This week

This sentiment is ringing very true for me this week.  It is the perfect storm (almost literally today as our winds gust over sixty miles and hour and twenty foot waves are predicted on the lake).  Trent is in the throws of show week and the kids and I have had multiple events every night.

I got home last night from a meeting for the middle school musical to find the kitchen a mess (Evan had made brownies so that mess thrown in with the still not done dinner dishes).  Hailey had the living room torn apart with her shelter she constructed for Survivor viewing.  Spencer was in his room on a device with his book report no further along than it was when I left.

So I sat down with Spencer and talked him through ideas and concepts to add to his book report - which is super hard when you have never read the book.  Not to mention teenage boys are really fun to work with especially when they want to do the minimum required and call it good.  Unfortunately for Spencer, he was not blessed with a mother who likes the minimum.  While Spencer and I were working on it, Hailey came in to show me a drawing she had made and in my frustration with life this week I was a little too sharp with her about how I couldn't look at it right this minute.

I hate that.  The minute it comes out of your mouth it just feels wrong and you want to breathe it back in but it is too late - it is hanging out there crushing their little spirit.  When I had set Spence on the right track and he was typing away I found her and apologized and let her explain her drawing to me.

Ugh.  This week - and we still have two more days to get through before we get a bit of breathing room.

Light

Ok - get ready for picture overload on a Tuesday morning.  I had a weekend filled with photo editing and even some time to edit recent pictures I took of Hailey.  I am always blown away by her in photographs.  Looking at her pictures reminds me of one of my favorite excerpts by Robert Fulghum.


"I know some people who give off a lot of light. Because they have absorbed a lot of light themselves. They shine. This is not the kind of light you can actually see with your eyes, of course. But there are lots of parts of the spectrum of light we can't see. WE experience the results of its existence. It takes a different kind of looking.



To look this way is to see.

To see is to have vision.

To have vision is to understand.

To understand is to know.

To know is to become.

To become is to live fully.

To live fully is to matter.

And to matter is to become light.

And to become light is to be loved.

And to be loved is to burn.

And to burn is to exist.

Off and on.



Maybe the fireflies are on to something."

Hailey gives off a lot of light.  She always has.  It is amazing to me how in photographs of her the light always seems to come through.

We had such a fun time when we did a little mini photo session of her.  She was totally into posing - happy, serious, surprised - she was having a great time.

I just can't get enough of this girl.

Halloween

I have been meaning to get these Halloween pictures posted here all week, but as usual things come up and the week gets a lot busier than you intended it to be.  Throw in the fact that the time change has me exhausted by the time I get home from school and there's the reason I am so behind.  

So here is our Halloween 2015 in a few photos. 

Hailey was extremely excited for Halloween this year.  It seemed like everyday she came home with a new picture in her back pack. 

She dressed up as a 50's girl in a costume that we found at Goodwill for 5.99.  Throw in some cat eye glasses and I can't even stand how cute she is.

She kept getting confused as to which decade she was from but ironically the movie Grease came on Sunday afternoon and she fell in love with it.  We recorded as much as we could (sadly it starts right after Summer Nights) and she has watched it everyday since.

The only picture I have of the three of them together.  This was right after school on Friday when Hailey was still dressed up and Evan and Spencer were getting ready for their middle school dance. As you can tell, Spencer wasn't very ready since his pajama pants are peeking out he had to be coerced a bit to attend the dance.  Teenage angst is super fun. 

Evan was a Ranger from his latest book series obsession "The Rangers Apprentice".  We ended up buying a Robin Hood costume which consisted of that cheap looking green shirt and the glove things - for the bargain price of thirty dollars.  I can't tell you how much I hate to spend money on cheap costumes!  Had I known then he wanted me to make him a cloak we would have found a different kind of shirt to work underneath.   Since I haven't read the book and didn't really have any indication of what a ranger was, we were kind of not jibing with our costume ideas until the very end.

The black pants were a pair of mine that I planned to give to Goodwill so I hemmed them a bit for him.  I tried to convince him to wear my boots to the dance but he only wanted them for the picture.  They were actually too small for him!  When did my boys get bigger feet than me?

When Spencer saw me making a hooded cape for Evan, he wanted one too but in black. Of course I made it but he wouldn't wear it to school or to the dance.  In typical Spencer fashion he decided at the last minute to have Dad do his face "old looking" and dress as a sort of wizard.  I was just thankful he used the cape or I might have killed him.

Spencer went to a friends' house to trick or treat so we just had these two little cuties to tote around - with a few of their friends and parents.  It was pretty miserable weather for Halloween.  All the kids were soaked when they came in.  I almost think snow would have been better.

So now we are almost done with the first week in November.  I can't believe the holidays are upon us.  Time to get organized and ready for festivities!