Terrible dark pictures of Katie roller skating at a birthday party.  

I'm thrilled she's so capable.  I don't roller skate, so it's awe inspiring to me.  

I'm reading my 5th/6th graders The Horse and His Boy this year.  (We did Magician's Nephew last year.)  I decided to get the Narnia map I'd grown up with, but I was disappointed in the quality of this version.  It's not a printed paper poster like the one I had as a kid.  It's photo paper, and not great print quality.  It feels like someone took a cell phone photo of the real map and printed that.  

Katie's flag football season is drawing to a close.  They won one game this year.  

Took the cats in for their shots.  It's nobody's favorite.  I ended up bleeding and Grumman and Fiona gave me the side eye for the rest of the day.  

It's been a while since I've been up close & personal with amphibians.  

We read a book about the changing season and watercolored autumn leaves on diffusing paper.  

I like that I could use different leaf shapes for different classes, so I could see at a glance which dry leaves belonged in which stack.  The following week, we mounted the leaves on construction paper and wrote Give Thanks in paint marker for a fall decoration.  I didn't get any pictures of the finished projects, though.  

I'm pretty sure there's a picture of Annaliese very similar to this somewhere.  Just purple softball uniforms instead of blue flag football ones.  Katie is #2.  

Speaking of Katie, she had a birthday!

My baby is 13.

At the pumpkin patch for evening church one night.  

This story isn't finished yet.  I introduced my 2nd graders to Kandinsky, and we're working on a Kandinsky inspired project.  

Here's the example I made them.  Fingers crossed they can create something similar.  

My eclipse supplies.  I sat outside on the porch swing for the whole thing.  The kids popped in and out of the house.  

We were in the 80% band of the map.  We did have some clouds, but they were moving quickly, so we got some good views.  

No, Grumman did not look at the sun.  

Is it me, or does the eclipse look like the French hood Anne Boleyn wore?  Not that I'm Tudor obsessed or anything.

Fiona IS autumn decor.  

She's also a fairly good seat warmer.  

Jack's boss needed an aerial shot of his business for the county.  So Jack and I flew the drone one morning.  (Okay, Jack flew the drone while I hovered nearby telling him not to crash, not to go over the road, not to go too high, and other "helpful" things.)  

Still weird.  

Grumman pulls random things out of the clean laundry and drags them upstairs to me.  He was really enjoying this pair of boxers.  

Fiona would much rather hold down my latest projects in the sewing room.  

Speaking of projects, this was a fun one.  Our city was holding a drive through donation event for the food bank.  Instead of going through the pantry and pulling out random garbanzo beans and such, we made birthday cake kits.  A couple 4 packs of disposable covered casserole pans, cake mix, frosting, candles, extra packs of unopened napkins from birthdays gone by.  I printed coloring pages, and we put a colored page in the bottom of each one, hoping to brighten the recipients' day.  

My step mom sent us an advent calendar.  I put it away so I wouldn't peek at it.  Now to remember 1) to pull it out on the right day, and 2) where "away" is when the time comes.

The school choir performed in church.  I was impressed.  The accompanist lost her guitar strap in the middle of the song, and the kids kept right on singing while she seated herself and began playing again.  

I've found some odd things in the washer over the years.  But this was my first pair of scissors.  Instead of, "WHO PUT SCISSORS IN THE LAUNDRY?!?!" which would have elicited panic and lies, I left a note on the white board, and the guilty party laughed and indicated they'd seen it.  

This year's school pictures, brought to you by the color orange.  Not sure why they're using the Trump filter on everybody, but several of the moms were like, "This barely looks like my kid.  They're supposed to be blonde, not redheaded."  

Stay tuned for visits from the adult kids.  Maybe if I get really inspired I'll even go back and share the highlights of the rest of our road trip.  It really was quite the adventure.