photos taken: 67
We woke up slowly on Saturday morning with each kid finally making their way to the king size bed where the moms were gathered talking and laughing since 7am. Once everyone was up and ready to rock and roll, we headed downstairs for a delicious feast of a breakfast while the kids put together some donut spiders (thank pinterest!)
The kids gobbled down their breakfast and wasted no time in getting to their playing while the Mums hung out in the pajamas for as long as possible sipping coffee, chatting, and playing with the three littlest kids. We all got in some pumpkin cookie decorating, and visiting with Nana (Kate's mum) before finally getting ready for the day and packing up some picnic lunch for our afternoon activity.
We made our way toward Weakland farms where we let the three littlest ones finish their nap while the big ones and the Mums snacked on our picnic lunch on the trunks of the cars. Grey sporting those glasses and messy hair like a bonafied Ferris Bueller look-a-like (!)
After the little ones began to stir from their naps, we spent the better part of a chilly afternoon petting the farm animals, navigating the corn maze, and getting corn kernels into all of our nooks and crannies (hah). The big kids led the way through the corn maze and then all of them had a blast in the corn kernel pit digging, throwing, and sinking (!) among all the other kids in there. It was mayhem, but joyful kid mayhem at its best.
We said our goodbyes (until Sunday at least for the kids!) and then went our separate ways for the rest of the evening. At home, I was able to successfully transfer the two sleeping big kids from the car to the couch without either of them waking up (worn down especially from their sleepover the night before), but the littlest gremlin was not having any more nap. So I went upstairs to toss her in the bath and jump in the shower myself while she chugged down a bottle. Then it was dinner prep and waking up the big kids to throw their little corn filled butts into the shower each too.
I had just got them finished up with dinner while Brandon and his Dad arrived home from hunting that afternoon. While the kids settled down in front a movie and the baby went down to sleep for the night, I hurriedly finished a blog post and then it was out the door to meet up for dinner with Katie and Karpy!
I headed out in the rain towards our half-way meeting point; Pour on Center in Ebensburg for dinner and drinks together. Pizza with argula and fried artichoke hearts: a real life grown up dinner with food that's delicious and fancy. We sat at the table and enjoyed some live music and talked about anything that our conversation naturally landed on for topics. It was such a wonderful evening with my two favorite girls.
After a drawn-out goodbye and plans finalized for Sunday, they headed east while I headed west and stopped off at Giant Eagle to pick up party snacks that I promised to purchase for the upcoming Halloween class party in Greyson's class and milk. Giant Eagle at 11pm at night is blissful; not kids, only a few other customers, no lines. Is this my new shopping time? Haha! By the time I got home, a little before midnight, everyone but Bullet was snoozing and I headed up to bed myself to read a little before drifting off to sleep.
photo series debrief: whew! that was intense, so intense in fact that looking at my life so closely through the lens of the camera really got me cherishing all the beautiful, chaotic, and simple minutiae of my life. By the end of the week, I was really struggling to grab my camera to take the photo instead of just soaking up all the moments. Not that I don't normally soak it up, but the extreme focus on capturing it all really brought to life all the beauty in our life that sometimes goes uncelebrated because of everything else that goes on and needs done.
I feel grateful that I have filled my photo album with a lot of ordinary moments of our life right now too. They will serve well in our family yearbook next year to preserve what it was like to live our life as it is right now in the moment. For that, I'm very grateful to have participated in the series.
I've been struggling with writing a blog post since the series (I miss two days in Blogtober!) and that's because I've really been keeping it close to our family and what we have going on. I've been limiting social media and really focusing in on our family and our house. It's been kind of chilly and rainy and B is on vacation and nothing else really seems more important than cozying up with our little family and laughing at each other's jokes. Brandon's response to my sad declaration that I didn't meet my goal on blogging every day for 30 days said, "So you blogged for 27 days in a row instead? that's not so bad, babe." I'm gonna have to agree with him on that one :)
