So, with the epically long and long-to-write posts I've been doing lately, I haven't really been getting back around to the other little things we've been doing this month. I guess our summer trend has continued--mostly little moments in between the big ones!
Carter wrapped up fall soccer on a super rainy day mid-month with a big win. No matter how many ways I tried to block the rain--chair with a cover, umbrella, raincoat, boots, waterproof blanket, poncho--it still managed to drip through and soak me in spots. Oh well. But at least I could mostly keep warm--the players were drenched and cold! Carter could barely move his hands by the end, but the year-end gift was a comfy flannel blanket, which was perfect.
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| Soaked to the skin and muddy! |
We stopped on the way home to finally pick up pizza from Carbone's, the pizza place we've passed by dozens of times on the way back from soccer and always talked about stopping at. Thanks to the cold, the ice cream place a couple doors down will have to wait! But he loved the pizza and it was a nice reward for a good season. He may not have scored but he hung in there with big kids who are already playing modified soccer and kept a good attitude throughout.
Despite the rainy weekend (that was a trend the entire month), we went to get pumpkins the next day. We found a short break in the rain and still got sprinkled on, but the trip was a success!
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| We did a little stack this time, which was fun. I got a medium-sized warty orange and green pumpkin at my office last week to finish it off. |
As I mentioned in my last post, I took a work-sponsored tour at Mt. Hope Cemetery a couple weeks ago. It was such a fun and interesting tour that highlighted the "Mischief, Murder, and Mayhem" of the cemetery's "residents". There were some little-known stories of botched murders, sad murders, riots and more. It was so well done--the tour guide was an older gentleman who seems to love local history--and the leaves and details around the cemetery were gorgeous.
I took a picture of this when the fountain in the middle was running when we visited during COVID. It was so peaceful in the fall.
The leaves on this tree were so pretty. It may not be clear unless you zoom in, but trust me they were pretty against the finally-blue sky. It was one pleasant day in the middle of lots of rain (and not super cold) so I was happy to see any nice leaves at all at that point, since it wasn't looking good to get in a fall hike like Carter and I usually do.
Last Saturday we once again went to the Monroe Madness event for the Syracuse University basketball teams at the Blue Cross Arena. It was fun being back and seeing the court down for the first time since Jacob's sectional win. Jacob and Carter got to go shoot on the court the night before, despite Jacob's injury. Carter and I got our picture with Otto!
Hopefully Jacob is able to be back on this court again at the end of the high school season, but we have a long way to go.
Later that night I was in the crawl space checking for hand-me-downs for Carter and I noticed a puddle of water around a drain. The drain was sort of weird--I've never really noticed it but it was only a few feet away from the sump pump and what I believe is the sewer pipe. It appeared to be a drain, anyway--it was a round spot in the floor that the past owners had capped with a red raisin can lid that had been cemented down somehow. All I can figure is their pets wouldn't leave it alone, or maybe critters were coming up through it? But I'm wondering how it passed inspection when we bought the house. It looks like they tried to poke holes in it, but I'm not convinced they'd drain if they had to. I was worried something was backing up, but it didn't smell so that gave me hope. I sent a picture to our plumber and posted something on Facebook looking for crowdsourced expertise. I soaked up what water was there, but there was more water there the next morning. We were on our way to Craig's parents' for the Bills game after church on Sunday when the plumber got back to me and suggested I contact the DPW to come look at it sooner rather than later. I had the boys drop me back off so I could wait for them to come. It was a bummer to miss the family time and Buffalo food, but duty called. They came within an hour but admitted they couldn't really do much in the crawl space (no confined spaces). They didn't find anything of concern since our toilets were flushing fine. As they were there, I realized the back of our dehumidifier was all iced up. I didn't think the water was coming from there originally because it was draining fine into the sump hole and the puddle didn't go that far over, but I realized as I was thawing the ice and watching the melting water end up around the drain that the trail probably dried up first before the puddle, so it didn't look like it came from there. Once I turned it off, the puddle stopped, so it seems like the freeze and thaw cycle of the dehumidifer did it. So far so good after the thaw and restart, but we'll see. Now that the heat is back on I'm not sure it's running a lot, so I'll just have to keep an eye on it.
That night I ran to Wegmans and when I came out, the lighting outside was wacky. Dark clouds in one area, golden in others, interesting clouds to the west. On the way home, I saw this crazy bit of rainbow. Turns out in other parts of Rochester it was a super vivid full sky double rainbow, but this little bit was impressive on its own.
This was the view to the west with orange-gold clouds.
When I got home I went out to the yard to see if I could see the now-pink sky better there. I walked out and suddenly realized I was being watched--by the same buck I saw from my bedroom window earlier that morning.
