Signs of fall coming.

 We just came out of another fun, filled weekend!  There are signs all around us that speak fall is on it's way!  

Our favorite pumpkin farm is not far from our house and it's so fun to go pick out a bunch of white ones for a school sale put together and then some pumpkins for the kids to carve out!

We had evening plans but they got right to the carving part when we got home.  They were both all into this!  I'm fully aware that the pumpkins are not going to last long in our warm weather days but they had fun!

Austin had me nervous with a knife in his hand, so I ended up helping him cut out the eyes and mouth.  Mr. Lapp thought he should capture a photo of us two!

It's September and I always love how blue the skies are and the mornings and evenings get this glow!  A local town is holding a Hot Air Balloon Festival this weekend and we are excited to see many balloons in the sky!  We had dinner plans Friday night and on our way out the driveway, we stopped to count 24 balloons!  So pretty!

Saturday, we got up to watch the skies!  Last year, we had so many balloons float past our house and we thought for a minute that one was going to land in our back yard but the wind picked up and they had to land in a neighboring field.  So, we were excited to see these again so near to us!  BUT, we were dissapointed to see the wind blow the other way.  One thing about hot air balloons is that there's no steering wheels and they got to kinda go with the wind.  We only got to see a handful of balloons in the distance.

We went to Weavertown School sale and look what the boys got painted!  The kids love days like these!  Ashlyn and Austin purchased wrist bands to play games, get face paints, eat popcorn and be with cousins!

Later that night, the kids and I hopped in the Audi and we drove down the street to watch the balloons take off in the sky again.  We parked along the side of the road and the kids played in the corn field as I watched!  I packed some snacks for us too!  Mike joined us a bit later and the take off being only a hand full of balloons because of the wind.  Instead of 40 balloons, it ended up just being 4.  Too bad.

There were lots of people at the festival though having a good time in the bounce houses, ordering food from all the food trucks and enjoying many other fun things there!  We drove around the block and then went back home for a campfire.  Matt's stopped by after not seeing many balloons and we chatted around the campfire into the late of night.

As we chatted and roasted marshmallows and ate s'mores, we heard a tracker coming and thought that maybe the farmer was chopping down the beans across the road from us but it ended up being the corn farmer.  They took down the first few rows at 8:30 PM, in the dark and what entertainment!

Sunday we woke up thinking we might be seeing the last of the balloons from the festival but didn't see them around.  The wind must have been a factor this weekend.  We went to church, came home for roasts that I cooked in the oven, watched some football, took a cat nap and then sat around the campfire at Mom Lapps with Mike's family.  We made burgers on her new campfire ring and it was delicious!

Weekends like this are not going to last for forever.  The tempts are still like summer but the chill that comes each night is staying fall is coming.  I love it that way!

Today, it was lots of laundry, grocery shopping, mowing the lawn in my tank top (this will soon change too) and watch the funeral service of Queen Elizabeth 11.  I'm not much for politics but world events are so interesting to me!  England is such a neat country and what an honor to be able to watch online!

September is going fast!  We have lots of fun things coming up for this autumn and I'm holding on to these summer tempt days!!!

All in a day!

 Signs of Autumn are around us!  The sun is golden and the skies are blue, blue!  The air is crisp and our AC is turned off!  The windows are open but closed at night because the chill in the air is getting real now.  Pumpkins are displayed around every corner!  I love it!

The other day, Ashlyn said to me, "Mom, I bet all you do all day is listen to your favorite music!"  I smiled and agreed.  Then the next day, Hadassah made the comment, "What are you going to do today, Mom?"  Again, I smiled and that's when I thought that it would be so fun to journal my "things to do" in a day.  I would pay a lot of money for some journals of what my mom's day would have looked like years ago!  I remember thinking the exact same thing about my mom!  We left for school and she was always doing the laundry and when we came home, everything looked the same to me.  Now, that I'm a mom I know she was busy all day long to keep it looking organized and clean in our home.  So, yesterday, I documented a lot of my errands!  Here you go girls!  I hope some day you look back and see what all your mom did in a day!

