October Recap!
October came and went like a blur! It was crazy!
As a gentle recap, over the past 365 days I have taken on three new positions, I am now sitting on 2 boards of directors, and still homeschooling away. It's crazy busy and most days I feel like I have lost my darn mind, but in a good fulfilling way. And when I remember to lean into God's power and might (which I need to remember to do constantly...) I am reminded how much I can do when I do not rely on my strength but His.
Anyway, October is my favorite month for the crispness of everything. Do you know what I mean? It's so great! I was thinking of this the other day...it's crazy, weird that NOVEMBER isn't my favorite month since that one holds gratitude, my birthday, Christmas decorating, and shopping, but no, October still holds to be my favorite month.
It started with this crazy brood! We went to the pumpkin farm, picked the perfect guy, and came home to carve away! It was so much fun. I love our little family so much!
And then blur, blur, blur, blur, blur and before I could fully blink we were to Halloween!
This year Calvin was ninja (in New Balance Tennis shoes because that's how I roll) and Emma was Nancy Drew.
Seriously how stinking cute are these two kids of ours? Oh, and since we fast forwarded to Halloween from the Pumpkin Farm you can see that the majority of my pumpkins are now rotten. Gross! Guys, I need legit ways to keep these suckers alive. Help! Every year pumpkins fall victim to my pumpkin killing and the massacre just has to end. Do I need to bleach them? Talk to them? Stop singing to them? (Just asking that last one for a friend...promise!)
Anyway, now's where we talk about the no spend challenge and you wonder what happened to the girl who started out so gung-ho at the beginning of the year and now you haven't heard from about it in a million years. So, we are still TRYING to do the no spend challenge. Y'all it is so hard! So, so hard. So we'll use the kids' costumes as an example. Emma totally went with the no spend idea and came up with something brilliant. We didn't spend a dime on her costume and she kept getting so many compliments. Calvin on the other hand had one specific thing in his mind...the kid wanted to be a ninja...again. We tried making one at home for him, talking him through it, but alas, he was insisting on the costume. So we compromised and we purchased him a less expensive costume than what he wanted. No kid wants to have a costume that they hate and we didn't know what to do other than compromise. We spend $20ish dollars on this versus the $75 costumes in previous years. See? We're making some progress!
The pumpkins were another issue with our no-spend year. I had to decorate my porch. Sorry, not sorry, that's just the case. So I took a fence panel from my neighbors free pile at their garage sale, dragged out other things I already had but had to have some pumpkins. Last year I spent over $60 on pumpkins. You all! That is crazy! So this year we found a new place to get pumpkins and for all of them they were $20. So I spent some but not nearly as much as I was in previous years!
But back to Halloween...
We don't really "celebrate" Halloween but we trick or treat.
For those of you just joining us, we live in a National Historic District and we just love it!
From the street lights to the brick paved streets, we love our neighborhood. Trick or Treating always helps me to take time to pause and reflect on how beautiful our neighborhood is. The kids trick or treating is like going through a 1950's neighborhood. All of the historic homes and picket fences make it so cheerful and nice.
And I have to show you this because it was hilarious...
When there's a construction project why not be silly?
So there's our recap of October! I hope you all are enjoying your November! I've missed having time to write...gah! Hopefully I'll be writing more!