Other October

October was a wild ride, but we survived.  Here’s my attempt to catch-up via crummy cell phone pictures…

October 6:  I’m pretty sure our house has been in a near constant state of disaster ever since school started.  There seems to be messes everywhere.  I’ve been so close to calling in professional help – no joke.  I feel like we’ve been drowning in disorganization.  I don’t put away laundry or clean up kid's rooms – that’s the kid’s responsibilities.  Which means things usually look like this…

This is several days after we returned from Utah and Abigail still hadn’t unpacked her suitcase.

October 7:  Drew was featured on the YMCA website for his awesome craft skills today.

Jason had a fun scout activity at the Cedar River Watershed in North Bend.  I was able to catch the end of it. 

It was neat to see Rattlesnake Ledge from the other side of the lake.  That’s quite a climb to get to the top, but the views never get old.

October 8:  Just getting a drink in his choo-choo undies.  Drew is still running around in just his big boy underwear most days.

Justin and I went out on a date tonight – a little shopping in Tukwila (with returns of course) and then we finally settled on dinner at Famous Dave’s.  I was excited because I knew I had a free dessert coupon on an old receipt – turns out I’d been carrying around that receipt since 2011!  We decided on Banana Pudding – a surprising variation for my chocolate-loving self – it was divine!  So worth the five years!

October 10:  Several months ago one of the T-Mobile Tuesday freebies was a free t-shirt.  The designs were a bit tacky since their purpose is of course to advertise for T-Mobile.  We got a couple for our family and then Justin sent a shirt to two friends – Benjamin and Tolman as a joke.  Benjamin finally got his t-shirt today and sent Justin this awesome text.

October 11:  Another Tuesday – another T-Mobile freebie.  This time it was two cookies per line at Subway.  Yum, yum!  Thanks T-Mobile!

October 17:  Justin’s official deadline was today and after working lots and lots of overtime the last several weeks he left work early so we could celebrate.  He brought home pizza for us gobble up before heading to the movies to see Stork.  We had a few free movie tickets and a free popcorn.  (Abigail was at volleyball practice and had to miss the fun).  The movie was really cute and it was so nice to do something fun together.

October 19:  Last month at pack meeting each boy was given a small brown bag filled with random knick-knacks and an additional list of supplies they were encouraged to use from around their house to complete the “Genius Project”.  Their assignment was to create something from those items.  The more items you use from the list the more points you get.  Jason’s “Genius Project” ended up being in the top three tonight and his reward was the RIP trophy pictured here – yippee!  Jason was pretty stoked to have won.  We definitely didn’t put together the most creative display, but we used every possible item on the list.  Way to go, buddy!

October 20:  The older seminary classes started a “Feast Friday” tradition a few years ago and Abigail took it upon herself to start the same tradition in the freshman class.  We sent out a signup for the families to pick a week (or two) to bring in food for class on Friday mornings.  This was our week and Abigail requested homemade cinnamon rolls – I sent her this picture today before I’d frosted them, telling her it was killing me to make such deliciousness and not get to enjoy them all myself.  The sacrifices we make for our kids!

October 21:  Megan’s Mom sent me this picture of the girls playing at the football game tonight. 

This was their last game of the season that the band had to play at – hooray!!  Despite the smile on Abigail’s face she hasn’t enjoyed pep band at all this year.  Her schedule has already been so packed that having to give up five Friday nights and a handful of additional rehearsals after school hasn’t been fun for her.  Not sure if she’ll play band next year as it also conflicted on several occasions with volleyball.

October 22:  Tonight was homecoming.  Abigail was originally thinking she would go to the dance with friends, but thankfully we were able to come up with a fun alternative and avoid the whole whoopla of a formal school dance.  She’s too young for all that in my opinion anyhow.

The original plan was for the girls to go bowling in Bellevue.  The girls did some shopping at the mall while we waited for a lane to open.  Turns out the prices for bowling go way up on a Saturday night so the girls decided in the end to skip the expense of bowling a game and eat and shop instead.  Since I was just the chauffeur, I waited in line at Cheesecake Factory for an hour while the girls had fun walking around the mall.

After dinner we came back to our house for a movie and an ice-cream sundae bar.  Fun times for a great group of girls!

October 25:  Enjoying a quick snuggle with my babes

Justin and I watched a few “classics” from my youth this week (thanks, T-Mobile Tuesdays!).  The first, “Little Shop of Horrors” which was much more bizarre and disturbing than I remember.  But as we watched it I knew there was a point in my life I’d seen it so many times that I had much of it memorized.

The other movie was this past weekend – one of my favorites, “Some Kind of Wonderful”.  I loved that movie so much that I even bought the soundtrack.  Can’t believe this was the first time Justin had seen it.  I still think it’s pretty great.