Family Day

We try our best to keep Sundays for God and family. It is always so nice to see the kids enjoying playing together. They frequently have have friends and neighbors over, so it is a nice opportunity for them to focus on just enjoying each other. I went out to watch them playing yesterday and had to defend that cause, as it tends to attract neighbor children over when they are out! But it was worth it. ;)

All Saints

Our parish had its All Saints Celebration yesterday afternoon. I was a little disappointed that it was not on the actual feast or the vigil (Halloween), but I understand the logistics making more sense to have it on the weekend. Everyone came home after mass and dressed up except Sebastian. He was super grumpy about it so we just gave up and took him in regular clothes. He had a great time though!

Allia - St. Lucy Yi Zhenmei, Anastasia - St. Anastasia, Gloria - St. Therese, Mariana - St. Gemma, Stephen - St. Stephen

Crazy Pregnancy Project

Even though I barely have enough energy to keep up the laundry and cook dinner, my crazy nesting hormones somehow inspired me to paint/redecorate the kids' bathroom. I blame this, in part, on Sebastian potty training. Sometimes it takes him 10+ minutes to figure out he is really finished. So I am sitting there staring at the walls. One day I decided that I just had to paint them! It took me about 3 weeks because I could only do a little at a time, but I am finally finished, and I love it! I did a sea creature theme to go with the existing shower curtain.

Before (well, sort of. I had already started painting a bit):

After:
The color is really cool...as you can see it looks more blue in some light and more green in other light. So the bathroom is always changing colors! I replaced the unframed mirror with a framed one.

And I replaced the existing towel racks with this set of hooks.

Now I need to focus my nesting energy on things that are actually important, like getting baby stuff out and washing it! The girls loved it when I pulled out the bin of baby girl clothes the other day!

A catch

We are having problems with possums in our yard again and don't want to end up with another family making home in the shed for the winter! So Austin decided to put out a trap using cat food, which is what they usually come foraging for. The first night, we caught Ginger, our own cat! Silly guy! But last night we caught one of the possums. Yay! They are actually sort of cute except for the nasty giant rat-like tails. Ick!

Robotics

Mariana had her first meeting with a robotics team last week for 4-H. It is going to be really tough to fit another thing into our busy schedule. But she enjoyed it even more than I expected! She has a gift for building/putting together/fixing things. When Austin has a fix it project, she is always his first choice in helpers (and usually the first volunteer) and often aids him in the actual problem solving.

Manic Monday!

After a fairly routine weekend with our usual activities plus a few extras, Monday turned out to be c.r.a.z.y. We had 4 scheduled activities for the afternoon/evening basically all back to back with a few overlapping. Then to top it all off, while in between pick ups and drop offs, we picked up some sharp object on the highway that flattened our tire almost immediately. I had just enough time to exit and pull into a parking lot, thankfully!

My knight in shining armor (or nice work clothes, rather) came to rescue us...could you imagine an 8 months pregnant lady with 4 other kids in tow changing the tire on a 15 passenger van? That would have been a sight plus I doubt I could have actually done it. The kids were really interested, and he even enlisted them to help.

Austin generously traded vehicles with us and took the van to get the tire repaired while we continued our crazy evening. Pawpaw filled in for me, picking up Allia at swim practice so I wouldn't be late getting her. Then we all met at the pumpkin patch for a 4-H photo shoot and pumpkin picking since we hadn't been yet this year to get pumpkins. With the change of plans we had to let Stephen hop out, pick his pumpkin, and then we dropped him off at soccer practice.

 Then the rest of us went back to take our time enjoying and picking pumpkins...and Allia took pictures of course. Here is Allia with the other photographers

Anastasia is missing because she was running fever all day and had to stay with Manah. :/ The others picked a pumpkin for her, though.

 Gloria and Mariana wanted to take some photos too.

This is one well-cared-for pumpkin! They didn't want it to get messed up while we went to pick Stephen up from soccer!

After a quick stop for a couple of pizzas we finally made it home for a quick, late dinner just after Daddy returned from the tire shop. Whew! What a Monday!

Gorgeous weekend!

We had such beautiful weekend weather. It finally felt like fall for a few days (and I got to wear real clothes! I have been wearing mostly workout clothes for the last 5 months because I am so hot all the time!). Sunday afternoon we couldn't resist spending some time hanging out outside. Pawpaw and Manah even joined in.