September 2023 Month in Review

September, so much to talk about. I’m so behind that I’m only really completing this once the month is almost over.

(there are affiliate links in here)

Week 1

I don’t know why I thought life would suddenly be less busy once the kids graduated and they were back in school. I must have been off in the head when I came up with this idea.

I forgot to resize this picture, oh well. This week seems to of been dominated by a couple of specific events I have pictures of, and then one big event which I have no picture of.

Oh wait, I just realized one of the pictures I had included was from week 2, picture swapped out and new picture uploaded.

We started the week with the homeschool co-op Not Back to School Party. As you can see we had a whole crowd of people there and there was so much food there, but still even with all of that food, the kids devoured all of it. By the end there was no food left. So different from the years when we’d bring a large amount of food and return with a slightly smaller amount of food.

Then we had Game Club, where the kids happily played board games and I was quite amused to have a new family come, and realize I knew the mom from my youth group days.

Meanwhile we as a family played a couple of games, and we generally had fun with that.

But, most of my time for a couple of days was taken up with sewing the dress you see me modeling. I’ve been watching videos of people making the walkway dress, and then another sewing YouTuber made a pretty cool video of the Mary Ellen wrap dress that she decided to make, and that made me really curious to see if I could adapt patterns I owned to make it, and I slowly but surely modified a couple of dresses, and then changed it again, and then again, and finally getting it just right.

But not pictured was Superman getting two flat tires. We still haven’t figured out just how he did that, but we figure it is at least partially because his tires were pretty bald. I woke up to a phone call telling me he had an accident, and then headed off to find him, but also had to take The Artist with me because she had work in a little over an hour, and we headed off to meet Jeff and Superman. After helping him change a few things around, I got Superman to work, then met Jeff at the tire place as the tire had a different number of lugnuts than our other cars. We put on the two new tires, I headed off to get the dog’s medicine, arranged for The Artist to have a ride home, and then heard from Jeff I needed to meet him at the car repair place because now that it has the new tires on, the van is not driving right.

I drove over to pick him up, and then discovered I had driven to the wrong car repair place. It was a long morning, and it wasn’t even 11:00 yet.

Long story short, the car needs some pretty significant repairs versus the value of the car, but we decided to repair it because we think it might be more cost-effective than buying another used car.

And that ends the week.

Books I read:

• Wrought of Serpent and Snow– this is the sequel to a book I read in August, continuing the storyline, and I raced through it, and went to Amazon to get the final book in the trilogy, only to discover it comes out in November, sigh…
• Wrought of Rings and Wraith– billed as book 2.5 in the series, it follows a few minor characters and takes place mostly during the last week of the second book. I liked it okay, but felt like it was a bit more filler, though it did introduce a really fun new character into the world. This was also significantly shorter than the actual books in the series at only around 200 pages, as compared to the 500 of the books in the series
• Ashen– a Cinderella retelling, more or less set in a vaguely fantasy world. I really enjoy this author, but found the first half of the book a bit hard to read because of how much this particular “Cinderella” was abused by the village. I wished it had a slightly longer ending, to resolve a few loose ends with one or two characters
• The Secret Seven– this was a reread because I needed something light and fluffy, a bunch of grandparents in a retirement community decide to fix-up their grandchildren. The first book has them all coming together to fix-up a grandson and then realizing they were trying to fix him up with the wrong girl, and fixing it. Hijinks ensue of course. The epilogue is the 7 grandparents getting together and realizing they want to keep doing this.
• Not on the Agenda– The second book has them fixing up the CEO granddaughter with the owner of a local surf shop, which doesn’t sound like it should work, but it did. It is really silly, and I partially read the second book in the series because I thought my mother-in-law might enjoy it since she currently lives in a retirement community somewhat similar to this (though obviously not in Florida)

Games played

• Shadows of Brimstone– we’re playing through the Trederra storyline right now
• Pathfinder Level 20– you are all kobolds, and you are trying to get away from a player who just needs a few more point to reach level 20, it’s a fun but really silly game, I don’t know how long we’ll keep it on our gameshelves, because we have figured out how to win the game more or less, such that I think we might be playing it wrong.
• Battleship– Superman was kind enough to play this with a kid at Game Club when they didn’t have quite the right numbers of people for a game Superman likes as much
• Last Night On Earth– in the end however, he was able to play a round of one of his favorite games, so he was very happy

Oh gosh, it’s September 29 and that’s all I’ve written!

Week 2

Okay, hopefully the pictures will jog my memory.

The week started with the kids going to Schlitterbahn with family friends, so Jeff and I had the day to ourselves.

Which would be so much cooler if we had actually done anything interesting, but I just don’t remember a single thing we did.

Sorry, it’s really one of those months.

