Catch up: Fall fun 2020

 It's time for some catching up!

Right now, the world and the political situation of our nation is moving me to go on a dive for happy memories and photos to share!

The photos above are from a trail near Spring Canyon Park. This fall gifted us with some beautiful days--days in November that were in the high 60s and even 70. Whenever possible, we dragged our booties outside. Here are some photos of Scout walking with the dogs on an elevated ridge. As often happens on family walks, Ruby and Cory are walking partners bringing up the rear. If I were to characterize the girls, I would say that Ruby is almost never impressed with nature and the outdoors and Scout mostly tolerates it with good cheer, and is even occasionally really pleased with the outdoors. On this particular day, we saw two bald eagles sitting atop the power line pole. After we walked past them, we looked back and got to see them take off. They are enormous birds and it was quite a lovely sight.

Because of the way the photos load, I am sort of going in reverse order. Here we are playing Clue. Ruby was given Clue by Uncle Jake and Aunt Jess as a birthday gift. We have played it twice and it's been fun.

The lucky girl had lots of birthday presents to open

Big packages came

We had a little zoom birthday gathering for Ruby

She got a Nintendo Switch

Holding a new blanket from Auntie Jan with the "It is your birthday" sign behind her

On Ruby's birthday, we asked our friends the Morrisons to come on over for some fun. We got cookies (because we were going to do cake later on), and we had a little scavenger hunt throughout the neighborhood. Then we celebrated out in the driveway and she looked at all of her awesome presents... including a Caboodle from the Morrisons.

Serenity by Jan candle

On the morning of her birthday, she woke up and we were so excited for her to see this big sign! We hired someone from "Card My Yard" to post a fun sign, and if you look closely, there's even a little dancer figure in the display. 

A fun fall project for every family with a yard is raking leaves. 

Who actually believes that?

Well, we did try to make it fun. We raked and shoved the leaves in the yard waste barrel, and then the girls helped me to compress the leaves by jumping in the barrel. We even got the blue wagon out and the girls gave it a spin.

Here was another project. Back when Cory completely re-did the flooring on the main level, he had the idea to pull apart the coat closet and make it more like a "hook nook." So, the girls helped me paint and now it is ready for the the backpacks and the coats and everything else that it will ultimately hold. 

Scout has been doing some really fun projects for school, too. She has done a few at home science experiments, but this is an example of a social studies project. She learned about the Egyptians and then she actually mummified a chicken wing (not pictured). The photos are of her little scene she created. 

I took this picture and I thought it was worth adding because Luna and Furley spend a lot of time finding the sun around here. They'll often sit at the back of the backyard, out of the shadow of the house, just soaking up the sun. What if we could all take a lesson from these two and focus on finding the light in our own lives?

The girl in one of her new leotards

There was a trip that we took on a Sunday down to Boulder Body Wear. It's kind of a funny story, because Ruby won a $100 gift certificate to Boulder Body Wear at least a year ago from her dance performance raffle. In the past year she has grown out of nearly ever leotard that she owns, and I did travel with her to the dance store in Loveland, but she tried on about 10 leotards and only found one that she really liked. Since she goes to dance three times a week, it's nice to have a few leotards in the rotation, so I promised her that we'd go down to Boulder (actually, the store is in Lafayette) and she could find some others that fit. The trip was a long car ride on a beautiful day, and on our way back to Fort Collins, I took 287 and we stopped in Loveland at the sculpture park. Ruby didn't even bring a jacket, so we couldn't stay long, but the whole trip reminded me that we are so lucky to live where we live--where a car ride can be a panoramic view of the Rocky Mountains, and we can enjoy a sweet little side trip to the sculpture park (and, let it also be noted, I bought them ice cream from Good Times). 

Obviously, early in November was the election. I'm sure that history will write about the 2020 election in the United States, and I will affectionately call it A CIRCUS. It was a worldwide pandemic, but the United States was leading the world in infection rates and fatalities, and when some states tried to make mail in ballots more accessible for the sake of voters' safety, a lot of people (primarily the President) acted suspicious about mail in voting. The saga goes on and on, and the election was not called until days later after all the states could finish counting their votes... and Joe Biden won. There is, of course, much more to the story and if you thought it ended there... just wait until you read the news about January 6, 2021, where Trump supporters stormed the capitol when the senate was voting to confirm the electoral college's votes for Biden. But, back when this photo was taken, I was just a girl, wearing blue, taking a selfie with my pearls on and an "I voted" sticker. The pearls were supposed to be a nod to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, famous for her white collars. RBG passed away earlier in the fall.

This is the story of Halloween 2020! So, we weren't sure what the turnout would be this year with all of the concerns about gathering and social distancing. We decorated the driveway and Cory and I sat outside until about 8 pm that night. Our driveway had little circles with candy bars so that kids could pick a treat and it was "no contact" delivery. Scout and Ruby dressed up, but they only trick-or-treated througout our little cul de sac. All in all, it was a fun night, and the moon was really gorgeous later in the night.