Not exactly how we planned to spend our Thursday, but G is now appendix-less and is recovering semi-comfortably. Thankful for trusting my (also appendix-less) gut, fantastic staff at Children’s Hospital, parents and friends who help take care of our other two kids, and overall health, all things considered. The staff here have been raving about how fantastic this kid is, and I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly. Looking forward to getting home! ❤️
It feels especially hard these days to find the beauty in everyday moments, but I’m trying harder to look at my world each day and find something to make me smile. These kids, man: they’re pretty great.
We celebrated Oliver’s birthday a bit early this year because we’ll be up at the cabin on the actual day, and we wanted to celebrate with Grandma Pam and Grandpa Jeff. We enjoyed a birthday brunch together featuring a fabulous spiced squash cake that everybody loved except for Oliver. (He ate about half the scrambled eggs instead.) Pictures below followed by two short video clips.
Blowing out his candle (and some very sour grapefruit!):
Opening Maggie’s gift:
Update: We took the following picture on the 25th at the cabin:
Sarah was inspired this year. A green dragon, a red, dragon, a mermaid, Prince Ronald, and the Paper Bag Princess!
After the success of our venture with the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game last spring, my colleague and I decided to offer the activity again this fall. We had enough student interest to justify buying two more boxed sets. The photo below shows all the material organized and laid out before students arrived.
I finally finished the quilt I started for Maggie before she was born, and it really was more rewarding finishing it now because she loves it so much ❤️
Oliver has been enjoying watching the construction across Snelling (see Daily Pilgrimage) and was starting to play with old construction trucks in the backyard. With the advent of chillier, wetter weather, Sarah came up with this activity in the kitchen. He loves it!
At first we weren’t sure if this was a crazy looking spider or a weird mushroom with a spider under it. Turns out, it is definitely the former. We think it is a marbled orb weaver, though we’ve never seen one quite like this before. Apparently some people call them pumpkin spiders or even halloween spiders. Coloring can vary widely.