Then we had our homeschool co-op’s monthly meeting and my friend had a kitten that slept on my lap half the night, which I was quite happy to have a cuddly kitten. Kittens are soooooo cute.

I decided I wanted to go through and get booklists for all of the themes for My Father’s World Kindergarten, which means I’m either rechecking books we read over a decade ago, OR I’m creating brand new lists.

Either way I get a fun excuse to read picture books again.

And just as Batman is almost completely done with Basic, the page shared over 200 photos from his battalion, it took me over 20 minutes but I found a picture of him, but it was from his very first week there.

Books read:

• Eternity Gate– this was an interesting Asian feeling fantasy setting, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what culture it reminded me of, but it had some interesting ideas
• Ashen– a Cinderella retelling, not one of my favorites of this particular story because it felt like the people were meaner here, so I’m unsure on this one (side point, it’s currently free)
• Not on the Agenda– a Rom-Com set in a retirement village where the people living there are trying to match-up their grandchildren, I got the first one on a whim, and I found it amusing enough to eventually get the second. I think my mother-in-law will like these

Games played:

• I don’t think we played any games. Much sadness.

Week 3

Things rather blurred together, but that’s a good thing.

The week actually started with the picture in the bottom center, Superman had a Kung Fu show, it was very weird seeing him perform without his brother. There were a few times I had to not cry.

Then the bottom corner is a Call of Abraham game I’m trying to make that is somewhat similar to the Oregon Trail card game in how it plays, but not completely the same. I still need to work on it some.

But the big deal is heading up to Oklahoma to see Batman graduate from Basic Training. I made him take lots of pictures, which he put up with.

Some funny stories from that:

• We got up there and planned to go grocery shopping, only to discover half of the town did not have power. At one point we said, “I guess we’ll try shopping at Target,” but a gallon of milk was
• As we’re picking him up for Family Day, one of his platoon mates came up and said, “You duplicated Messing,” which was rather hilarious.
• Then that night when he came back, there was a lot of discussion on how they thought he would look with a beard, since Superman has a beard. The general agreement was he should not grow a beard.

His big requests for that day was to play D&D and have soup, so we made him tomato basil soup and he gm’d for us up there.

We had a lot of fun seeing him, and it was great to see how he was doing.

Books read:

• The Dragon and the Scholar Saga– this was an omnibus, and each book is 150-200 pages, but it’s a fun fantasy series, the first book has a scholar sent to a kingdom to help cure the king’s injuries from a dragon fight
• Beast of Talesend– Beauty and the Beast in a film noir setting, this was last month’s book quest with Lorehaven, and I finished it a week or so after everyone else because I just have a hard time reading a chapter a day, so I read it in bursts
• Alice in the Land of CLovers– I got this because it was an Alice in Wonderland retelling, but I just really struggled with it. Alice ends up in Wonderland as she’s fleeing from a guy who wants to marry her, but she doesn’t want to marry him. It sets up several love interests, but some of them part animal. There are the kings of each of the different cards, the king of diamonds is also the White Rabbit, and he’s described as a rabbit with a human face. A distractingly handsome face, she emphasizes this a lot. Then the Cheshire Cat is also described as rather cat-like, but with again a devastatingly handsome face. It was also a bit more graphic than I prefer, and looked like it was going to set up a reverse harem. I did a lot of skimming as she ended up becoming very familiar with several of the kings, and then read summaries of how the series ended. I was vaguely curious, but I didn’t feel the writing was all that good, and it was much more explicit than I want to read.

Week 4

We headed back from Oklahoma to start off week 4, and finally finished listening to Skin Game with Superman.

Not super a lot happened on this particular week, or at least I don’t particularly have a lot of pictures.

We had Mom’s Night Out for our homeschool co-op and we all went out to 85C, a Korean bakery (I think Korean) and then we wandered through the Asian market. It was a fun experience and I got to try some fun new desserts.

Then Friday, one of the guys from our gaming group always brings fun snacks and drinks, and this time he brought these. They got quite a few laughs, and they were not particularly great flavor, but were very amusing.

Then Saturday was rather busy, The Artist had a birthday party for a friend about an hour away, so Jeff and I drove her out there and had a nice informal date as we ate a very slow dinner and read together. Then Superman had a banquet for Kung Fu, and he enjoyed going there again.

Books Read:

• Warriorborn– a Cinder Spires novella that happens between the first and the about to come out second book, it stars one of Batman’s favorite characters from the series
• Frugal Wizard’s Guide to Surviving Medieval England– Superman has been eager for me to read the second Secret Project, and I can see why, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, and look forward to talking with Superman about it
• Ummmm, I don’t remember if I read anything else and I’m feeling lazy about researching it.