October and November Miscellaneous

I built a new planter box on the side of the house following the pattern of my compost bins.   This will be for tomatoes and herbs in the spring/summer.   I built it this fall so that it's ready when I'm ready to plant, and so that I could empty one of my compost bins to have for winter collection.  Since compost doesn't break down very fast in winter, I need more space than I do in the spring or summer when it "bakes" faster.   In the winter, it mostly compressed and gets snacked on by the wild critters.

Lucy enjoyed the first snow.  And, yes, we have our Christmas lights already installed before Halloween!  They'll stay on until Valentine's Day most likely. 

And then the snow melted and John was able to hang our new wreaths!  The past two years we had live wreaths as part of the Boy Scout fundraiser.   Since volleyball practice and tournaments conflict with all of the scouting dates, William isn't participating this year.  I bought some online and hope they last a few years.  And that we find some place to store them when they come down in 2024.

I was feeling artsy taking pictures in the backyard one morning!

And in the side yard

And the front yard

 

Benet Gala

In another case of "we didn't have anything planned that weekend (and no one is on a business trip)," we attended the Benet Academy Annual Gala.   I honestly can't even remember what the formal name is.  For All Saints it was the Dinner Dance Auction (DDA).  There was no dance here.   Drinks/silent auction, dinner, live auction.   We didn't sign up for a table with anyone in particular and were assigned to "Freshman Boys."  It was really neat actually.  One couple was friends with one of my partners.   And several of us had sons in the same challenging math class so we could commiserate.   

I bought a new dress, got to spend the night hanging out with my husband (a relatively rare occurrence), ate some decent food and came home with a lot of Benet gear.   My favorite was the pair of seatbacks.  They've been invaluable during volleyball matches.   William was thrilled with more hoodies and joggers!  We all win! 

Josh Gates Live

One Saturday morning I was scrolling Instagram and saw a Josh Gates post that he was on tour and in Chicago (actually in Aurora in the historic Rialto theatre) that evening.  We didn't have anything planned for the evening, so I bought tickets and we went!   There were quite a few tickets when I bought them but the theatre looked sold out when we arrived.   It was a neat evening of clips from his shows, stories about his adventures and how the production is done, and then open mic Q&A.   Glad to have stumbled across it and been spontaneous!

 

September Miscellaneous

 Couple of random pictures and memories that I don't want to forget to include!

September is really gorgeous weather and there's not much better than having coffee in the sunroom and enjoying the view.   Then following it up with an afternoon swim if it's warm enough!

I took a lot of photos of the sun rising during the school bus walk.   Early in the year it would be dark when we left and sun when we got home over the course of a 10 minute round trip.   Or I'd walk Lucy for a full walk instead of just to the corner and back like she gets in the cold and dark winter.  

With all our beautiful trees can come some messy yard after a storm.   We actually had our trees trimmed this year in order to avoid too much of this sort of thing.   Nevertheless, we had a very heavy limb shear off and slice open the pool cover.   We had to leave the cover partially open for the rest of the pool season so that water wouldn't leak up through the cover and make it too heavy to open.   A new cover will be installed when the pool is opened May 1st.  In winter there is a different heavy cover that is over the top of the pool versus on sliders.  

I don't recall Lucy helping with all that clean up but she sure was tired!

We went to the Benet homecoming game.  It was underwhelming.  The football team was stomped and the pageantry was lacking.   After seeing my nephew's band and some of my Kansas City friends' posts, I was expecting a lot more from the halftime show than 20 kids and no flags.   I guess this is exclusively an academic powerhouse!

Fall meets summer!  I actually love September and October pool weather.   It makes it hard to want to go anywhere from June-October with the pool calling to me!  

An artful arrangement of my favorite kitchen accessories

On the morning school bus walk, we are usually serenaded by owls.  This particular morning we thought we heard about 6 in different spots around the neighborhood.   Indeed, the owl convention was confirmed when we spotted these two together on a neighbor's chimney! 

Lucy loveys make the early mornings better.   So do flowers from the yard and put on my island!

Lucy's DNA Results

We had Lucy's DNA tested out of curiosity, and were pretty surprised by the results.  When I read the characteristics of the different breeds that she tested, I can see certain of her personality traits or physical characteristics.  But it's like a horoscope, I suppose, and you can read anything into anything!  Our collective guess was Labrapit/Pitador (a lab and pitbull mix).  Maybe some Boxer.   She has no Boxer registered and only 7 or 8% each of lab (golden retriever) and Pitbull.   Instead she's all these big, hairy breeds!   I can agree with the hair after going through another undercoat shedding season.   But her size and her stockiness didn't really register.  I guess she's just one of a kind, and we love her!