2 Years of Anticipation

 

Much of last week was a normal October week with school, Great Grandma's on Wednesday, rain, cooler temperatures and getting things done in the house.  Tobi opted to enjoy one of the warmer days camped out in front of the screen door in a nice cozy spot someone had left him.

Friday night, we met up with our friends at the New Salem Corn Maze to check out their new attraction, the Halloween Light Spooktacular.  We went for a ride through  a series of scenes set to lights and music and all had a great time!

Saturday afternoon, we made a quick stop at a church gathering for New Life in celebration of their 10 years, where the kids got to ride another horse, play on a bounce house and play bean bag toss before we had to leave about an hour later for the night's adventure. 

Saturday night brought us the LONG AWAITED (nearly 2 year of anticipation and several holds and reschedules due to Covid) NEWSBOYS CONCERT!!!  A Christmas gift to our kids in 2019 that was purchased in early November, we were so glad to finally be able to go!  We met up with our friends, found our seat and waited anxiously for a little longer for the time of the concert to arrive.

Sadly, we were a couple of framily members short due to some changes in life as well as a last minute change in plans for Henry's sitter that meant he and Becci had to stay home, for which we were very sad. 

The kids could hardly stand the wait any longer!  We got warmed up with Adam Agee and Mandissa, 

and then it was finally the moment we had been waiting for!

We had such a great time, even if it wasn't quite the concert we had bought tickets for, as the two years had resulted in a tour change and also meant the original members who had returned for the United Tour had gone back to their own activities, meaning less of the old songs and more of the new.

Elam was wore out about 30 minutes before the concert ended, and Tierney soon followed suit, both falling asleep on the pew despite the very loud concert and lights going on around them.

Near 10pm the concert came to an end

We gathered up our sleepy babies along with our very tired kiddos still enjoying the wakeful hours and lingered a few moments more to soak in the moment.

Sunday morning, after church, we headed to Kathy's house to help with round one of the leaves.  The kids all worked hard and in just a few short hours we had the whole yard raked and those leaves nearly all burned up!

Youth group Sunday night for Ezri, some overly tired but still amped up kids from a very full and exciting weekend, and we closed the chapter on a week we had looked forward to for far too long.

Settling in to October

 

October is upon us, and we are beginning to see fall make it's appearance in the changing of weather and leaf colors.

Snickers is adjusting well to our home, having been with us 3 weeks already.  At 11 weeks old, he is learning to use the litter box and slowly beginning to use the water bottle in his cage, though he still prefers the bowl.  He's super friendly and social, full of energy and gets no shortage of love.

We received Barb's grave marker last week, with some emotion of course, but are so pleased with how it turned out!  The company we chose was able to use an actual image of Barb to engrave on the stone, and that has meant the world to Ezri especially.

Last Friday was homecoming for Hopkins, so we grabbed dinner from the FFA Pig Roast and settled in to watch the parade and collect some candy!

We have attended a new church, New Life, in Wayland, a few times now, and are getting into the groove of attending church in person on Sunday mornings again.  It carries with it some anxiety for me, but also a very welcome return to the church atmosphere after over a year and half of online or outdoor services at several different places.  We are considering calling this our new home.  The younger kids have enjoyed their Sunday school classes.  Ezri does not have a class on Sunday morning, and has had to sit with us, but has attended youth group on Sunday night a couple of times and really enjoyed it.  We let her pick out a Bible case and loaded her up with pens, highlighters and such to give her a reason to be excited about sitting in the church service, and last week she was busily using her things right along with us.

It's been a quiet start to the month, but that has been a welcome change from our chaotic and busy September.

Riding Into Fall: Coronavirus Weeks 80 & 81

Life around our house has been a bit calmer lately.  The kids are still loving Snickers, who is growing like crazy.  Each day, they take turns cleaning up his little poops, which they have named "Poop Care".  Elam loves to use a little Barbie shovel and wheelbarrow to do the job! 

We have also begun the final stretch of scraping and sealing the walls in the basement, after a long stretch of letting it sit in the name of other stuff taking precedence.  We tackled the first third of the West basement wall, which had a lot of flaking paint and needed quite a bit of prep work before the painting could begin.  This also required us to move some things around, but in the process, we were able to re-work the layout of the basement, moving the work bench and freezers to create some better organized spaces.

It was exhausting work!

The kids have also turned their focus toward thougths of Christmas list ideas.  Elam especially has been loving a catalog that came in the mail, studying each picture, working out how each of the toys work and explaining it all to me.

Last Saturday, the kids and I went to a local farm that was hosting a family day, somewhere we had never been before, but it offered the promise of horses, so the kids, especially Ezri, were all in!  We spent nearly 2 hours having a wonderful time.  We started off checking out some chickens, goats and a bunny, then we moved on to brushing a pony named Oreo.

Then each of the kids got the opportunity to go on their first ever horse ride!  We started out the morning riding a show horse named Rush.

While we waited in line to ride the next horse, Elam went to play in the dirt with some other kids, or at least supervise their dirt digging.

Then the kids did an obstacle course on a horse named Riley.

Followed by a trail ride on a horse named Moses.

Then they decorated some horseshoes at a craft table

Finally the kids rode a barrel course on a horse named Nevaeh.

They all had a blast riding the horses!  And this mama loved watching them have so much fun.

Saturday afternoon, we worked on scraping the next section of wall in the basement to re-paint and seal it from water.  Later in the afternoon, we met our friends at Crane's Orchard for some apple picking fun!

We ended our weekend with church at New Life on Sunday morning, a visit with Grandpa and Grandma in the afternoon, and Ezri stepped into a new adventure Sunday night, choosing to attend her first youth group meeting, which she absolutely loved!