October 2022 in review

Well, it’s two weeks in and I’m finally sitting down to get it all written down.

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Week 1

I just realized the pictures from the Chalk Walk and the boys performing at their show is actually from October 8.

Oops.

So, Saturday, October 8, is the start of next week, so pretend I actually put that on next week’s collage.

Also, how cute is that llama with tea cups and pot on his head? It’s adorable.

The two pictures actually from that week…

We have a picture of game club, the boys played some Smash Up, a little We Didn’t Playtest This At All, and some Throw Throw Avocado. I think that’s what they’re playing on the floor there. It may be another game similar to that.

We cooked another geography meal, actually two, first Nepalese chicken and second Liberian chicken. With the boys officially graduating and heading off, I’ve been forced to greatly accelerate our geography lessons to get through it all.

Week 2

Starting up on the top is a picture of The Artist and friends working on the parking team. Then right next to is a picture of The Artist working participating in the flag ceremony as they close out AHG for the day.

Going down to the bottom our foreign meals for the week are a Saudi Arabian meal (pictured) which I was sure was going to be a hit and was a big meh, and then a Suriname meal (South American) which had everything go wrong and I was sure the meal was going to be super weird, and then Jeff and Superman loved it. Even though that meal did not turn out at all like I was hoping for it to.

Next to it is the Oregon Trail dice game that I finished up this week. I was glad to finally have it done when I’d been working on it off and on since May. That’s right May. It’s been mostly done that entire time, but I kept getting distracted by so many things.

We ended the week with the start of Jeff’s birthday weekend. The Artist made that amazing apple pie (which doubled as the basis for her English class paper), it was going to serve as Second Breakfast for our Hobbit marathon. We forgot to eat it while watching the first movie (the plan was to have two “meals” with each movie), but the snacks were a big hit.

Week 3

The week started with it being officially Jeff’s birthday, so I have that big middle shot of Jeff taking a picture of The Artist’s pie she made him (that’s up above in week 2). The weekend of gaming and movies was a big hit, and everyone was pretty happy, though tired by the end.

Monday The Artist had a “Women of Faith” fashion show (bottom middle), and we spent a very long time trying to pick someone for her to dress up as from the list because I didn’t have time to sew anything, and I didn’t really want to go buy anything, so she picked through it all and found someone who was vaguely from Regency/Victorian, and she dressed in something kind of sort of Victorian-ish and called it good.

I’m still in the midst of all my Halloween sewing, and as I went upstairs I realized the kids had been adding their cousin’s artwork to the empty wall in their room (top middle), this greatly amused me as it’s a much smaller version of The Artist’s art wall.

The first item finished was Batman’s updated vest. Two years ago when I made it for his Greymane costume, I did frog closures, which require tension to stay secured, and so it kept falling open and he really hated it, so I switched out for buttons.

I’ve got Superman’s coat pretty much done, it’s been sitting that way for over a week. I just need to complete the hand-sewing the lining at the armholes.

The Artist is helping me with sewing her costume, and we’ve had lots of “arguments” over pressing seams. I joked I was going to disown her if she didn’t iron her seams open, I even got all my friends to agree a perfectly reasonable decision. Then later as I’m explaining to her the next step on the waistband, I started going into a lot of detail on how to make it work, and then I stopped and said, “You don’t care. Why am I saying this?” She spent the rest of the afternoon teasing me about that.

The afternoon ended with her saying, “This is Mom, ‘Don’t do weed. Don’t do drugs. Iron open your zippers and stay in school kids.’”

Apparently my adventures in sewing and ironing is greatly amusing all of my friends.

On another note, that has absolutely no picture. Superman has recently been completing statements other people make by saying, “And lick it!”

Unfortunately for any sane person visiting our house, my response to that is usually, “Okay, let’s see you do it.”

This ends with him licking whatever item he was talking about. So far this week he has licked the ceiling twice, a sock, his brother’s foot, and then his brother licked a shoe. Every single time they claimed I was daring them.

Literally, one time I asked them to pick up shoes and socks from the floor and Superman responded with, “and lick it.” I just stood there staring at him, and he picked up his sock while staring at me aggressively and licked it. Then Batman, picked up his shoe and staring aggressively licked it.

Why boys? Why?

I have yet to figure out a response to this that does not end with Superman licking something and thinking it’s hilarious.

I gotta admit it is funny.

The handle broke off the driver’s side door and so Batman told me the new procedure to get out of the car is roll down the window, open the car from the outside, then roll up the window and turn the car off.

The Artist has slowly been working through the Power series, and since she prefers paper to ebook, I ordered the third book, Power Through, in paper copy. The author just posted in her Discord server you can order signed copies, and so I’m thinking of buying the last copy as a signed copy for her.

October week 4

Wow, this week had so much going on, and I don’t even have the ability to put everything that happened in pictures.

I should rephrase that, I have the pictures, but unless I want to shrink everything into super small pictures, then there’s no point in sharing.

The Artist and I started off at Ceramic Lodge, a local paint-your-own-pottery place, I opted to paint a new garlic keeper because we’re cooking enough that we’re going through significantly more garlic than earlier.

Towards that, this past week we made a meal for Nicarauga, carne asada which was a big hit, and then caldo de mancarra from Guinea Bissau, which was not a hit. I think I ended up throwing away the leftovers for Guinea Bissau versus Nicarauga was wildly popular and almost had no leftovers.

Thursday I went to watch my brother give a talk at a conference and he did great. It was also cool because I got to see an acquaintance from high school who I went to church with back then. We got to talk about all the things from our high school that people currently attending our church don’t have a frame of reference for.

Friday Superman, The Artist, and I went to a homeschool college fair and they went around and talked to all the colleges there asking about transferring community college credits, CLEP tests, what dorms are like, and things like that. They enjoyed this fair much more than the one for the school district, it was much better laid out, and more organized, not to mention significantly less crowded.

The weekend was the Great Pumpkin Hunt at the church and my high school girls (bottom middle) and I drove all over the city and did terrible, but it was a lot of fun.

Halloween the boys were determined to get a giant group for their last time trick or treating, with The Artist quite sure she didn’t want any more people than she could help there. Which ended with only a few more people than we usually had, and a great enjoyment was had by all.

I’d read this post online about a lady who’d put a potato in her candy bowl to see if people would take the potato, and outside of our group I had 3 kids take potatoes. One preschooler, a teen who took it ironically, and then an elementary kid who took it. Then various people from our mob of kids took it, including a 10 year old who took 3 (his Mom later told me he planned to use it for breakfast tacos). There was much laughing as they did so. Five pound bag of potatoes gone.

Later that night as Leezard escaped after we caught her we found one of the potatoes just thrown on the floor. It had clearly been thrown a couple of times by the kids before landing on the curb.

And that’s our October!

I can’t believe it’s already almost 2023. It’s so weird to think about.