Fall Break

This week the school district held parent/teacher conferences.  That meant that the kids and I had Wednesday-Friday off of school/work.  While it feels like school just barely got going for the year, it was nice to have a couple extra days to spend with the kids and we spent it with the prefect combination of relaxing and doing fun activities.

One of the high points of the week for me was going to art lab at the Oregon City library.  The library planned an activity that involved painting on foil (and paper too if the mood struck).  Carrigan is naturally more free creatively than Merrick and immediately got to work.  She didn't stop creating until it was time to go and ended up painting her very first flower.  Merrick, who is much more analytical, took his time with his paintings and always questioned whether his paintings were turning out well or not.  I think it is good for him to be involved in these type of projects where there are no rules or structure other than just to create.

Another highlight was going to OMSI with cousins on Friday.  We arrived about noon and Jeremy was able to join us for about half an hour.  We have had our membership there for about 10 months and it is so surprising to me that after all that time I still have to pry the kids away after more than 4 hours of playing.  I think it is especially fun for them to be there with their cousins.  I had fun this time going into the fetal development room and seeing an actual fetus the same age and size as the one I feel rocking and rolling around in my tummy.  You can read that your baby is the size of a carrot all you want, but it is different to see an actual baby that size.

Finally, yesterday, Jeremy got to be home with us to enjoy the last little bits of "fall break".  We had the best intentions of going to a pumpkin patch, but after a soccer game and getting sucked down the rabbit hole of finding the perfect new basketball for the basketball season, which starts tomorrow, the day was quickly getting sucked away from us.  We decided that rather than spending the money for an all-day wrist band that we would only get to use for about 1.5 hours, we would take the time to break in our new fishing poles (you may remember that Merrick got one for his birthday and I scored a cheap Barbie one for Carrigan from a friend).  I am not sure how many fish are even around at this point in the year and we certainly didn't catch anything but we had fun hanging out at the river as a family, listening to "Let It Go" Radio on Pandora.  It was kind of the perfect end to the week.