Autumn Has Arrived

What better way to celebrate the first day of autumn than apple picking in the mountains with friends? It helps when the schools all decide that we need to get Yom Kippur off so we all had a free day--I'll take the midweek holiday any time!

 

We took a picnic lunch and ate out in the orchard,

before we got to work picking.

I think I've mentioned before, that what our family usually calls "apple picking" is more like "driving to the mountains to wander around in some trees and then eat donuts and buy a couple bags of apples from the orchard store.

I think these two monkeys were pretty excited about the actual apple picking, and tree climbing it required, this time.

This little monkey was not. He asked me if we could get donuts about 137 times before we finally DID get donuts.

But the rest of these kids would probably move into a tree if we'd let them.

"The donuts are this way!"

It was a beautiful, warm, but not too warm, day and we had great company. 

(And the apple slushies were a huge hit. Better than the donuts, which didn't quite live up to our Skytop cider donuts we love, but the kids still devoured.) Happy Fall!

Weekend Vacation

You know what this is? This is freedom. This is the beginning of a stay-cation for Mama. This is Daddy-o driving away with 3 kids to camp with the church for the night while Mama stays home because as much as I might like camping, I couldn't pass up the first chance I've had in over 11 years to be alone in my own house for a night. 11 years! One of the downsides to living so far from family--we don't do weekend trips where one of us takes the kids to visit grandparents without the other. The only times anything like that has occurred has been me with the kids.

 

 The only other night that I have stayed alone was another church camping trip 5 years ago when I was so sick from being pregnant with Peanut that I couldn't get out of bed without throwing up. So I don't count that one--and I wasn't really alone. Peanut was already making his presence known.

The kids had so much fun camping with friends from church, participating in pioneer activities to celebrate church heritage, and eating sugar at every meal.

I think Daddy-o had some fun, too, even though he was definitely working the whole time.

The farm they camped at looked beautiful.

These kids came home exhausted from a late night and early morning.

And from lots of outdoor time.

 

And while they camped, I got to take a bubble bath, binge watch a new Netflix find, read for hours, eat without interruption and without cooking, and work on a scrapbook from a trip I took almost 13 years ago. It was kind of a perfect weekend, and one I wish we could replicate more often than once a decade.

Soccer Mom

Guess who got talked into coaching, the very first season she convinced any of her kids to play soccer?

 

Yeah, that would be me. Bug finally decided that maybe he wanted to play soccer (and then accused me of making him because I've said that I wished one of my kids wanted to play--oops--bad mom move, I guess, but he's having fun. And for the record, even if I had mentioned that, I didn't actually force him to sign up.) He's playing with AYSO, which is all volunteer coaches, and they kept sending the emails, begging for more volunteers. I was hoping to assist this season so I could get my feet wet a little more slowly since I haven't played organized soccer for over 20 years, but when no one else stepped up, decided I could probably handle U10s.

So far, we've had 2 games, and 2 practices. We got our roster 2 days before our first game (this league has felt pretty disorganized, even if I do like their philosophies and focus on skills, rather than winning), so the kids hadn't even met each other, but they've played well both weeks and showed HUGE improvements from one game to the next.

 

And I'm a little less nervous now. I think they're all having fun and the parents have all been so helpful at practice. I don't know how people coached before Google, but the resources out there these days are awesome.

 

I've already decided that Peanut needs to play in the spring so I can coach his team. 3 on 3 games with 4 year olds sound perfect and I've found so many games that would be fun for that age. Bug's probably about at the end of my skill range at this point, but the little guy has years to go before I'll get uncomfortable.

Driving in the Fast Lane

Guess who got to drive around the Charlotte Motor Speedway (NASCAR track, for those of you who may not be familiar with the whole racing scene)?

That would be the three of us. I decided that it would be nice to commemorate 9/11 by participating in a blood drive and since this one had some pretty awesome perks, I thought these kids might like to come along. (Peanut had to miss out because I didn't think that he could handle all the waiting, which ended up being a good call when they were running an hour behind.) So, after I finished my donation, and the kids ate their weight in junky snacks, we headed over to the racetrack entrance.

 

I was actually pretty nervous to drive the track because those turns are banked pretty steeply, but the follow-up truck driver assured me that if I'd be totally fine, even in a minivan. But going into that first turn at 70 mph was a little scary. And then I realized that it actually was totally fine and we had fun for the next two laps.

The Long-Awaited Day

Peanut had to wait for 3 weeks after the kids started school before his first day of preschool. And I can tell you, it was a long three weeks. After getting over the initial shock that the kids had to go to school every day, not only once, he quickly realized that I was the only person available to play, and begged me to "Play with me, Mama!" about 75 times a day.

And I will say that the first week of school went better than I hoped. Knock on wood, but we've had very few separation tears. The first two days, he was totally fine when I dropped him off in class. He really took to the play kitchen area when we dropped in for the Meet the Teachers day, and has spent a lot of time playing there this week.

