31 days in July

What a busy, busy month! I may be too tired to think in complete sentences... but somehow I can still count.

1 red-white-and-blue Independence Day parade

4 forts in Nana's living room

1 inspiring local homeschooling conference
6 fun afternoons at the park with friends

5 long-anticipated tickets to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” (We took my dad and left Littlest with his Nana.)
1 lesson in leverage

3 parties to celebrate friends' birthdays
At least 20 games of chess, checkers, Battleship and Dinopoly

4 weekly cello and violin lessons
3 days (for the professional) to hang and finish the drywall

Lots and lots of 100-degree days
A dozen evenings at the pool

1 day to move our living and dining furniture into...
2 Uboxes while Scott refinishes the floors
1 teary farewell to dear friends moving to North Carolina

4 rooms to paint (including ceilings)
11 days of prepping and painting

3 cans of Behr satin Cornsilk
2 cans of Behr satin Rainwashed

2 cousins visiting from New York
3 delicious dinner invitations 
1 visit with friends to a children's museum

1 lesson in using a table saw for Eldest

3 days to lay the new tongue-and-groove floor in the kitchen and laundry room

14 days until Daddy goes back to work his easier paid job as a teacher

Where November went

Obviously I've been lazy on the blog the last few weeks, so I'm catching up. My brain was otherwise-occupied this month, it seems. First with my Dad's birthday party, and then with the possibility that I might be pregnant. (I'm not, but it certainly gave us something to think about!)

In the meantime, life went on...

First hot chocolate of the season...

Tea and sweater knitting (I'm making Scott a pullover with the yarn Farmer's Market yarn I bought during our road trip)...

 Neighborhood walks in our beautiful November weather...

     

A Thanksgiving potluck with new homeschooling friends...

 First snow of the season (forty minutes uphill), and a play day with favorite old homeschooling friends...

And the first half of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in the theater! We finished listening to books five and six on CD before we went, but we'll save book seven for after Christmas. In the meantime, the big boys have been reading off their own shelves...

Today we're off to the library to turn in our fall books and gather new books for Advent. I'll let you know what we find!

It's Quidditch er, trampoline season again!

In some parts of this country, kids play outside during the summer. But where we live, summer is for leaving town, hiding out in the A/C, or making friends with someone with a pool.

Autumn, on the other hand, is trampoline season. The boys have been on ours every afternoon for the last two weeks.

And yes, they're playing Muggle Quidditch. Please don't tell my insurance broker.