Fall Stuff I Forgot to Blog About

#1. Olivia's birthday. She likes cats.

I bought her a bunch of kitties from the thrift store cuz I'm cheap like that. But it made her happy anyway.

Auntie Emmy made her an awesome Hello Kitty cake.

#2. Justin's birthday. He turned 40. He's still a handsome young stud to me. But I am much, much younger than him.

#3. My sister-in-laws, Jubilee & Melanie came to visit. They brought their friend, Gina. They also brought my nephew, Aiden, whom I had not seen since he was a newborn. I performed the amazing feat of rocking him to sleep, which is something he usually only allows his mama to do. Even though my youngest baby is now almost 3 whole years old, I've still got the knack.

#4. Uncle Joshua & Auntie Heather came to visit.

#5. Halloween happened. Wait. I think this should have been #1 or #2. Oh, well. Not gonna fix it now.

#6. In the middle of my frantic packing for our trip to WA, for Thanksgiving, Seth decided to go for a bike ride, hit a pot-hole, fly through the air for a bit & "break" his arm. Very inconvenient for me when I had to load everyone up in the car & head off to the ER for our monthly visit. However, it was just as well, because the staff was starting to miss us & wonder if we were OK. Heaven forbid. But I suppose it was no picnic for Seth either, as it was his arm which was injured....poor kid. I felt so sorry for him that I did his chore, the dishes, for the whole next month. (Yes, I do dishes on vacation. But when you have teenagers, they should help, right?) When we returned from our vacation & had the doctor re-X-ray his arm, it turned out to not be broken after all. Simply sprained. Hmmmmmm.....Suddenly, he's able to do the dishes again. Thank you kindly.

#3: PART 2: When Jubilee, Melanie & Gina were in town, Justin's work was having an early Christmas party. I asked them to babysit the boys so that I could go with him for a date. Not only did they watch the boys all evening, so Bonnie & Clyde could go out on the town, they (along with the boys, whom they paid) cleaned my house from top to bottom. They cleaned & scrubbed things I had forgotten even existed. That was a HUGE blessing & I can't tell you how loved that made me feel.

Another highlight of the evening, for me, was when I beat Justin at poker. That has never happened before. He beats me at every game we ever play......cuz he's smart like that & I'm.....not so much. Well, technically, I just finished ahead of him (that's the same thing, right?). I also relieved a bunch of guys of their chip stacks, so I was pretty dern proud of myself. A good time was had by all, except for the guys whose chips I stole.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts about our vacation.