First thing is devotions and that's reading Daniel 4-6 today.  I cannot imagine a man actually living and becoming like the cattle but it happened to the king of that day.  Then Daniel interprets the writing on the wall and later gets thrown into a den of lions but lives and the king issues a decree that the people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel!  Go and read it!

I'm teaching Sunday School on Sunday and we are starting a study on the book of John!  So I make notes.

While Hadassah brings her employee to our house and cleans three bathrooms, vacuums the living room, cleans kitchen widows and then wipes up all the floors, I pack three lunches for school and make French toast and lemon tree for the Littles!  The cleaners and school kids are all our the door by 8 AM!  A lot got accomplished already!

Laundry is started and the bedsheets and bathroom rugs get washed!

Make up brushes get cleaned!

The kitchen gets cleaned up and the dishwasher loaded!

Water the plants outside.

And it's why I love September because you don't know if it's gonna be warm enough for shorts or if you should wear slippers and a long sleeve shirt?  I love that I mowed the lawn this week in a tank top and shorts and then went grabbing for something warmer to wear when then kids came home from school!  I love this season!

I like breakfast!

And I ALWAYS listen to HOPE 94.5!!!  Ashlyn is exactly right that I listen to all my favorite songs every single day!  I love this HD2 radio station!

Ask for help when needed!!!  This was spoken over me when Austin was a born.  We packed up our entire house, moved into my in laws one bedroom basement when Austin was only five weeks old, lived there for 5 months while we remodeled our home and moved back in to the finished new home on the week of Christmas!!!  It was so crazy but we did it!  I love a clean house and I made new goals for my cleaning after we remodeled so I hired a friend to come help me.  We cleaned together!  I loved it that way!  Then she got another job and now I pay Hadassah and Jess to come for one hour each Thursday!  It's such a huge help!  Austin is now seven and I'm spoiled and want cleaners always!  Whatever does not get done by them, I then do.  Dusting, vacuuming, clean the kitchen, etc!!!  It's what works for me right now and I love it!  I don't pay a full price cleaning bill because I actually clean to but it's still a huge help!

I started doing this a few years back and that is ... if I'm teaching Sunday school, I try to listen to a sermon on that scripture. So we are just beginning the book of John in Sunday school on Sunday and I'm teaching.  So, while I cleaned a bathroom and dusted, I listened to a sermon!  This is one of my favorite preachers!

I folded lots of laundry.

 

I was almost finished cleaning and Hadassah stops in again!  She's finished cleaning today too and so she went with me to Costco!  I wanted to buy a sheet set for Austin but do you think we could find that one full size???  Bless this mans help as he helped us look in all the bins.  I was not going to look through all the boxes but he was trying to help me find my deal!  He even considered looking in the bin high up in the racks but we laughed as he gave Hadassah life lessons as to why it's ok if she's like her mom and loves a good deal and digs through lots of sheet sets.

It was 3:00 before I knew what happened,  I put the laundry way, groceries away from Costco and waited in the sunshine for Austin to come home from school!

After checking my email box, scrolling through some media, Austin was home!  He grabbed a snack, changed clothes and we were off to volleyball!

We went to Ashlyn's volleyball game and watched them win their match!

Heated up some New England Clam Chowder from Costco for our supper after we got home from volleyball!

I helped Ashlyn with some math homework and Austin read to me for 10 minuets.  Then it was time for baths, devotions and popcorn!

We all snuggled on the basement couch and watched the Chiefs win their second football game!  Go Chiefs!

This completes my posts that I documented on Instagram but the truth is there is actually a lot more that I did!  We have a house dog, Ginger, that needs to be left out every now and then!  I made four beds after the sheets were all dry!  We grabbed some Latte Luv drinks on the way to the volleyball game!  The garden was watered.  I reminded Matthew of some things he needed to pack for the high school retreat he was attending that night!  Just life ... 

I love being a mom!  I love how each day looks different for me.  Yesterday, was cleaning day.  Today, I will be working outside and mowing the lawn and weed eating around the property!  I bake sourdough bread most Wednesdays.  I'm busy but love it!

