Just keep trick or treating… just keep trick or treating…

Is there anything better than a group costume? As you might have noticed from F’s birthday, she’s a bit obsessed with fishies and the Finding Nemo/Dory movies. So it didn’t take much to convince the rest of the family that we should dress up as characters from the movies.

There was no question that F gets Dory, the blue fish. I love my fuzzy nemo costume and am going to need to find a way to make this my costume every year. If you haven’t seen Finding Dory, you might not know E’s character Hank. Tom is Bruce the shark, and Gideon is either Squirt or Crush (one of the turtles).

I think it’s finally starting to feel like fall here. The leaves have been changing and falling for a while, and pumpkins have been out, but when everyone’s still wearing shorts, it’s hard to get in the mood. But finally we looked at the calendar and said it was time. Saturday was our town’s 2nd annual fall fest. We’re still trying to get the hang of it, and always leave feeling like we were a bit confused and not sure we made the most of the day. We ate some food that was not as great as we were expecting, and tried the bounce houses but found them too crowded and aggressive, and waited in a line for far too long for a train ride (that at least everyone said was fun!) We saw a lot of people that we knew, but the whole thing was so crowded and frenzied, that it felt hard to actually hold a conversation. We rushed by booths and were constantly trying to get to one place or another.

It’s back to school season!

I’m not going to lie, this back to school period was hard. The calendar was very full, even without the fun celebrations for a birthday and vacation. We had three children starting school on three different days, and each had an orientation day and back to school night on top of that. Two of the children were starting completely new schools, which only added to the stress.

You know me, I love when a kid gives me a theme to work with. F has been very clear for a while now that she expected her birthday to have a blue cake, goodie bags, and everyone to sing to her. But the actual theme she wasn’t super sure on.

You have been counting down to this day for MONTHS. Constantly asking when your day would come. When would you get your blue cake and have everyone sing Happy Birthday to F. And somehow it’s finally here. I’ve been calling you a two year old every day leading up to this, savoring these last bits when you’re still so little. Because in many ways you are so big.

Life got busy as it does, and one of the things that disappeared around here was blog updates. There was also a period where I debated if I wanted to continue it, but I’ve decided that the benefits of tracking memories makes it worth it. You will see some changes - making things a bit more generic, for example, to keep some privacy while still documenting life.

So what did we miss in the last 6 months or so?

When a once in a lifetime event happens, and it’s going to take place in your hometown, you go right? There was some talk about how to do it, especially since it was during the school week, and there were no hotels, airbnbs, etc available and sleeping all 5 of us at my parents house isn’t the easiest.

Tom’s low on vacation days, and and eclipse might be a lot for the younger ones, so it was decided I would take the first grader to VT. Even better, we decided to car pool with my bff and her first grader. We figured it was educational enough to pull them from school and make an event out of it.

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the dinosaurs were roaring?

Close enough.

We had a Saturday morning where all our plans were unexpectedly cancelled, but there was a dinosaur event in town… so obviously we checked it out. We walked into a room with some animatronic dinosaurs bouncing up and down and making noises. The kids spent a while trying to pet them and pretended to feed them, but much like trips to zoos with actual animals, they eventually got bored. Tom’s favorite exhibit was a little toddler that walked around roaring at everyone, but even that got old after a while.

Our town puts on a carnival every 4th of July called fun on the 4th, although this year oddly enough it happened the last week of June. Besides being confusing, it meant we missed it while we were on vacation. So we went looking for our own fun during our long weekend. E told me that they didn’t mind, though, because vacation was way better.

We hung out with friends on the actual 4th and went to a parade in search of candy. The candy was a little stingy this year, but enough to keep the kids happy. What did not keep the kids happy were all the guns they shoot off in the parade - some right in front of us. Are those really necessary? I could definitely do without them.