Around Here forty-three: 10/21-10/27

A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this minute

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 500 hours (of 1000)
Up a laughable (if it wasn't so depressing) 4 hours this week.  We finally had enough leaves to build a proper leaf-jumping pile in the yard and the kids were pretty happy about it.  Grey of course had to throw sixty thousand touchdown passes to himself while diving into the pile while the girls held hands and ran through them together.  Bullet has always loved rolling around in leaf piles, so we all called him over and he comes over, stands in the middle of the pile while we are all cheering him on, and takes a pee all over the leaves instead.  I could not stop laughing.  The kids and I tried to separate out the wet leaves (semi-successfully) so it was definitely a bath night after that.  Sheesh, always a circus here.

Reading nada....which is quite terrible for my soul.

Celebrating Bud's birthday on Friday with some kid-homemade paper/crayon banners, and dinner at our house with his parents.  He's kind of my favorite person on Earth, so I get particularly thankful and gooey in my heart.  So grateful he was born (thank you Gigi!)

Eating brains as a family...hahha, just kidding.  we did all dress up like zombie though (even Rust!) for the Zombie Crawl downtown that my sister planned for You in Flood City.  It had a great turnout and even a flash mob to MJ's Thriller in the middle of Central Park at 9p!

Running on empty (as they say) big time.  I think the hustle of the rotten eight which turned almost immediately into working part-time and keeping up with all of our other stuff has finally caught up to my brain and soul.  I read in some article last week about how getting around six hours of sleep a night continually is the equivalent of being drunk which really resonated with me.  That is how I feel, intoxicated in a sleepy -can't remember-hazy kind of way.  ugh.  On the upside, it's really forced me to take stock of what needs to get done each day and the things I can let slide - and without (too much) guilt even.  Lowered standards isn't such a terrible thing when it comes to housework, right?....right?!?! hah.

but...Trying to copy Violet's enthusiasm about life when she daily looks at me (or Bud) and says, "Best. Day" at the instant of any one thing she loves (like hot dogs for lunch or finding a baby doll)

Helping in Ashley's Pajama Drive which we love to do every year!  We used her Amazon Wishlist to order some jammies and sent them directly to her house from there to help kids who need some extra warm and cozy as we move into the colder months.  Thanks as always for organizing this awesome drive, Ashley! There's still time to participate too - please hop on over to her wishlist and do something kind today :)

Grateful for our awesome babysitter, Kristy, who has alleviated a lot of my daily stress of scheduling our home during my part-time hours.  And who also plays hair salon and dance party with the girls and follows my weird no tv before 10:30am rules and pretends like she doesn't notice our house is a mess.  xxox thank you Kristy!

Trick-or-treating on Thursday night as is tradition for us at my parents' house.  Grey wanted to be Harry Potter, Gemma was Rapunzel, Violet was dressed as Hulk Hogan (because they share the same hair genes) and Rusty brought his big brother's first Halloween costume back to life as a little tree frog.  All three walking kids did amazing and Violet was so excited that getting candy for knocking on doors and saying 'chickacheet' is a real thing that exists in life.  Like a total sap, I always get weirdly emotional on trick-or-treat night because it highlights the beauty of neighbors, and neighborhoods, and community, and real life face-to-face speaking to one another.  What a strange little holiday where people turn on their porch light and wait for kids to ring their bell to give out candy and treats and a smile for free.  I just think it's lovely.

Making roasted vegetables for brandon's birthday dinner and the girls and I made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies one afternoon.  but truthfully, I feel like we ate a lot of pizza last week - some weeks are just like that.