Fall 2019

Hi hi hihihi I’m back after an extended, lengthy, whoa-did-this-blog-die-or-what kinda break. Not because I didn’t want to keep ‘er going, but moreso things have just gotten busy. When kids are little they are time-consuming but in a different way, you know? Like, they are all-consuming while awake but they also do these handy things where they TAKE NAPS and GO TO BED WAY EARLIER THAN US and stuff. Moose even slept like garbage the first 5 years of life, up every few hours in the night, but dammit he still actually went to bed at 7pm. I still found an hour here or there to edit photos and eek out blog posts.

Now, though, the kids don’t nap. And they fight bedtimes (I lovingly scream-threatened Pete back to his room to stop pestering me for the last time at oh, around 10:18p tonight and oh yes loves, I remember the exact time). And in the evenings we are zipping them around to stuff like swim lessons and coding class and dance class and Minecraft Club and birthday parties and all manner of child-related garbage.

(And also my workload at the office is still, sadly, bonkers, so sometimes that lovely hour between kids to bed and ME TO BED is spent organizing notes, skimming emails, and generally catching up for the next day.) (And if it’s not work related well it’s basically my overstimulated, stressed brain watching brainless YouTube planting videos before I go to bed to zonk out.)

And then! Our CEO gave us a gift of a looooong holiday from the office this year, a delightfully long break that would certainly mean ample time to update Ye Olde Blog, but instead I did all manner of things:

• Deep cleaned closets in a way that has not been done in 4 years (whoops, but hey DONE NOW) (also I carted two car-loads of stuff to the local thrift store, wowza.)

• Put together an actually-functional workout area in the basement.

• Worked out in the new shiny workout area exactly zero times.

• Dusted, pruned, set up grow lights, and moved around all the houseplants to settle in for the long Wisconsin winter.

• Deep-cleaned and re-organized the downstairs playroom for EVEN MOAR FUN PLAY TIMES FOR CHILDREN. Also finally weeded out the last of the baby/toddler toys. (Hopefully.)

• Watched approximately 8 Netflix holiday movies and binged 2 series (in my defense, while doing all of the above. Also don’t waste your time on Soundtrack; interesting in theory and the actors did well with what they were given but the writing, woof. Although if you want to just give it a peek, skip to episode 8 it’s the only one that works).

Sooooo…. Yeah anyway nothing involved blogging, but here we are in the throes of a new year and I have finally carved out some time to edit months of photos and toss up some half-assed blog posts (yay, resolutions). You’re welcome.

SO ANYWAY. I’m lumping the fall into one mush and you’re just gonna deal.

First up: first day of school way back in September. Moose started Kindergarten and I have precisely one (1) blissful year of both kids at the same location and thus life being 1,000% easier than it has ever been at any point in our time of having two children. I am fully embracing this delightfully simple year of child-wrangling.

My Moose, my sweet boy. Kindergarten has been a struggle, he’s a ball of anxiety hidden inside an Introverted shell. We’re working on it, though.

And off they go.

Next up is Moose’s 6th birthday. Which is shocking to think about, I feel like everything up to and including Age 5 is smol tiny baby children. Six is like, huh, weird. Big.

We did the yoosh  decorating insanity and it was once again an emergency vehicle/disaster theme because this is a kid who just can never get enough 9-1-1 excitement.

Lookee, I made a tornado for his cake!

It only stood up in the cake for about 5 minutes. Waffle cone, inverted, hot-glued random things on the cone, wrapped cotton-candy around the mess, then used toothpicks to prop it up. I mean, at least it stood up long enough to admire and blow out candles that’s all I was really asking for anyway.

Fun fact: we never ate the cake. We went out for family fun-times post candles/gifts so I pulled all the plastic bits off to soak in a bowl in the sink, popped a lid on the cake pan, and slid it up on top of the fridge. And there it sat completely forgotten for almost two weeks. Whoops.

OFF TO THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH, CHUCK E CHEESE’S.

The best way to watch the animatronics show is from the safety of the gerbil tubes.

Negotiating the trade of game tickets for prizes is the longest part I swear.

I know we took them out to eat as well (no Chuck pizza for us) but I have no idea where because I never picked up the camera not once. Sorreh.

Spider Time! The Milwaukee Public Museum held a special Spiders Alive exhibit, but it ended early January and we knew November/December would be too busy to go, so we headed out one weekend in October.

The space with the special exhibit was small but they made good use of the space, we spent quite a bit of time in there.

Spiders were errrrwhere. Glass cases of of ’em, models, videos, preserved spiders in jars, you name it.

They also had some other bug friends. I think this one below is the one that had a lasso tail, maybe a scorpion? I thought? I just tried Googling it so I could throw up a link to go with the picture but I wasn’t finding much and frankly all the image results creeped me out so whatever I guess we’ll never know.

After exhausting the spider exhibit we were off and running through the rest of the museum.

We got to this mummy exhibit and Linus was very quiet for awhile and asked if they were real and I was all excited like Yup They Are Real Actual Mummies! and then he stood frozen for a second, then grabbed my hand and whispered that we needed to leave NOW before we woke them up while frantically tugging me away.

Thankfully I was able to talk him off the ledge and clarify that zombie mummy remains were not going to break out of the glass cases to eat us. Then we checked out the interactive x-ray of the mummified remains and somehow that soothed him enough to finish walking through the museum.

Always gotta stop to say ‘hi’ to granny.

Can’t leave without fawning over wooly mammoth bones.

I love the neon in this museum because it’s so delightfully 1980s.

And then we were done. Back to the parking garage.

And off we went to hunt down some lunch.

I was searching through my phone for some fun new places to try but in the end, we ended up at our old stand-by – Good City Brewing.

(Oh yeah and as per usual, the kids were allowed to pick one thing from the gift shop and they got stuffie bugs. Pete got a scorpion and Linus got this giant fuzzy spider who he lovingly named Spider Fist and he is one of his Top Three Favorites still, which is quite an accomplishment considering how many stuffed animals these kids have.)

Beer me, I deserve it after looking at all those bugs and not letting on that the hairs on the back of my neck were raised the entire time. Bugs, EW.

Our waitress recommended the grilled cheese sandwich to me, and what I wasn’t expecting was a thick slice of juustoleipa seared and served on a bun with a whole pile of veg and sauce, but I have to admit I certainly wasn’t hatin’ it, either. Half a sandwich was about all I could handle, though.

After that we hit the road again and went in search of pumpkins.

We had a pretty busy fall so this was the only time we were going to have to hit up a pumpkin patch as well, so we figured we’d just find one on the way home. My niece and her husband (yep, the ones from this summer’s wedding) like Jim’s Pumpkin Farm, so that’s where we headed.

The corn maze was a real trip.

I have never heard this gourd called Yugoslavian Fingers, you learn something new every day.

Eventually we made our way to the wagon ride out to the patch, time to get our pumpkins.

I am not sure that I got a proper photo of our carved pumpkins and that’s a shame because we carved a pretty cool skull face into Peter’s weirdly-shaped one.

And then the sky was super duper pretty on the drive home so you get some shots of that too.

I was going to tag Halloween onto this but I’ve tortured y’all enough already so we’ll save that for another day.

Peace out.