fall phone photos

A fuzzy blurry phone full of fall pictures -- 

My bees, still struggling. But aren't they adorable? I ordered them their winter bottom board, and a nice new roof yesterday (instead of ordering myself my favorite Anthro dress that just went on sale YOU'RE WELCOME BEES). 

Socks socks and more socks. I am really in a sock groove. This was the third of a set of four and I'm casting on the fourth today. I am getting ahead in my Christmas knitting (which is the kind of thing someone says when they want to spark a worldwide yarn shortage or other terrible event of karmic retribution on a grand scale). 

Ben, throwing rocks in Walnut Creek, which has water in it for the first time since late May. Bear forgets every week that he can swim. He walks into the water like he thinks it's going to bite him, and then halfway through retrieving a stick he remembers he can swim. I wish there was a way to type out the way his voice sounds in my head. I guess sort of like Ralphie from the Simpsons? 

One of our babysitting swap nights -- our turn for the babysitting. I promise we didn't just leave them alone with the ipad the whole time, but it certainly did make the last 20 minutes go pretty smoothly. Parenting today, eh?

My date night with Jane -- our 100% middle child, who needs all kinds of one-on-one attention and she definitely lets us know when she's missing it. We went to Whataburger and talked about school and birds and trucks and strawberry milkshakes. 

And here she is at a roller skating party for one of her school friends last weekend. I believe this was the 'night at the disco' portion of the party? Not really clear on what exactly was happening. But yes, I was also wearing skates, and taking a picture with my phone. Pretty impressive, huh? You should have seen the amazed faces of my fellow parents when I skated out of the restroom with no visible cuts, bruises, or clothes soaked from falling in the toilet. Success!! 

More fall knitting- Ben's birthday vest, in its early stages. I cast off the edging yesterday, and now all I have to do is embroider his initial on it. It didn't turn out exactly as I pictured, but what ever does? I am deciding to be proud of my continuing construction skills instead of disappointed that it doesn't look like the pattern. And he really doesn't care. He's turning two. 

A picture I snapped last night at work, a cart full of books to catalog and repair. It makes me happy to see them all stacked up there, ready to go. A coworker was sort of trying to mess with me the other day, and brought a giant box of books into my office and said "Oh sorry these are for you..." But then he saw the look of incredibly dorky excitement and glee on my face and had to say "Oh no actually these are for the book sale... I was just kidding...? Wow. You really like books, huh?" 

Yes. Yes I do. 

And one from bright and early this morning. I stepped out of the kitchen and these two put some teamwork in action -- dragging stools and chairs across the house to reach the brown sugar. Their oatmeal was apparently not sufficiently sugared and they decided to take matters into their own, very very sugary hands. It's nice to know that Jane shares, even is what she's sharing is a propensity for mayhem. 

I just realized this photo dump is nearly Wrenless. She's doing just fine - she's loving 2nd grade and her wonderful teacher. She's halfway through the first Harry Potter and very into planning her Halloween costume. She's been writing little books that she leaves for us all over the house- these are usual fairy tales, even though she's not reading Grimm's quite as much these days.  Our most frequent fight right now is over her screen time; she would like more, I would like less. It's something I'm sure we'll be compromising on for the next ten years... which is, astoundingly, how much longer she's going to be living in my house. A blink. So no, she's not spending a significant portion of it on Webkinz world.  

Anyway, that's the family update, instagram style.