Days like today are why I love fall

Today turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts. Lots of little happy events scattered across the day added up to make me HAPPY.

When I walked into the kitchen a little after 6am this morning, I noticed that Jeff had left his lunch at home. He drove the car to work today because the cold predawn air didn’t feel good on his sore throat. Not wanting my beloved husband to suffer school cafeteria-induced malnourishment, I decided to run his lunch over to Sunnyside High School. So I put on my running shoes, bundled up my patient little children, loaded them into the stroller with their Daddy’s lunch, and we were off! It took 59 minutes for me to run from our house to the high school. We breezed into the office, gave the secretary Jeff’s lunch, chatted with her briefly, and then found our car in the parking lot and drove home. [We picked Jeff up from work this afternoon].

It was a long way to push that leaden stroller—my farthest double stroller’d run ever, by nearly 3 miles. Rose slipped into a  daze after the first mile or two underneath all of her layers, with just her little pink nose peeping out. Jay’s talkativeness died out after the first half hour. When we got to the school, he kind of awoke from his stupor and said “Ho-wee COW, dat’s a big school!” I cracked up and said “You’re so cute!” to which Jay replied, “take a picture?” He knows me too well. These goldenly hilarious little exchanges make dealing with other less-cute 2-year-old behavior worth it.

All those other bundled pictures are from other days this week—THIS one is from today. Each kid had 3 layers on top. I didn’t want to freeze my little ones on an hour-long run in the crispy fall morning air! They were toasty when I took them out of the stroller, but I could barely buckle their car seats over all those poofy clothes.

Spending time breathing in all that brisk fall air inspired me to come home, take a hot shower, put on toasty fleece clothes, and have some hot fallish food…

Pumpkin scones! They were delicious, especially spread with liberal amounts of homemade apple butter (more on the apple butter adventure another time). I also whipped up my daily oatmeal—today’s version had brown sugar, cinnamon, canned peaches, and milk on top. I regularly eat that peach cobbler-esque concoction for breakfast. Delectable. With our bellies full of warming food, we were ready for a project: let operation sew Halloween costumes begin!

Well, they aren’t done yet, but I used lots of THIS fabric to make them. You’ll just have to hold your breath and rev your imagination till I reveal The Costumes when they’re finished.

I don’t sew much these days because 1. I’m not very good at sewing and I’ve never really sewed much, and 2. It’s exceedingly difficult to lay a piece of fabric flat and have it stay that way till you can finish cutting it with a little boy prancing all over the place. At first I was inclined to be exasperated with Jay’s counterproductive antics, but then I just rolled with it and turned it all into a game. We both had tons more fun that way, even if the project did take a bit longer (still not quite done…).

Steph visited us and made Jay a SUPERcool Hotwheels highway out of masking tape. He was in heaven. I thought that was such an easy, fun idea! Jay liked it so much, he didn’t even give Steph a hug when she left. That takes a powerful distraction.

During naptime, I continued working on the costumes while snacking on pumpkin cookies and candy corns. (they fuel Halloweeny brainpower, believe me). A knock on our door revealed our smiling postman bearing an Amazon box which contained the latest installment in the Sammy Keyes series—released just last week. Leaps of excitement around small apartment. And we had steamy bowls of smoky bean-ham-bacon soup with homemade bread for dinner.