Fun weekend! Black light Halloween!

We started our weekend off with the normal Saturday activities, but then make sure we got the pumpkins carved!

Mason's pumpkin:

Anna's pumpkin:

Olivier's pumpkin:

And here is what the look like in the dark!  

Saturday night we had some fun activities.  Olivier went on a zombie hunt and I took Anna to Band fest at the university.  We had a really good time and enjoyed having the balcony to ourselves!

This is the wind orchestra and the wind ensemble playing together.  

And the marching band:

And today of course we celebrated Halloween!  We have a Dorothy, Charlie Brown (poor Chuck only got a rock!) and the Grim Reaper.  

Charlie Brown is happier with his rock now!

And your friendly garden gnome joined the group!

The kids loved the carnival in the garage last year and asked to do it again this year, so we did!  This year Matt did a lot of painting with black light neon paint which made it super fun in the garage!  We had ping pong games.  

Ladder ball with neon poles and balls.  Neon putting green with glowing balls.  

Neon corn hole too!  

The pumpkins looked cool in the black light!  And you can see my shadow and tell I stayed in costume!  

We did have the dart balloon game again but decided that was best played with the lights on!  

We had a great time!  And it is hard to believe November starts tomorrow!  It will be a crazy busy month with birthdays and holidays but also a lot of fun!

Band performance!

This afternoon Anna had her first band performance...ever!  She has been talking about it for a long time and they have been working hard to make happen, the school, the teacher and all the kids.  She is hidden behind a flute player for the most part but the music is the important piece!  

First up, Monster Under the Bed (apologies for the extra before the song started):

Here is the Haunted Carousel: 

And this is the song Dark Ride:

Well done Anna!  Well done!

Did you feel that...?!

 At 4:42 p.m. today a small earthquake shook a town not far from us.  It wasn't long but it was enough to feel and Anna has now officially felt her first earthquake.  Matt and the boys were driving home so they didn't feel the earthquake.  Let's hope next time isn't "the big one"!

Guess what we got this week?

The boys school photos arrived this week!  They are looking so grown up, and it feels like these really capture their personality!  

We had a good week and this weekend we took the kids shopping for warmer clothes!  They were in need of some long sleeve shirts and sweaters now that the weather is feeling like fall.  And tonight we are expecting our first rain which we are very excited about.  It likely won't be too much but it should be a decent first rain.  We are hopeful that it is the first of many this rain season.  

We have a special treat in store for us Wednesday late in the afternoon, I will post about that after!  For now you will have to guess!  

Weather all over the place...also known as fall around here!

This week was hot and cold and windy.  The high temperatures and wind lead to issues with fire risk and the county south of us had a fire spark and quickly spread early in the week.  We have been fortunate for no large fires here and thankfully no smoke impacting us from that fire.  Today is a cooler day with a high of 71 degrees compared to yesterday's high of 91.  We are much happier with the 71!  And thankfully it looks like it will stay that way for the next 10 days, they even are predicting a chance of rain later in the forecast... trying not to get too excited!  

Otherwise we are just doing our normal routine.  Waiting for the boys school photos still.  All is good and we are thankful!

Enjoying fall!

Not much to report this week which is nice!  The kids are doing well, we are doing well, nothing new and exciting happening which is not very exciting but also it can be nice to be boring!  We look forward to another fairly mellow week ahead!

Two Trumpets and One Clarinet!

This weekend the kids all have their instruments at home.  It has been quieter than I expected but there has been some tunes going at various points.

Anna's school photo arrived this week also!  So weird after not having school photos last year!

Ironically she had her photo taken after the boys but it arrived first.  Another one of those things that we just shrug our shoulders and move on.

This weekend we are staying home because there are a lot of people in town for the university homecoming weekend and we don't want to be around all those people!  COVID cases in our county have gone down a bit since the county implemented an indoor mask mandate at the beginning of September but they still are fairly high overall, including a fairly high number of individuals in the hospital with COVID.   So we avoid crowds and enjoy being a home.