olivier's pumpkin!

On Wednesday, the kids went with me to work for a Relay for Life walk.  It was nice to be able to support the cause, involve the kids, and get in some "PE".  Olivier was happy to get these glasses too!

On Thursday, while the kids were doing their school work I noticed that Taz was a bit agitated outside.  Then I saw the neighbors chickens just beyond the fence.  He didn't understand why I wouldn't let him have one, and why they couldn't come into the yard!  Here you can see Poppy (white chicken).

And then Pepper joined her.  

And then Penny.  Penny was the most hesitant because recently she came into the yard and Taz made a bee line for her.  

For Halloween we kept it low key.  We did get a family photo of our 50's girl, air traffic controller, dragon tamer, Johnny Appleseed, and Marty McFly.  

We wanted to make the day special so we had some fun activities for the kids.  We set up a scavenger hunt around the house which ended in a pile of candy we know they wanted.  Then it was on to carnival games!  We had set up a putter with various candy they could win depending on how far the shot was.  Bigger for the harder shots!  

We had a balloon pop with darts that they got candy for each popped balloon .  And a bean bag tick tack toe game that had different candy in the spots. 

The aftermath of the balloon dart game!  

And then we added in the ping pong ball bucket toss.  Small pieced for the big buckets and big for the small buckets.

We enjoyed our time together and the kids were happy to get plenty of candy.  And Anna was happy to get stuff she could eat with her braces!  We were thinking we would watch a movie but we ended up having a full evening with the games.  

 

Cooler week!

We may finally be heading into fall!  This week the temperatures dropped and we even had a day in the high 60's!  Yippee!  It was nice to feel our normal weather return.  It was a bit of a hectic week but we got things done without issue.  

And just for reference, this is what a typical "school" setup looks like for the kids.  The white board is still super helpful to keep track of what is going on each day.  

And when I am working from home, this is my desk (for at least the morning).  I love the view, both outside and looking over my left shoulder I can see the kids.  Busy house but we get it done!  

We have both dropped off our ballots at the Clerk Recorder's office to ensure they will be counted in the November 3rd election.  Feels good to have that turned it and know that even if our preference is not the majority winner, we at least got to have our say in the process.  

The kids are excited, Halloween is now officially less than a week away!  

Hot week...again!

This week started hot and ended hot.  Monday and Tuesday were both 100.0 and Wednesday was "so much cooler" at 99.9!  Ha!  Thursday dropped even more to 99.7!  Thankfully Friday brought relief at 97.3!  Not!  It was a tough week for the kids to be home with school and no AC but they held it together well and today was down to the mid 80's.  Whew!  And next weekend they are say we will be in the mid 60's, we are looking forward to it.

We decorated for Halloween today.  The kids won't be trick or treating but we figured we can still decorate and they have their costumes ready to go.  We are planning on taking down the outside decorations early in the day on the 31st and doing some fun things just for our kids.  I think they will enjoy it!  

Other than that, we are just rolling along!  Sorry, no pictures this week!

Gray Belt!

Yesterday Olivier was promoted to gray belt at jiu jitsu!  He has really been focusing and going to a Tuesday night drills class virtually and the classes on Saturday.  The smile on his face when he left class on Saturday was so big and it was so thrilling to see.

Other than that we have been sticking to our normal routine.  The weather was more normal this week but it looks like we are going to have another heat wave this week.  Fingers crossed it won't be too miserable!  

More heat and more smoke...

Starting on Wednesday we had a heat wave hit, and with it the smoke returned.  We ended up having four days in a row over 100 degrees.  On Thursday night we had noticed a strange smell coming from outside but we couldn't place what it was.  On Friday morning Matt when to clean up the yard when the strange smell came back thinking maybe something with the heat caused the smell in the yard.  Nothing seemed to help and the smell was MUCH worse than the night before.  Late in the morning there were some visitors in the yard and it answered the question.  There was as many as seven turkey vultures that were taking care of something that was in the creek behind the house.  Matt got a photo of three of them in the trees.

Thankfully the vultures took care of the issue and the smell went away!  

On Thursday night we found out that the President and First Lady have COVID-19.  On Friday the President was hospitalized.  There is a lot of contradictory information so it is hard to know what is true.