Fall

 

 While there are days when I wonder how I'm going to make it through another day of this chaos--- lack of sleep, piles of grading, busy days at school, getting the kids out the door, fed, and happy, etc. etc., there are other days when I see my kids cracking each other and I hear Cal saying, "Hazen is my best friend".  Those moments put everything in perspective.  They make all the craziness fade away and remind me how lucky I am to have these two little gems.

And who wouldn't want this guy to be her best friend?



Speaking of friends, we've had a bunch of them visiting.  Below is our good friend Mic, who came up to meet Hazen for the first time earlier in September.  Mic and I met in Montana while we were both getting our Master's.  He recently decided to go back to school to become a science teacher (his partner is a teacher and he always seemed envious of the teacher's schedule, plus he says that I made it look easy).  He's going to be a fantastic teacher, but I think he's realizing that even though teachers get more vacation time, they definitely take more work home.

Then there was the annual fall visit from Nana and Grandpa:

Another visit from the Dormer's:

 And finally, Bumpa and Grandma rounded out the visitors this past weekend:

 

And between on the visitors, we made it out apple picking:

note the "apple picking tutu"

And then a ride on a bicycle carousel at the Nor'East Fest in Burlington:

 We love the visitors.  They inspire us to keep our house clean and remind us how lucky we are to have what we have-- a lovely family with a lot of people who love us!