This blog has been such a fun resource for our family to look back over the years and I hope that one day, this post will be interesting for my children!

Happy September!

September weekend.

The autumn candles are burning non stop in my kitchen while I mixed up 5 dozen fiber balls for the senior class fundraiser.  Matthew's class planned a volleyball tournament and chicken bbq on Saturday and it went great!  They raised a lot funds for their upcoming Africa trip! 

The garden is looking pretty good for September!  However, I did pull out the plants that the worms or bugs decided to feast on!  They just didn't look good anymore.  BUT, I planted more butter crunch and cabbage and I'm hoping it will be ready to harvest before the frost comes!!!  Bryce and Zayla helped me pull out all the sunflowers too.  They are finished blooming but I kept the heads that full of seeds and I hope to use them for new plants next year!!!  Cucumbers are coming too ... stay away frost!

We did it!!!!  We finished our first 2000 piece puzzle over the weekend!  We started this on vacation at the cabin, carefully wrapped it in plastic to bring it home and it's been on the dining room table ever since.  So many moments were around the puzzle and piece by piece we got there!  Ashlyn and I loved it the most!  So cool!  Matthew's friends were even found around the puzzle a few times!

  

Campfires are staples during the summer but also in the fall!  Saturday night, Matt and Lena came over and we gathered around the campfire!  I heated up some apple cider and we sipped on that while we roasted veggies from the garden!  I picked jalapeños, banana peppers and little stuffing peppers!  I also grabbed some pea size tomatoes and we cooked them all over the fire with bacon and herb dip stuffed in the peppers!  It was such an easy, tasty snack!

Yesterday, the kids and I stayed home from church because Ashlyn has a cough.  She feels fine but sounds terrible.  We watched church online and then watched the first football games with Mike in the afternoon/eve!  It was fun to watch this game once again and we are ready for it!  Every year, I learn a little more about this complicated game!  My family gathered at Jason's for a birthday party for Shakia and while we were there we watched the Chiefs win their football game and Austin lost his very first tooth!

September 11, is a date I will never forget.  I was pregnant with our first baby!  We were in Florida with my grandparents.  They were doing some house work before the winter came.  Mike was out golfing and an elderly man told him that two planes crashed into the twin towers.  Terrorist attacks.  We didn't have cell phones so when he came back to the Florida house, we went out the mall to watch the news on TV.  We bought newspapers and listened to the radio for news updates.  How terrible it was for America on that day!  So much death, loss, hurts and pains!

We made it to today and I still remember this like yesterday!  God bless America!  

September is such a beautiful month!  Enjoy it!

Labor Day Weekend.

I don't know the last time when I was in the kitchen baking and mixing up so many things for one weekend!  We got invited to spend the weekend with the 50's Group at JR and Lorene's cabin and it was so much fun!  We had a lot of good, wholesome conversations!

I baked pumpkin cupcakes, made a pan of Rice Krispie roll ups and baked a coffee cake for our breakfast the next morning! 

The kids had a blast and the we drove out to town for some coffee drinks one afternoon!  Can you see Austin's eye is healing up but not without some color there!  When he did a backwards flip on the trampoline the other day, he hit his knee and bruised it.  It's now got quite the shiner on his eye.

There was lots of football and wiffle ball games played!

Of course, I went with a fall flavor drink.

We spent lots of time outside.  One evening, we took time to remember Tot's life (and of course Damiens life too) because it's been a year now that she passed into eternity.  We cried and then prayed as we remembered and then the kids said some great memories of her!  It's sobering to think that two of our good friends have already buried their oldest child.  Both families have been through so much grief but they are proof that God can take you through grief and bring healing!  Life is a journey and we are witnessing their two families grieve, adjust and move forward.  God is still so good!  

We also laughed as we talked about family stories!  Life always brings funny stories and this group of friends is always filled with laughter!

Spending Labor Day in the woods, at a lovely cabin, with great friends was perfect!!!!