Fire, fall, and farms

On Monday we had a fire at work. It was not a big one but we got a beautiful morning in the sunshine and lots of people took pictures with one of the trucks.

The kids had a day off this week so Kiernan got to have a play date with a boy that used to be  in his class but moved.

It started inauspiciously. I got a call from Kiernan (this is the first time he has ever called me) and he sounded very shaky on the message. He said,

"Mom? Mom?" then I heard Nana in the background telling him that he could talk. Then he said in a voice that made it quite clear he was trying not to cry, " About the Cole thing Mom I don't think that it will go to plan." then there was a long silence in which he breathed deeply and hung up.

Oh my boy!

Cole's mom was very wise and brought Cole with her to pick up Kiernan. So the boys played together at our place for about 15 min until Kiernan was ready to go. After that he had a grand time and spent almost 4 hours in total on his play date.

It turned into jacket weather.

Here are much lighter pictures of my hair as I was told the last one was too dark to see anything.

Jacket weather is also hot tub weather.

Me and my hot tub girl have been loving it!

On Friday Megan's class got a visit from the fire station too. She told me that from now on she is not a human., instead she is a firefighter.

We went to the costume shop and got way too expensive costumes. The kids had particular fun this year. They wanted to try on all the things. They wanted to poke all the scary moving animatronic displays. I even got a bunch of spider webbing for the front of the house.

All week I was working on my final paper for my Lab management class.

It took every spare minute and I chipped away at it instead of enjoying video game time with the boys (David and Kiernan and I are really bonding over World of Warcraft).

We are still pushing ahead with the hardcore house cleaning.

I have invited some of my friends from work over to try out the hot tub. The hot tub is ready and more than suitable but the under deck area ...not so much.

So my project on Saturday was to clear it all out.

Tons of toys and gardening supplies and leaves and hot tub parts and spider webs and bikes and scooters and a million little things have now been tossed or ordered, mostly tossed.

I filled the back of the truck with recyclable plastic toys and pool parts while David (bless him) tackled his project.

David attacked the garage.

We got 5 boxes/bags for Goodwill and a full truck load of detritus from the garage.

At the end of a long day of hauling and clearing away I took the kids for a bike ride.

Megan had a crash and Kiernan relearned how to  brake.

I feel that we should be doing more consistent bike riding.

On Sunday we took our annual trip to Gaver's Farm.

It was far more crowded than I had ever seen it before.

It kicked my anxiety up something fierce.

I had chest pains the whole way round.

On the other hand we bounced

and did a corn maze

and rode peddle carts

much better than we were able to last year in some cases.

There were water pumping games

and enormous chairs to sit on.

Most importantly we got pumpkins.

The rule this year was that the kids could get any pumpkin they could carry to the car.

Megan ran around sure that the perfect pumpkin was just around the bend.

They carried their pumpkins to the hayride and then to the shop and then Megan dropped hers but it didn't split.

After that I got a cart and they ate honey sticks and apples while daddy towed them to the car.

Kiernan approved of the not carrying tool use so much that when we got home he ran for the wagon.

I finished my paper. 

I woke at 4 and at 5 with anxiety.

Some residual from the being too busy.

Some from forgetting and therefore missing a Wolf Den meeting.

Some from a fun experiment we are doing at work.

We are getting the chance to sequence our own exome.

I fear all my hypocondriachal dream will become a reality once I see that.

My boss told us that we had to look up a genetic counselor before we were allowed to do this.

So I have one and sure hope I don't need to call her next week.

Some of the anxiety just seems to be about October.

I wish I knew why this time of year is so rough. Still its better than it was a few years ago so thank goodness for that.