Just another autumn morning waiting for the bus to pick Alistair and Ariana up for school. In case you hadn’t noticed, Alistair has a bunch of blue hoodies he’s been wearing, and Ariana’s wardrobe consists of a great deal of pink. It was a bit warmer today, because Ariana’s hoodie here is a very light one. I tried to make her change about 8 times as she started off the morning in a tank top and shorts… this is where we ended up.
I’ve had to redress the kids every day since we started having to wear sweaters, pretty much. They wake up with Arin and get themselves dressed, then once I see what they’ve chosen I have been telling them to go back and get on long sleeves and long pants. Alistair especially is in summer mode still, but Ariana has been wanting to wear tank top dresses and shorts as well! Silly kids.
It’s not just the bus stop that is chilly… the school classrooms are colder than normal too. In addition to being a school where they are always trying to keep the heat down, they also have open windows as part of their COVID protocols, which lets in all the colder air. It’s nice to have fresh air, but I want to make sure my kids are warm enough and that means having a sturdy sweater they can wear inside if they need to.
Tomorrow is Alistair and Arthas’ turn to go to the doctor for their yearly physical, so Alistair won’t be at the bus stop tomorrow. We also don’t have to leave until an hour later than I did with Ariana and Arin last week… but I’ll probably need all that time to get little Arthas ready to go. I’m a bit nervous about taking the baby by myself plus a crazy Alistair, but they only allow one parent at a time (and only two kids at a time). That’s the world we live in now!
After all these doctor visits and shots we are hopefully going to have a fun few weeks leading up to Halloween. This coming Saturday is the local mother’s club’s Trunk or Treat, so the kids will finally get to wear their costumes. They have been chomping at the bit to put them on since they arrived, and we have had to hide them up high. A few times they’ve gotten into them already, but we don’t want things ruined before Halloween, and these kids have a knack for ruining things.
This year Arin doesn’t want to go trick-or-treating for Halloween, which breaks my heart in a million pieces… my little baby Bobo! I can’t believe he is already at the age where he is over being a kid and getting candy for Halloween, I think I was trick or treating in high school, I mean it was my favorite night of the year! I used to go in college with friends who had young kids, and I couldn’t wait to have my own baby to take trick-or-treating… which I did for Arin every single year, even when he was only 3 months old! It’s the end of an era but he’s not really bothered about it, he’s too busy being cool and super busy with all his high school friends.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when Alistair and Ariana become old enough to stop trick or treating, I think I can convince Ariana at least to keep going forever, even when she’s in college, just to ‘support’ Arthas. I would go with my little brother and fam when I was older! And Arthas is just never allowed to be ‘too old’ for Trick or Treat, forget it. He’ll be going until I have grandkids to replace him, even if he’s 25! There have been maybe 2 or 3 years in my entire life I missed trick or treating and I’m not about to let that number go up now.
Other than Halloween, we did get out to go apple picking one day, and to the pumpkin patch finally too. We didn’t actually get any pumpkins though, and it wasn’t a proper pumpkin patch… just a farm that put their pumpkins in a field. We did get to go on a hay ride and see some spooky things, I’ll be posting those pictures soon too. I’m hoping this weekend we can go to a REAL pumpkin patch and actually come home with a bunch of pumpkins. In addition to carving them, baking the seeds and displaying them for Halloween, I also want one or two to cook with. I love making dinner-in-a-pumpkin and I haven’t since Arin was little!
All in all, it’s been a reasonably festive fall so far, and after Halloween I may or may not be diving completely into Christmas planning with maybe some late autumn themed walks and festive local trips. The local mother’s club is with me on this because on November 4th there is a ‘get in the spirit of Christmas’ event at Santa’s Christmas Tree farm with ice skating, fire pits, North Pole bounce houses, and Santa himself!
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