Currently

Celebrating at my parents' annual fall festivus party last weekend.  We got to spend time with friends, eat delicious food (and enjoy leftovers all week), and the kids had a blast having so many people willing to entertain and watch them.  Bonus that we got to have a sleepover with Ninna and Uncle Jonny.

Playing with our favorite friends this week on a hike.  It was the perfect fall day to spend in the woods and so nice to get to chat with Kate while the four big kids ran along the path or hid in the bushes to scare us.

Soaking up our five and half year old boy.  In the madness that was last week, between school picture day, a short school week, karate and gymnastics practice, I totally dropped the ball on Greyson's official half birthday.  So I made up for it on Monday.  We just do a little something special to commerate their half birthdays; we sang at breakfast over chocolate muffins, he got measured in our door frame, and we completed an 'all about me' at 5 1/2 worksheet together.  Just astonishing how time slips by.

Admiring Gemma's ability to find joy in the tiniest things.  Now that we're in full-fledged pants weather, I realized she is low on leggings and so I bought her a few new pairs at the store.  Her exclamations from the backseat over each pair was filled with real happiness.  She's always saying things like, "You look SO beautiful, Mum" if I add lipstick to my yoga pants/tank ensemble.  She delights over a new tablecloth or discovering a book we had been missing.  I could use a lesson or two from that girl about celebrating all the tiny little bits of joy in my day.

Giggling about Violet.  This girl.  Her teeth are outrageous - I don't know why but it's hysterical, her little perfect toothed smile gets me every time.  She wants so hard to speak and is really testing the waters trying out words and communicating.  She loves shouting from various rooms, "MUM!" until I come in to see what she wants to show me.  She has this whine face if anything is even a little bit how she doesn't want it, this scrunch nose, lip curled face with her head tilted back.  we are in some trouble with this spoiled little thing.

Leaning into the holiday with adding new decorations created by the kids.  Grey brought home a decorated pumpkin from CCD last week and Gemma and I have been tackling fun little Halloween projects together in the afternoon like this candy corn banner.  The kids all finally settled on what they want to be for Halloween:  zombie (Grey), ballerina (Gem), kitten (Violet) - and now I'm working on collecting the items we need to assemble their costumes.

Re-organizing the living room, including the office space and kids toys.  I have just been so fed up with our home, (could I possibly type throw.out.all.the.things one more time!?!) and this week, I took the bull by the horns and tackled our main space.  The girls and I picked up two cube/stools from walmart ($13 each) and a new rug for the desk area.  We threw out broken toys, old papers and moved the furniture.  All this week, I've been lighting candles at night and the toys all get scooped up into the cube/stools by the end of the afternoon.  Brandon and I have both declared that the living room is now a place "we want to live" hahahaha, but not kidding.  Now that's my new motto for organizing in our home - make each room a place we 'want' to live.

Reading I Know This Much Is True By Wally Lamb and listening to Orphan Train as I walked this week.  I'm really loving Orphan Train and I'll be bummed when it's over (only about a half hour left in the reading!)

Baking these Peanut Butter and Chocolate chip cookies which is the best of both worlds over here.  Brandon loves peanut butter and I like them fine, but definitely not my favorite.  So I baked these up and we're all fans of them (Violet especially!) Also made this chicken corn chowder and it was gobbled down pretty quickly.