Fall Catch-Up

First, the obligatory Halloween picture.

From left to right: Ian as Harry Potter (Quidditch version? we could only get a hold of a red cape in time for Halloween); Sage as Cinderella, in my homesewn dress that I'm quite proud of; me as either a leopard lady or a cavewoman, depending on your preference; Lucy as a cheerleader; Nora as a cow -- she's the fourth child to wear that costume, and the button on the front still moos, but I guess it's time to retire it; and S. as Frank from 30 Rock (the hat says "ninja expert", if it's too small to read in the picture).

Next, a Thousand-Bloom chrysanthemum at Longwood Gardens. Technically this single plant actually had 718 blossoms, but thousand-bloom is the name of the horticultural style/technique used to produce it.

Fall in Valley Garden park.

The collection of jack-o-lanterns this year. Can you guess whose is whose? They're arranged in age order, if that helps, and I didn't make one...

Raking the leaves. And then, um, unraking them.

Lucy grumpy-faced in her "harvest hoedown" outfit from the day's preschool non-Halloween celebration.

Playing in the packing materials that came in a box of books from Grandma.

The girls wanted to make silly hats, which were mah-velous, and clashed delightfully with Sage's pajamas.

Our lives are not as impossibly rosy as these pictures might portray -- I decided not to post the unflattering, red-eyed and grumpy picture of Sage on Halloween after she woke up from a deep sleep just before time to go trick-or-treating, and there weren't pictures of the horrible drizzly, muddy hours we all spent on the soccer sidelines earlier in the day cheering Lucy on.

And I've avoided even looking at, let alone taking pictures of, the horrible hole in my (brand-new car's) trunk that came from me backing straight into a big black Suburban in a very dark, nearly empty parking lot after pack meeting the other night. I was up most of the night crying over that one...

But things are always better in the morning, and S. and I feel so incredibly blessed in all the ways that matter most. So I guess my sentiment today is, life is great, may we all make it through the rest of the holidays with our sanity, health, and family peace intact!