Missy's blog: September

18 years? Look at all that gray hair!

Are we old yet?

We had our traditional Anniversary meal of mac and cheese and peas and garlic bread and I got my traditional roses. I love our traditions.

I took some roses to work to remind me of lovely things. We made plans back before we got married to go on big trips for our big anniversaries and soon it will be 20 and suddenly things like cost and vacation time are intruding into the day dreams. I wonder what will happen. I want to take the family to Denmark and northern Europe. We shall see.

One of the things I am doing for work is taking a intro to 3D printing class. We do some printing at work for fast prototyping and because some of the people there are brilliant designers. I have been printing lots of things designed by other people and want to learn how to make my own designs.

Here is a ukulele I am making for a class project.

here is my first attempt at a chess pawn with a honeycomb top that I designed myself.

Here is a credit-card catapult that works super well that I printed out for the kids.

Here is a somewhat complex set of instructions for making a simple but rather specific shape.

Ta-Da!

Ok improvements will come

Its apple season and the Bramleys are early this year and I made apple crisps.

Also not-Borscht

We had a few tornado warnings and went to hide in the basement. The kids are doing online schooling now. Its ok. Kiernan is in middle school but its a weird year. Poor Megan has the longer day and the shorter attention span. The teachers are doing heroic work herding cats from afar. I wish things were more normal for Meg. She has school online and Kung Fu online and Girl Scouts online. He poor social self is not getting all it needs. I am happy for Kiernan in many ways. He had so many difficulties with his teacher last year and this being at home has made his usually very hard transition back into school so much easier.

I went to Costco and got new passport pictures and sent off my expired in August passport with a ton of money for its renewal. This is about keeping my documents up to date and about fear about the election and about hopes for a big anniversary trip in a few years. Its working on my list from the beginning of the summer (do our wills, renew my passport, roll over my 401K). Anyway I'm working on stuff and that is good.

Look at this adorable boy.

His voice is starting to get a little lower and his hair is getting a lot longer and he is starting to do math I have trouble with. He likes very random music. He does kind things for us like watching videos with Megan that he doesn't like or like bring me tea when I have a headache. He's developing quite the sassy attitude and a huge apatite and I see teenager looming but its not here yet and he loves to be tucked in at night. He loves to play World of Warcraft and Among us.

One of his classes is Food Science and due to it we tried making solar s'mores with a magnifying glass on the driveway.

Megan can now start and stop on her bike and take good tight turns. We took a mommy Megan day and went to Baker Park for her first long ride (3 miles).

We were tired when we got back.

Megan loves dance music and everything on YouTube. She has a bad temper and needs to work on her self control. She is afraid of things but refuses to show it. She is a little lioness. She sings beautifully and she wants to be an artist and fashion designer when she grows up. She's gotten quite good with my hot glue gun. She's getting better at skateboarding. She reads and does math very well but doesn't like the math. Megan is perfecting her eyerolling and sassy but a stern word spins her 180.

We went to Scearce's for a big birthday party. We spread out and brought our own food and had fun.

There was a cool chrysalis by the garden.

We went to drive in Kung Fu at the school.

Its the first time we had seen any one there in person and the first time we had seen the school. We saw live action Mulan and ate way too much candy and some popcorn. It was after the kids bed time when we got home but they were happy.

we've gone to a few more since although they are now very chilly and we bring sleeping bags.

I've started looking at historical tattoos. They are very beautiful

I am particularly like this place in Wales they make beautiful Celtic/Norse traditionally inspired tattoos like this one

The garden started to slow down and i made the hilarious and foolhardy decision to make fried green tomatoes from these tiny things. Delicious but a stupid amount of work.

Mom picked an dried the herbs from the back garden and the house was crazy smelling for a few days.

Kung Fu goes on apace.

Megan is helping me with a giant paint by numbers project. We are about halfway done.

Grandma Mary made me this cool drawing. This was a request by me to represent our small archery group. All of lab workers or scientist so its a lab rat in a lab coat.

We took a day off work to go look at bows. We had lunch at Nandos.

We went to Bass and Pro shop and tried out bows. I was looking for a takedown bow of a slightly higher draw weight and Krishna was looking for a long bow. We liked two in particular. I got one and she got the other and we will trade off at some point to mess with.

Here is mine, look how pretty the wood is.

Its been added to the wall with my other two.

We also go some tea at this place with a cool indoor tree. There was a temperature scanner by the register and you had to scan your forehead before you could place your order. They had brown sugar milk tea Yyyuuummmm!

Mom and Kiernan and I went to the apple orchard to pick up some baking apples and cider

They had snacks and everything smelled like sweet apples.

The caterpillars got fat and disappeared.

I made waffles.

I made bean soup.

My plants on the deck did really well.

We had some good cook outs. We tried out all the various veggie burgers.

We got fancy and went out for our anniversary. I tried to do an upthing. I am not good at doing my hair. My firends very kindly reassured me and I went out like that and felt self-conscious but pleased.