September's end

Well September sure sped by! Here are pictures from the last week of September. I may add more words to this post later, but I really wanted its publishing date to be in September so I'm posting it unfinished at the very end of the very last day of the month. September was so busy!

Amber made her own PeaNutella sandwich with extra Nutella.

This was a delicious warming soup I crock pot-ed one chilly day, and I was proud of myself for throwing together wholesome wheat biscuits after cross country practice (cooking after practice is hard and rare).

Amber, playing with her friend Malcom.

I helped my nice friend Leslie move to Yakima on Tuesday. I was so sore the next two days from all of the lifting.

We did some silly fun relay races for core work at the end of cross country practice one day.

Amb borrowed my hat.

Waiting for all of the parents to pick up their kids after xc practice gets a little wild and lengthy some days.

Amber has started drawing actual people and I LOVE her little head-men! Her preschool teacher always asks Amber to tell about her picture, so Amber explained who each person was to me--apparently they were all of us, wrapped into two people, because she kept changing her mind who was who.

DIRTY WINDOWS: Suddenly I HAD to clean this mess at 7:30 one morning.

We had no ladder, so I used a mop to wash the windows. It worked...mostly, minus the hairs that got stuck on the window from the mop. I ended up rubber banding a wad of paper towels to the other end of the mop and washing the window that way. It was like a giant Q-tip.

Clean, minus a few mop-smudges. It was the best I could manage and it has made such a difference!

Lola--the darling tiny dog I rescued last year (adopted by our behind-us neighbors) always greets me whenever I'm getting the mail and she's outside to pee. She is such a sweetie and one of the few canines in this fierce world that I will touch of my own free will. The good thing about small dogs is they can't shove their noses up my you-know-where. It makes them more trustworthy than the big dogs and their booty sniffing.

Amber picked this book out from the library and it fits my dog reluctance so well.

Fall cooking is so satisfying after a hot summer of wanting to cook as little as possible. The rich nourishing fall flavors are just so scenic, I kept taking pictures of my food. Yam pecan bacon spinach apple salad: deceptively filling and absolutely delicious!

I got a haircut during preschool one afternoon--nothing fancy, but it feels so good.

I wish I could infuse this picture with the rich sweet grape scent on the breeze--there is nothing like the smell of September sun-warmed grapes wafting on the wind.

Other peoples' bounty: we bought $20 of apples from a high schooler with an apple tree, and our friends the Kannelys had an abundance of the sweetest, juiciest, most divine tomatoes I've ever tasted. They shared and I will never look at tomatoes the same way again. We're talking Garden of Eden-caliber here.

Making the poster for the annual Grizzlython cross country fundraiser after practice on Friday. Amber decorated it with her bubble-head crayon people and it was excellent.

Saturday morning, 40 degrees: time to run!

After 90 minutes of running and a cumulative team total of 363 kilometers run. Go Grizz! They earned enough money for uniform shorts and possibly for t-shirts too--yay!

After the Grizzlython, I snuck in a 5 mile run, finishing at the Weavers' house for the traditional team brunch after the fundraiser. We stayed and talked for 2 hours.

More delightful filling healthy food. I made the best from-scratch crock pot black beans ever, and my avocados ripened at the opportune moment and those Kannely tomatoes plus a crisp quesadilla: quality lunch fare right there.

[I have a few more photos to add but it's bedtime so later]