October Flies When You’re Having Fun

I look forward to October all year long and then when it gets here, it passes so quickly that I feel like I missed it. How is it October 17 already? I’m not quite sure.

We have been going non-stop around here. Jose and I kicked off the month going to all 3 Astros home games in the ALDS, including the Game 5 win that sent the them on to the ALCS. Woo! The good luck I had getting tickets to the ALDS did not carry over though, and I was unable to snag any tickets to the ALCS home games. I was bummed, but it’s not all bad since it saves us some cash. Baseball games are a particularly expensive outing in the postseason — inflated ticket prices plus food plus at least 6 hours of babysitting.

That said, I’m verrrry close to buying Game 6 tickets for Saturday on StubHub… The ticket prices aren’t completely insane there, but the “service” fees are outrageous. We’ll see.

We finally got a cold front and some fall weather over the weekend, and then another one came through yesterday. I spent last weekend soaking up creative energy at the Bayou City Art Festival on Saturday and at my monthly quilt guild meeting on Sunday. We were able to check out most of the artists at the festival before heading to the kids area for the last hour and a half of our visit. (The capes came from one of the kid booths, and were a hit as you can see.)

Our guild meeting on Sunday doubled as a sew day for this year’s QuiltCon charity quilt, which I am coordinating again. I’m still waiting for some final blocks to be turned in, but we were able to get started and made some good progress. The theme this year is “text” and the color palette is black/white/gray. There are 10 words in our quote, so getting 5 of them completed on Sunday was great! We would have gotten more done, but a couple people who volunteered to make E’s didn’t have them ready. So, more soon!

(I like coordinating this project, but it’s a lot of work and I get irrationally stressed about certain things. I’ll be ready for someone else to take over the block-wrangling and sew day organization next year!)

This week has been a doozy and I’m happy it’s almost over. The girls and I were all off school and work on Monday for the federal holiday, so we celebrated with donuts for breakfast. Emma spent most of the afternoon with a friend (half at the friend’s house; half at our house) while Charlotte and I went grocery shopping and hung out at home, and I finished my Halloween quilt.

Jose left for California on Tuesday to visit a supplier for the lunar lander project he is working on, so I’ve been solo parenting for the past couple nights. Yesterday Charlotte was supposed to have a field trip. It was cancelled when the bus driver was sick…but I didn’t find this out until I was already downtown at the theater they were supposed to be going to. So I got to drive all the way downtown through rush hour traffic and rain only to immediately turn around and drive back to Clear Lake. SIGH.

Tonight is the annual Sock Hop at Emma’s school which she is excited about…and I am dreading. Ha. From the parent perspective, this event is 1.5 hours of barely controlled chaos — kids running around the gym/cafeteria, loud music, lots of sugary treats, etc. Also, Charlotte will want to run around with Emma, while Emma will NOT want to be with Charlotte but instead be with her own friends. This is totally understandable, but it means I will have to deal with sad Charlotte. SIGH.

So yeah — it has been A WEEK.

But! This weekend we’re going to a fall festival and a pumpkin patch, I’m planning to make owl cookies with the girls, AND we’ve got a babysitter scheduled for Saturday night. All good things!