Daddy's Girls

When the kids were little, Halloween wasn’t just a day, it was a whole season. We would go to several fall festivals and trunk or treats; there would be things at school; and they would probably wear their costumes 3 times before the actual day. This year, on Friday, I finally thought to ask if they knew what clothes they would wear with the masks Lillian made that they planned to wear. We trick or treat in 10 hours and we still haven’t looked for Lil. 🤦‍♀️ But Timehop never lets me down to remembering those years that weren’t so long ago.  It’s crazy how quickly things change but each season has their own joys so you can’t be too sad. And we’ll still have plenty of fun today with pumpkin carving, Charlie Brown and trick-or-treat with friends. They may not want to celebrate all month, but they haven’t grown out of it yet. 😊🎃👻💀

We’ve been enjoying the fall weather this week by trying to get outside some. Lillian asked me to take her to the corn maze last Saturday night with a group of her friends. One by one everybody but Kaylee backed out because they were scared of the haunted stuff but the two girls still wanted to go. So I picked Kaylee up and was glad to finally get some time to talk to her since she and Lillian have quickly become best friends.  I promise they were with us 😉 but Katie and I were not interested in the haunted stuff so they took off and we only saw them about once every 30 minutes while Katie and I played. She found some “friends” (she didn’t know these kids before that night, lol) and ran around for hours.  Katie and I had a good week. We went to a movie one day. Yaya came by after school one day to see their painted rooms, and she rode with us to pick Lillian up from her student council meeting and we got ice cream. And yesterday we went to Cara’s to play with Josie and see th...

One of my favorite fall traditions is our pumpkin patch pictures at Asbury. We’ve been going since Lillian was one and I love seeing the memories come up every year. We went Tuesday on the way to the football game and even Matt was able to meet us on his way home from work.  It sure is crazy how much they have grown. I want to have them recreate this one from 5 years ago next year. And this morning, Lillian and I got up to participate in United Way’s Day of Service. Benton Intermediate Student Council had chosen to sponsor the Barksdale Annex Friendship House. They collected non food household items all week and a few of the kids met up there to deliver the items and hear about what they do.  I had never heard of it but it seems to be an amazing ministry. A woman and her husband live here and provide an after school place for kids in the neighborhood. It was very eye opening to our kids who thought this kind of thing only happened “other places.” The woman talked about fifth g...

I originally had plans for a very relaxing fall break with no real plans, but it ended up being anything but. We got back from Baton Rouge on Monday and the girls and I started talking about painting their rooms. We’d been talking about it for months but it got serious when we picked up paint samples on Tuesday after we had lunch with Yaya.  That went back and forth for most of the week with several Home Depot trips until we picked the ones we liked. I painted Katie’s room yesterday and today, but after 10 hours of work I decided painting trim was above my pay grade and have the painter coming to do that next weekend. 🤣 We’re very happy with the way it turned out, and we will do Lilli’s next week too. They want room decor for Christmas and it is going to look great when it’s finished. I also cleaned out the classroom and consolidated things to get one of the giant bookshelves out to make room for it to be a gymnastics studio after Christmas. 😊 During all of the planning of the we...

The last time we were in Baton Rouge was the last weekend of July and 2 weeks before school started. 2 1/2 months isn’t that unusual for us but it felt like forever since the last TWO visits had to be canceled the day before we were supposed to leave each time. We were going the first time for Piper’s birthday Party but Hurricane Ida canceled that plan. We were going the 2nd time just for a visit because we had been disappointed about the last canceled trip but Lillian got quarantined because of being a close contact with a positive Covid case the day before we were supposed to be leaving for the 2nd. So I was almost afraid to even tell the kids we were going for fear of it jinxing it but we finally made it. It was very low key. We got there about noon on Saturday and hung around Dad’s for the afternoon. Jimmy came and picked up the 4 girls and took them for ice cream while Allie and I went to see Nana and then everyone went to Dad’s for dinner and the game.  Saturday morning every...

I don’t know who I am but I stayed out after 10:00 two weekends in a row! Lillian was invited to go to Altitude Neon Night with a group of friends on Saturday night. She didn’t know any of these people 7 weeks ago and I really wanted her to go, but we were waiting on Matt’s Covid results (he wasn’t feeling great and had been exposed), so I originally said no. Well, when they came back negative Saturday evening, I changed my mind. But, I told her two things had to happen: 1. I was going too, and 2. Katie also got to go. She was ok with both, because she knew it was the only way she was going, but she was sure to tell me that I was the only parent that was going to be there. And she was ok with Katie going, because she had Landry over that could go too. (Christy wasn’t worried about Covid because we were both 99% sure it was the same cold the girls had had, and they have already had it anyway)  (They made us dinner!)  When I asked Katie if she even wanted to go, and told her it ...

We’ve had sickness run through this house this week. It started last Sunday with Katie running fever, cough, sore throat and runny nose. Of course for the last year and a half everyone jumps to Covid with those symptoms, but I took her to the doctor Monday and it was negative. She ran fever on and off from Sunday to Tuesday and still has a little cough but doing much better. She was able to go back to Gymnastics Wednesday afternoon and even cooked a meal and she and I did our first service project. She watched Lilli working on something for 4-H and asked if we can start doing something at least once a month too. So I signed up for the Feed the Homeless project that a friend of mine does downtown every Saturday morning. We put together 30 snack bags (they have Vienna sausage, crackers, granola bars, chips, etc for them to have for the week) to drop off to her. Lillian ended up with it Wednesday and had to miss school Thursday with a fever. Poor kids don’t even get sick days anymore sinc...