Bella, Gabe and Josiah

The month of September had been pretty rough around here. Pat’s work schedule has been crazy, so we haven’t seen much of him, which means that everything falls on me… The first week of school, Pat was it off town for work. This meant that I have to drop Gabe off at school, the Josy, work for a few hours, pick up Gabe from a friends house, work from home for a couple of hours, then go get Josy. Then there’s all the normal evening things, like making dinner. I still don’t get an entire 7.5 hours in every day, but I’m pretty close, as long as I don’t have to take anyone to speech therapy or the dentist or stop to get a coffee. It’s a good thing that Bella takes the bus… Anyway, so Pat was out of town the first week of school. Then he had three weeks of working 6 10s, which means that he’s off to late to pick up Josy, so I still have to leave “work” early and he works all day Saturday. On the last Saturday of that (the day Freddy showed up), he was supposed to get home at 4:30, but then th

Back in July, when we were in Oregon stay with Auntie Laurie and Uncle Nathan, they had a little of foster kittens. Gabe fell in love with a little black kitten named Ketchup. However, Ketchup already had a home lined up and he was already living there when we passed through on our way home. Gabe spent the last two months talking about his much he loved Ketchup and he missed him and he wanted to visit him. Then two weeks ago tomorrow, I got a message from Laurie asking if we wanted Ketchup. Apparently his current family had a sudden, serious health crisis and needed to find a new home. Any other kitten and we wouldn’t have agreed to it. But it was Ketchup. So three days later, I was booking a flight for Laurie to fly up with Ketchup to surprise the kids. It was seriously the best surprise ever. Gabe instantly recognized him and was super excited. Once I told him that we were keeping him (and Lucy), he decided that he could live in his room. Bella insisted that he live in her room, so t

We’ve added a few new family members in the last month. The first one is Swimmy. “Because he swims.” Okay Gabe, sure. We got Swimmy all settled into his tank and finally got him eating. Then Bella mentioned that it was a bit unfair that Gabe got a fish when she didn’t, and we decided that was reasonable, so we got Yager Jr 2.0. So far Josy hasn’t complained at all about not having his own fish, so I think we’re good on fish for a while. Also, this is a great example of why we didn’t take any of Gabe and Bella’s name suggestion when we picked a name for Josy…

Lacey and I decided to go for a run, so we loaded up the boys and her dog and headed out. We had a slight break in the rain and figured that we should just do it. We’d just started potty training that morning, so I packed a couple pairs of clean pants and undies, just in case. That turned out to be wise… We ran out to the glacier, thinking to let the boys play on the beach for a bit. That would have been a better plan if the entire beach hasn’t been flooded. But we managed to find a little sandbar with a giant puddle between the road and sandbar that we were able to play on. I told the boys they could play in the water as long as they didn’t go over their boots.  That did not happen. We were pouring water out of their boots by the end. But they had fun playing in the water and throwing sticks for the dog and making friends with other little kids. And then Josy fell over in the middle of the giant puddle. Needless to say, we decided that was a good time to head home. But I happened to h

I thought this week was going to be a bit calmer. Sure Pat is still waiting 6 10s, so “calm” was a relative term, but no. That is not how this week worked out… Monday wasn’t too bad, realistically. Except that my friend that had surgery fell and can’t get off the couch for another week, so after work I took her more freezer meals and Pat dropped off a load of groceries. Also, Josy refused to put on a diaper, so I guess we’re starting out training early. And Josy gets irrationally excited about overnight oats, just like his daddy… “onite oats!” Tuesday was when things started getting interesting… When Josy got up, he had a fever. I don’t know exactly how high it was because he refused to let me hold the thermometer in his mouth until it beeped, but I managed to see the number 101, so it was at least that high. All he wanted to do was lay there. Since a fever is a legit covid symptom, I scheduled him a covid test and made the other two stay home. Bella was so excited that she went back t

Saturday was the last soccer game of the season. It was raining pretty hard, but nothing these kids can’t handle, so we grabbed rain gear and changes of clothes and loaded into the car. Just then, I got the message that the game was canceled due to rain. Since we were all loaded up anyway, we met one of Gabe’s teammates at the field and decided to play some soccer anyway. Ironically, both boys really wanted to play goalie, so the other kid’s parents shot on the two boys while I chased Josy. The kids all thought it was wonderful. Gabe did pretty well too. He did some great saves and even took a ball in the face, but shook it off and kept going. To say we were wet was an understatement. We might as well have just gone swimming. But some snacks and dry clothes make everything better. Then I promised the boys hot chocolate. As we packed up to leave, an older gentleman at the table next to us, who’d watched me try and corral the two boys, not spill any more hot chocolate and make up the rul