I saw a doe in the morning, too, but she was nowhere to be found. He seemed curious about me, but he only stuck around for about 30 seconds after I showed up. One of them did come back late that night though, and when I saw them walk toward my garden, all it took was opening the blinds (to then open the window) for them to take off! Anyway, the sky was gorgeous, especially with the leaves.
The light it was casting on everything was just stunning and eerie. It was a crazy 15 minutes or so, but was so neat to experience at the end of a somewhat stressful 24 hours.
The next day, I happened to catch yet another rainbow, but this time it was a sundog as I was driving home from work. I guess God thought I needed two reminders of his promise?
That night I had to take Carter to get a Halloween costume, and while this is not his costume, it cracked us up!
It took us a few stops (including getting to the Halloween store right at closing time, darn it), but Target did the trick. I even got a couple cheap, early Christmas decorations while we were there, along with my Halloween candy. It was a big relief to find something for him, especially at a good price. It's hard with school because he can't wear a mask or make it too scary, and it's just not worth spending a ton on a costume that will be worn an hour at school and a few hours for trick-or-treating. So anything that's too reliant on a mask--think Darth Vader--just doesn't make sense. We found a good compromise--the mask is still probably the coolest part, but the costume doesn't need it to be fun.
This was the view to the west with orange-gold clouds.
When I got home I went out to the yard to see if I could see the now-pink sky better there. I walked out and suddenly realized I was being watched--by the same buck I saw from my bedroom window earlier that morning.
I saw a doe in the morning, too, but she was nowhere to be found. He seemed curious about me, but he only stuck around for about 30 seconds after I showed up. One of them did come back late that night though, and when I saw them walk toward my garden, all it took was opening the blinds (to then open the window) for them to take off! Anyway, the sky was gorgeous, especially with the leaves.
The light it was casting on everything was just stunning and eerie. It was a crazy 15 minutes or so, but was so neat to experience at the end of a somewhat stressful 24 hours.
The next day, I happened to catch yet another rainbow, but this time it was a sundog as I was driving home from work. I guess God thought I needed two reminders of his promise?
That night I had to take Carter to get a Halloween costume, and while this is not his costume, it cracked us up!
It took us a few stops (including getting to the Halloween store right at closing time, darn it), but Target did the trick. I even got a couple cheap, early Christmas decorations while we were there, along with my Halloween candy. It was a big relief to find something for him, especially at a good price. It's hard with school because he can't wear a mask or make it too scary, and it's just not worth spending a ton on a costume that will be worn an hour at school and a few hours for trick-or-treating. So anything that's too reliant on a mask--think Darth Vader--just doesn't make sense. We found a good compromise--the mask is still probably the coolest part, but the costume doesn't need it to be fun.
That Tuesday started an amazing stretch of weather (compared to most of the month) where it was finally warm and sunny after being colder than usual all month. I guess it's technically Indian summer because we had a frost--although I don't think it really killed everything off like usual because half of my plants are still doing just fine in the yard. On Tuesday I was working from home and decided I needed to go for a walk at lunch. It was so lovely to be outside in warmth, and the trees in our neighborhood were gorgeous.
I also caught pictures of the really fun Halloween house around the corner, the one where the husband passed away and his wife has continued their fun display in his memory. My night pictures never turn out so I figured I'd take them while I had the chance!
That night was Carter's evaluation night for this year's Upward basketball season. The season won't start until January, but they always do this night in October to get an idea of their skills to try to make even teams. I ran into two friends from college (one volunteering and the other waiting for her girls to do their evaluations) and also chatted with Carter's buddy Ben's mom for the first time since summer soccer season. I've seen his dad at a couple school events, so it was nice to catch up with her. We're crossing our fingers they could end up on the same team. Carter's evaluation wasn't as good as he wanted--the rims were not kind to him--but he still did a decent job. And honestly, I sometimes think that if your evaluation doesn't show how good you are, you're more likely to leave room for more good players on your team and can hopefully be more of a help than the evaluators expected. We know one coach has his eye out for him--he was a coach at Carter's level last year and recognized us because he was a scorekeeper at Jacob's old school for the basketball games. We ran into him at soccer a while back and talked about why Jacob switched, and he asked if Carter was playing this year and told us he'd be coaching the 5/6 group. So hopefully we'll have him as a coach, but I have no idea how they assign kids so we'll see how the season goes. It's hard to believe he's at the same age/level as when Jacob first played Upward. Jacob was really good, and I can't quite picture Carter shooting threes like his brother did. They are definitely different players at this stage, but I think it will be a good activity for him this winter and I hope he finally gets a winning team after mustering only one win and (I think) a couple ties over the past season and two-thirds (darn COVID).
