Fall Climb

It's such a beautiful, warm and sunny autumn day, that we decided to enjoy Kennesaw Mountain.  We have great views of the colors, and the animals are in full frolic today.

Falling Into Autumn

It doesn't seem like so long ago that "Bun" and "Papa" were "Mom" and "Dad", and Jack, Laura, and I were jumping into big piles of leaves. This is one of those special things that I'm glad Chip can do with them. We just wish we'd been there instead of at home, cleaning up our Halloween decorations!

BINGO!!!

Friday night, we had a family Bingo night at school. I helped serve the drinks; actually, G helped too by setting out the cups for me and we both got to wear plastic "glubs". It was a really special night for us. We sat right in front and had a great time playing together, each of us with our own card. We had pizza, cookies, and drinks, and played Bingo for about two hours. They also raffled movies and birthday parties at the local skate rink. The Chipster paid attention from start to finish, and he even helped to play my card for me at the beginning while I finished up with the drinks. He was a pro - after a while, he was even able to multitask, eating and playing at the same time. None of us won, but a couple of G's friends - Quincy and Jordan - did. We love that our school, and especially the PTA, do such special things for us. We really had a great time and can't wait for next year. Here are some photos, so you can see what a fun event it was.

Gloved and ready for customers

Pouring the water, fruit punch soda, "lemonade-ish", "Sprite-ish", and "Coke-ish"

The ball of destiny... for two hours, anyway

They didn't end up using this board; they wrote out the numbers, instead, but wouldn't it have been neat?

Our principal and the event organizer from the PTA

Our three stacks of cards: five cards for each of us

Excited to learn a new game and practice his number recognition!

Getting close to a Bingo!

Our principal/ball lady, our assistant principal/caller, and our assistant administrator/Vanna

Focusing on the raffle numbers - what a cutie

Kroger Math

We are at Kroger for our school's Math Night.  G is using the grocery store to do addition, subtraction, comparison, and shapes.  This is really fun, and it is giving us ideas how to work teaching moments into our grocery trips (as if he needs more teaching moments from us).  Lots of teachers and administration are here to cheer them on, and at the end, a big reward:  a cookie and apple juice!

The Last Candybender

Happy Halloween, everyone! This year, G was Aang, from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and we were Sokka and Katara. Aang's costume was from all new fabric, but Sokka's and Katara's were mostly from Goodwill findings. It was fun to deconstruct the clothes and remake them into costumes. We felt like we hit gold at the Goodwill, because we found a cross-front shirt (Katara), easily removable fur trim (Katara), an undershirt (Sokka), two of the exact same scrub shirt that could be made into a larger, cross-front shirt (Sokka), as well as sweatpants for Sokka that we ended up replacing with new ones from Target. One day later, we have two new costumes.

Today was a very busy day. Since soccer was rained out (thank goodness!), we only had three parties and trick-or-treating on the schedule. M and G attended a classmate's very well-organized and fun birthday party while I finished my costume. We all went to his soccer team's Halloween party after I got ready and made myself some "hair loopies". "Tara Coach" lives in a beautiful house near Marietta Square, and it reminded us a lot of our house in Ann Arbor. It looked to be about the same age, with several fireplaces, beautiful molding and windowpanes, and hardwood floors. If you can't tell, we thought it was beautiful. Not fancy, not big, just lovely. There is a photo of one of the kids at the party below, who was dressed as a mad scientist and whose moosetache, as G says, was the best thing ever. After that, G and I went to our neighborhood party while M came home to change and leafblow (a kid slipped on the driveway anyway) before joining us there.

Finally, it was time to trick-or-treat. We would probably have been tired at that point if we weren't so hopped up on sugar. This is the first year, we think, that we have made it to every single house. Aang is faster this year than in past years, and we hardly got through our whole flask of bourbon before we were home! Please to enjoy the photos from our day (and one picture for reference).