Its not so bad.

Fall is officially here! I feel bad about writing this post last year.  It isn't the Fall that I dislike, it's the Winter.  And this year I've timed a baby to come right in the middle of what may have otherwise been a bleak expanse of time, relieving myself of the monotony of even that wicked season.  There is much to love about the Fall, though I'm not great at really playing up the holidays and making things magical yet.  It will come in time, I'm sure...that ability to create a haunted wonderland in October, a sparkling decking of the halls shortly after that. 

For now, I am focusing on sweaters and the more practical task of switching out Summer clothes for warmer ones.  That is one thing that can be said of the Fall, it doesn't mess around.  When it's here, it's here.  You can pack up clothes with a certainty that you just can't find in the Spring.  I like that.  I've been doing laundry like crazy, so as not to miss any shorts or outgrown items before lugging up all of the bins and making the big fall switch.  With four growing boys, it's only a matter of time before I'm piling outgrown things up to be binned and going down to rummage through the bins to find something they may have grown into.   But for a glorious little time, I can be all caught up.  For that reason alone, the Fall deserves some love from me.

That and produce. I love produce. And the Fall brings lots of great grocery prices.  We bought 25 pounds of strawberries yesterday. The girl at the checkout asked if I was making jam.  I should, I told her, but I'm just not that domestic yet. This is another thing I'm sure I'll get the hang of in years to come. Someday I'll be more like my mom...someday.  But for now, I'm just slicing and freezing them for smoothies and such.  We've done the same with blueberries, peaches, and bananas.  But our blender broke last week, so it's not doing us much good just yet.  Marlee gave us her blender about a month ago.  It was nicer than ours (or so we thought...) so we gave ours to Mikelle and Abbie.  We used about 6 times, and it broke.  I looked it up online and it got horrid reviews, even though it was a Kenmore.  Anyone have a blender that they love?  I really only have one requirement: it must be good for making smoothies.  I would hate to have done all of that slicing in vain.

In other news, Moon and Swimmy have returned to us.  When we went up to Washington...oh, two months ago, was it?  Mikelle and Abbie watched over our fish for us.  And then we just sort of kept forgetting to get them.  I was hoping they'd...well...never return.  But they're back and the boys, who never noticed they were gone, have remembered their love for the pets.

We went to the fire station last night and the boys loved it, as always. We took a picture on Kev's phone, so I'll try posting them later.  This blog is so darn drab without pictures.