Thursday, the started outside on the playground and he wasn't too happy with that change, but in the end, he let me retreat to the parents' room for their last few minutes of outside time and then was fine for the next hour, so I'm still feeling hopeful. I don't know how any kid could not like this school. They've got a little bit of everything and the 4's/5's teachers are amazing.

Peanut's wait may be over, but because the school does a pretty long ease-in process, it will be a week from Monday before he goes for the full 4 hours, so I'm still not getting anything done (other than meeting the other parents as we hang out at the school). And there is a tiny part of me that is sad that he'll be away from me so much, but the rest of me is grateful that I'll have 16 hours a week that I don't have to talk with anyone if I don't want to, or more specifically, listen to anyone (because Peanut is carrying on the tradition of our kids which is that silence is evil and every thought they have is fair game to be shared). That means 16 hours a week that I'll be able to think straight. I'm kind of looking forward to all the things I'll be able to get done.

Uptown Adventure

 

After going to the art museum in Uptown last week, I realized it had been awhile since we had done a Saturday adventure as a family. We lucked out that this Saturday was the last day of the Clifford, the Big Red Dog exhibit at Imaginon and the first Saturday of the month, when a lot of museums are free for Bank of America card holders (and that's not just a Charlotte thing, so if you have a B of A card, you should check your area for the free museums!)

 

So, we hit up the Clifford exhibit first. Peanut isn't as crazy about Clifford as he is Curious George and the Berenstein Bears, but he's watched a few episodes and we have one or two of the books around, and he was pretty excited to explore Birdwell Island and see Clifford's home. 

 

After we finished there, we walked a couple blocks over to the Levine Museum of the New South, which specializes in North Carolina history since the Civil War. It's a really well done museum with enough hands-on stuff to keep the kids involved. We shopped at an 1800 Belk department store, carded cotton,

 

visited a barber shop, sat at a lunch counter just like the history changing African American students did in Greensboro, rode a school bus that helped desegregate Charlotte schools, and watched FDR's speech made in Charlotte during the Depression (and learned that he is the one who brought the Kudzu in that now threatens the life of trees all over the state--bad move, FDR!)

We had a nice morning and are excited to try one of the art museums next time.

End of Summer?

 

Summer is such a tricky thing--it's weather, it's a school holiday, and it's marked on the calendar, both unofficially and officially, so it's always hard to decide when the end of summer really is, but with the kids fully immersed in school now and the first of the -ber months, it's kind of feeling like it's over. Especially since due to some vandalism at our neighborhood pool, it shut down a couple weeks ago so we haven't even had the end of the season swimming like we normally do. The kids have been missing the pool a lot, but we've had two families invite us out on the lake in the last couple weeks, so that has helped soften the blow.

 

We spent a Saturday afternoon tubing and swimming, which everyone loved.

 

Peanut wouldn't go out on the tube, but he did have fun riding in the boat and taking a swimming break every now and then. A few days later, we spent an evening (which I didn't take any pictures of) with friends and their jet ski's. Daddy-o, who had never been on a jet ski before, fell in love and started plotting ways we could adopt the weekend lake habit. Personally, I'm thinking it's going to need to involve moving to the lake to make it worth it.

 

 

A couple weeks ago, we also squeezed in a Wednesday evening concert and picnic at Romare Bearden Park. We loved those so much last summer, and this year, we only made it once. But it was a beautiful night and there's always next summer.

 

We did a little back to school shopping--these two boys mostly ran around Old Navy terrorizing the place. I remember doing the same thing when I was there age.

 

And with the kids in school all day, Peanut and I have had to find things to do so we don't drive each other crazy (at least, I think my lack of interest in playing with him ALL DAY LONG is driving him as crazy and the fact that he wants me to play with him ALL DAY LONG is doing to me.) We've gone to the library several times, met up with friends at the park, scheduled play dates, and I spend a lot of time trying to convince him that playing "Mom and Day" (his choice) is most fun if Mom and Dad are cleaning things up. He doesn't buy it, and so our house is still in the state of end-of-summer chaos. I figure next week he'll start school and I can eventually get things back together.

 

We did take one day off for a special field trip to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to see the Matisse exhibit.

 

For all the museum going that we do, we had actually never been to any of the art museums here in Charlotte. This one was nice and the kids enjoyed seeing the art books of Henri Matisse. Both Bean and Bug had studied him in first grade, which was why I really wanted to do this, even if it meant they missed a day of school in the second week. 

 

And, we went with a group so we had an organized tour of the exhibit and then got to spend an hour in the art lab making our own Matisse inspired works.

 

Peanut got really into it and I have to say, his finished work actually looked very Matisse-like. I've been waiting to find cut up papers all over the house, but I guess that was enough of the cutting to satisfy him for a bit.

Other than that, it's been school runs, Activity Days, supporting the school soccer team at their first game, attending a coaching class (because I somehow got talked into coaching Bug's soccer team this fall, which has me pretty nervous), grocery shopping and meal cooking, dog walking and Peanut chasing. It all feels very much like we've entered autumn, but as long as it's still hitting the 90's, I'm going to pretend it's still summer.