Lately

The other day I realized that it’s been an abnormal amount of time (for me) since my last blog post. Things have been a bit busy lately. Busy but good. And truth be told, blogging hasn’t crossed my mind! Which is unusual. Even when I’m busy, I still think about blogging, but for the past ten(ish) days, I kind of forgot I have a blog! Not really… but kind of…

Anyway, on the day I remembered I have a blog, I thought, “Cousin Cyndi will let me know when it’s been too long between blog posts” (she keeps me on track), and sure enough, the next day I got this text: 

So that’s my cue to check in!

I don’t have anything amazing to write, but here are a few things we’ve been up to while I haven’t been blogging:

We did our final harvests from the garden and got most of the garden cleaned up for the winter. I still need to pull out the watering hoses. 

We celebrated Zoe’s birthday. Her actual birthday is November 2, but we did it early this year. She wanted a Halloween themed party. 

We got in our last visits to Lagoon. I went to Lagoon three days in a row last week. I didn’t know I was a Lagoon junkie, but apparently I am! I just have a few stipulations: I only go in the mornings when it’s not crowded, and I don’t go in the middle of summer when it’s hot.

We carved pumpkins. Not my favorite activity due to needy kids and the mess, but this year went surprisingly well, and I had an extra boost of pride since we grew all our pumpkins. We plant pumpkins every year, but we’ve never yielded enough to provide for our whole family plus extra. This year we had 13 pumpkins, which means we had enough for everyone to carve and still have porch decor for Thanksgiving (or until they all rot).

I’ve been helping a lot with the high school’s production of The Little Mermaid. I’ve glued sequins to costumes, moved large set pieces across town, and spray painted this and that (I’m currently stained with purple spots due to an exploding can). I’ve been making a lot of coral reef elements for the set, and I’m learning all sorts of new skills! My latest stress relief activity is cutting styrofoam with a hot knife. It is so fun and relaxing. Who knew? 

Here are a few of the things I’ve cut from styrofoam. I had lots of purple paint drama, including running out of paint before I finished (most of the paint was on me) but that will all be resolved in a few days.

My house and garage are currently overtaken with stuff for the set. Here’s my kitchen table:

Working with spray foam is a new skill I’m learning. It’s a creature with a mind of its own! I’m so excited to paint these! And I have a huge stack of styrofoam pieces that I cut out last night that also need painting. I have a stash of donated spray paint in a slew of colors that I’m in love with.

I’ve also been helping with makeup. We did a makeup run through early this week, and yesterday we did makeup for the leads for their publicity photos. The kids looked amazing! So many people have helped to get this thing running, and I love seeing everyone’s hard work coming together.

In addition to all of this, we’ve had Halloween events galore with many more to come (I shouldn’t have decorated for Halloween so early. I feel like it’s been years and years).

For the last three years, November has unexpectedly been one of my busiest months. For the last two years I’ve made and sold pumpkin rolls for Thanksgiving, but this year I decided I better not. It’s not even November yet, and things are already crazy. So giddy up! It’s gonna be wild!

Last days of beautiful fall weather