September, I hardly knew ye

This month has simply flown by. That doesn't surprise me, though... we came home from our trip in the wee hours of the morning on September 1. Since then, we attended a 90th birthday party for GG Roberts... (thank you Jenn for the picture! That's GG admiring the card Mallory made for her.)

We broke out the Halloween decor to replace the summer stuff...

(I still love this skeleton as much now as the day I bought him for $3 on clearance. Great score!)

(The picture of the kids at the hockey game needs to be replaced with a Halloweeny one. I'll order a print this weekend.)

(I like the way the front porch looks now, but the mums will be dead before Halloween rolls around, so I'll probably need to do "Autumn: Phase II" planters before breaking out the Christmas decor.)

The kids started back to school, obviously. That's been going very well since we got the first-day jitters out of the way.

We've spent time down by the creek. It's a great place to watch the seasons change.

There's been a lot of this going on. The sheer numbers of geese that fly over at the same time every day amaze me.

Also speaking of down at the creek... Liam made a discovery he is most proud of. It could have been a lot worse. The occupant could still have been inside!

There has been ice time... lots of ice time. Hockey and ringette have started for another season. (So have swimming lessons and gymnastics, but cameras aren't allowed in either of those venues.) Speaking of activities, I've also started some lessons of my own... I've signed up for a master's swimming club and am committed to one night a week with them. I really enjoyed my first night.

There's been this. Er, um, what is this, exactly??

Liam has made friends with a couple of little boys who live down the street. Lots of road hockey going on after school.

We finished the video highlights from our trip, and I'm in the thick of making an album. I love the video but I still like having something tangible to flip through. We have lots of maps and such that need a home, and I'm interspersing them with lots of great photos from our trip. It will be a while before it's done, though.

There's been a home improvement project that is finally, finally complete. Well, it's 95% complete. I'll wait til it's 100% before sharing. It's given me a lot of incentive to get a few more things done in the coming weeks. I go through a similar fall nesting syndrome every year: time to turn the attention back inside, tackle some projects, buy new bath towels to replace the faded ones, a bunch of new clothes hangers for Liam's closet to replace the mishmash of teeny baby-sized hangers that no longer fit his clothes. And a cozy new throw for the couch because the pattern caught my eye and it looked so cozy.

We spent an afternoon volunteering at the kids' school, painting hopscotch and four-square grids on the pavement and planting trees.

And, I read FIVE books this month... FIVE. I think that's a record since we have had kids. I reread Desert Solitaire as soon as we came home from the trip so I could then put a visual to the story; I read the second and third Fifty Shades installments; I read Gone Girl, which was utterly riveting; and I am almost done Happier at Home, which has been really thought-provoking.

One thing that has not happened this month: Four People Twelve Times. I have a day left to make something happen. I guess, after so many pictures last month, I am not surprised that there's been a lull this month. We'll take a snapshot and call 'er done.