Life after summer

It was a beautiful autumn. All the leaves have fallen to the ground by now, but most of them retain their lovely colors. They make the woods behind our house look like one of those quaint pictures that you see on the cover of a 1940s "Better Homes & Gardens". The weather has been unseasonably warm. Our high temps for the Halloween weekend were in the lower 60s. The whole family was busy outside with our usual fall activities. Eric worked on our cars (as always) and cleared out more of the scrubby trees from the edge of our woods. Zakary worked on covering every square inch of our yard with some sort of toy construction vehicle, and Corie spent her day continually reminding Zakary that he was going to have to "pick up every one of his toys before he went in". I was cutting back the perennials and pulling up the remainder of our garden. While doing my gardening I started to notice that my arms were getting sore, and I was sweaty and out of breath. Eric told me that it was the result of "exercise", and I have decided that I don't like it.

Halloween night was great. The kids came home loaded with candy. I let them eat as much as they wanted whenever they wanted for the weekend, and they still have a pile left. Of course Monday’s sugar crash wasn’t much fun, but I think the kids would agree it was worth it. The costumes met all the required criteria… they were warm, comfortable, and finished on time! BTW - they were tarantulas.

I am looking forward to winter for the first time since becoming an adult. I had just started sewing last spring and was really enjoying it. Summer is too short to spend indoors though, so my new hobby was pushed aside for the season. I took my birthday off, and decided to sew something for my sister. It came out funny looking, so I had to make her something else to compensate. I’m going to post the picture even though I’m not sure the package has arrived.The doll is from a free pattern I found on Martha Stewart’s web site. Here’s the link: Black Apple Doll pattern. I enjoyed making these guys so much that I made these next.

The pillows were copied from pictures that I found on the web.

The kids are doing great. Zakary still loves school. He is starting to get bossy with the other kids though (something he learned from his sister), and we are having a lot of talks about the Golden Rule. His favorite DVD, “I Love Toy Trains” Vol. 1-13, has temporarily been replaced by “Twenty Trucks”. Corie is doing much better in school, but her attention has started to turn to boys lately. I know she is only 9, but she is a Sprague. She has started writing scary stories, maybe I’ll post one. She never finishes them, but they start out pretty good. Eric has been busy with work, school, and fixing on our cars. The Blazer has been put up for the winter, and the Saturn is officially dead. Now he only has to work on the Taurus and Rav4 every weekend.