I had Carter's parent-teacher conference on Friday morning, and it's always nice when the first thing a teacher says is, "I love your son!" His teacher is this unassuming, sort of mousey older lady. She was so soft-spoken at the open house a couple weeks ago and I couldn't figure out how she could keep the attention of a class of 10-year-olds, but Carter insisted she was funny. Turns out, she was such a joy to talk to. I think she's a bit of a firecracker in disguise--usually a somber face, but there's some definite dry humor there and I can see her being animated when she needs to. She seems to know a lot about neurological stuff so we had a nice chat about ADHD. Interestingly, she said that she feels that kids who don't get on medicine by about third grade seem to never quite catch up. In her experience, the amount of learning lost to the inattention and distraction creates a gap in the foundational learning that makes catching up and building upon it in later grades nearly impossible because that base just isn't there. So she said our timing to get him help was perfect and whatever we're doing is working. Overall she seems thrilled with Carter and how he's performing. He's above grade level on a bunch of stuff, which she was very impressed with. There's still frustrations with his writing and his organization, which I am totally on board with as well, but she really seems to love his personality and his thoughtfulness about his work. It was such a joy after last year's conference that was bad enough to set the stage to up his ADHD meds. I mean, I'm thankful that communication was there to ensure he was getting the help he needed, and the rest of the year got better, but that conference was quite the bummer--and immediately afterward I found out Carter had COVID, so that was not the best day ever! But a year later things are so much better and my mama heart was so happy!
I also caught pictures of the really fun Halloween house around the corner, the one where the husband passed away and his wife has continued their fun display in his memory. My night pictures never turn out so I figured I'd take them while I had the chance!
That night was Carter's evaluation night for this year's Upward basketball season. The season won't start until January, but they always do this night in October to get an idea of their skills to try to make even teams. I ran into two friends from college (one volunteering and the other waiting for her girls to do their evaluations) and also chatted with Carter's buddy Ben's mom for the first time since summer soccer season. I've seen his dad at a couple school events, so it was nice to catch up with her. We're crossing our fingers they could end up on the same team. Carter's evaluation wasn't as good as he wanted--the rims were not kind to him--but he still did a decent job. And honestly, I sometimes think that if your evaluation doesn't show how good you are, you're more likely to leave room for more good players on your team and can hopefully be more of a help than the evaluators expected. We know one coach has his eye out for him--he was a coach at Carter's level last year and recognized us because he was a scorekeeper at Jacob's old school for the basketball games. We ran into him at soccer a while back and talked about why Jacob switched, and he asked if Carter was playing this year and told us he'd be coaching the 5/6 group. So hopefully we'll have him as a coach, but I have no idea how they assign kids so we'll see how the season goes. It's hard to believe he's at the same age/level as when Jacob first played Upward. Jacob was really good, and I can't quite picture Carter shooting threes like his brother did. They are definitely different players at this stage, but I think it will be a good activity for him this winter and I hope he finally gets a winning team after mustering only one win and (I think) a couple ties over the past season and two-thirds (darn COVID).
I had Carter's parent-teacher conference on Friday morning, and it's always nice when the first thing a teacher says is, "I love your son!" His teacher is this unassuming, sort of mousey older lady. She was so soft-spoken at the open house a couple weeks ago and I couldn't figure out how she could keep the attention of a class of 10-year-olds, but Carter insisted she was funny. Turns out, she was such a joy to talk to. I think she's a bit of a firecracker in disguise--usually a somber face, but there's some definite dry humor there and I can see her being animated when she needs to. She seems to know a lot about neurological stuff so we had a nice chat about ADHD. Interestingly, she said that she feels that kids who don't get on medicine by about third grade seem to never quite catch up. In her experience, the amount of learning lost to the inattention and distraction creates a gap in the foundational learning that makes catching up and building upon it in later grades nearly impossible because that base just isn't there. So she said our timing to get him help was perfect and whatever we're doing is working. Overall she seems thrilled with Carter and how he's performing. He's above grade level on a bunch of stuff, which she was very impressed with. There's still frustrations with his writing and his organization, which I am totally on board with as well, but she really seems to love his personality and his thoughtfulness about his work. It was such a joy after last year's conference that was bad enough to set the stage to up his ADHD meds. I mean, I'm thankful that communication was there to ensure he was getting the help he needed, and the rest of the year got better, but that conference was quite the bummer--and immediately afterward I found out Carter had COVID, so that was not the best day ever! But a year later things are so much better and my mama heart was so happy!
Carter had that day off because of parent-teacher conferences, so shortly after I got home, we were off to our first Carter-Mom adventure in a while! Can't wait to share more about that soon!
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