Our fall has been fairly uneventful - work, school, cross-country, and so on. My mom came for a visit just before Halloween and we had fun making a lot of candies. She also got to go to one of my concerts and one of G's concerts. We made chocolate and coconut covered marshmallows, boiled cider caramels, and peanut brittle.
Ryan and M dressed up and went out trick or treating.
And Ryan and the kids carved pumpkins. Gram helped M put up our Halloween decor.
Then Ryan's brother's family came to visit over Thanksgiving. We ended up having 10 people around our table this year since one of my orchestra friends and her husband joined us as well. I was on call over Thanksgiving so it was a little crazy to host, but everyone chipped in helping to make dishes and desserts so that made it much easier.
I tried out a new way of opening pomegranates over Thanksgiving and it actually worked!
When he wasn't chasing around "cousin" (M) with dinosaurs or asking to play, our nephew enjoyed playing foosball.
It was a lot of fun to get to see them all again.
Shortly after Thanksgiving I went with co-workers to a Rage Room - we picked out plates and cups and bottles and got to smash them with hammers, bats, crowbars, etc. It's a good way to get out frustration with insurance companies getting away with not covering the most basic of things.
M had their first band concert - when you force all the 6th graders to take a music class, it's pretty easy to fill the stage with the beginning band. We couldn't see M because they were way in the back as a trombone player.
I got enough of a break in the stream of on-call pages for us to go get a tree - it helps that the tree farm has a stand only ten minutes away! Ended up with quite a character-full one this year, but we like it! The kids enjoy that the new LED lights allow them to easily switch from white to multi-color lights.
M also pulled out a puzzle to start at Thanksgiving and I finished it in mid-December. Sadly, it seems the puzzle is missing a piece. But still a very fun puzzle to complete.
The kids and Ryan started their breaks at the same time while I had a completely packed clinic week before being off the week of Christmas. So I sent Ryan and the kids off on a trip that first week - it started with Ryan joking that they were all going to go somewhere fun without me and then I realized they totally should do just that! So they took the train up to Vancouver, arriving mid-afternoon there and stayed overnight before coming home late the next day. They got a fun trip and I enjoyed a couple nights of having the house all to myself before heading into Christmas week!
2 comments:
Our insurance won't cover fluoride treatment at the dentist. I can't even express how much this enrages me. And it's only $30, but when you multiply that by 7, it starts to cost quite a bit! After leaving Manassas, Sarah and I frequently bemoaned how much we missed Kaiser Permanente-- they were so great about actually taking care of their people. (No clue if they still are, or how they are on the west coast, but ten years ago in Virginia they were GREAT. My hospital births, even the c-section, cost me a $100 co-pay!)
I'm amazed at how much I enjoy being home alone now. Wiping down a counter and returning a few hours later to it still being clean feels like magic. I'm glad you got to enjoy that while you were working so hard!!!
And finally-- what's with these sons of ours playing trombone and hiding in the back??? Bentley at least played drums, but he was so short then that we couldn't see him in the back even though he was standing!
Ohh, don't get me started on Kaiser. They're great until you have a chronic disease. They're terrible about covering formula, even for kids with feeding tubes. We often have to let a Kaiser doctor manage the nutrition orders even if they have no clue what they're doing because that's the only way Kaiser *might* cover it. I know our doctors have similar frustrations, so it's not just the formula coverage but specialty visits and medications as well.
Isn't it delightful to have things stay clean?! Also, I think some of my enjoyment is that I've never really had a chance to live alone. I went from my parents house to college roommates to married and, while the thought of living on my own made me nervous at 20, at nearly 40 I look forward to solitude in the house occasionally.
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