October Love List

 1. School Pictures

2. Kindergarten, still. 

I volunteered for lunch and recess duty on a Friday, and it was so fun. So many darling kids who needed their coats zipped up ad their cheese sticks opened. Also, the cafeteria was serving the exact kind of bologna and cheese sandwiches my mom used to pack in my lunch and I'd add Fritos to. I walked out to recess with a little girl who was sobbing because she wanted her mom to be there, too, so I asked her if she wanted to play with Minnie and me. Minnie plays a game with 2 friends every recess that they call CRAZY BABY that's basically tag except the person who is being chased screams at the top of their lungs the whole time, and the tagger takes the baby to jail. Minnie tolerated the addition of a new player sort of, but as other kids saw me running around, they, too, asked to play. We soon had 12 kids playing with us, and Minnie hid under a slide and cried because she did not want to share her mom. When Ben picked her up after class that day (I went to campus for a meeting early, ran home for lunch and recess, and went back to campus to observe my TAs-- it was a very busy, hectic day), she said to him Well, recess with mom was awful.

I got to supervise a tissue paper craft during one of my literacy center volunteer days

3. The weather! 

We had weeks of highs in the upper 70s/lower 80s and then! The most delightful, Anne of Green Gables kind of crisp temps and October's bright blue weather at its finest. Sweatshirts and boots and long skirts oh my! (plus jeans and heels-- my fave fall look)

4. Coffee shops               

5. Date nights, specifically for cheese curds and old fashioneds 

6. Variety in my days.

When I do my monthly planning, I start by translating my google calendar into my paper monthly so I can see at a glance what's going on for the month. In October, I was initially horrified to see that I could be on campus 17 working days. That's a TON for me. But! You guys! It turns out that this split was actually really nice. Some days were just a quick pop by for meetings. Others were full days on campus. Sometimes I dashed in to watch a class or two and then went home to work. Some days I packed 3 full meals. And you know what? I actually enjoyed working away from the house more often. And! The days I did get to stay home to work were special. I am happy to have this realization., and I will try to make sure I spilt my time accordingly gong forward, or at least mix things up more than I might otherwise be inclined to do.

(November has a mere fraction of those must-go days on campus, so we'll see if I really make changes...)

Snaps

Dorothy left one of her Scuba sweatshirts in her locker, and you better believe I drove her and Coop to school the next day to make sure it was there and came right home. #MoneyOnMyMind

Annabel, in the Halloween spirit

Leaf walk

Starting early

Hard at work

Having some sartorial issues

Beautiful new building on campus

Ben is SO COOL THO

She's destroying me on the daily at Memory.

Working hard again

(I had a spending post on deck today, but it was utterly tone deaf in the wake of a US government shut down that will see no federal food aid going out 11/1-- which will have ramifications for everyone as subsidies that support pricing structures evaporate. SO, you get random instead.)

5 on a Friday: Health goals revisited

 So! YOU GUYS! I lost weight and then immediately started eating sugar again because I am an addict. AND THEN (and really this will surprise NO ONE BUT ME), I started feeling crappy again. Anxious. Moody. Jumpy. Dehydrated. It was like I forgot that I was trying to lower my BP and cholesterol and offset the effects of perimenopausal hormonal fluctuations not just lose weight.

SO. 5 habits I want to drag (kicking and screaming?) into the holiday season.

1. (Almost) no sugar. I feel better when I go (nearly!) sugar-free. So. BACK IN THE SADDLE FOR ME. I absolutely feel better with less sugar, no question. (Just last night, I fell asleep on the couch with all the kids but Minnie watching DMV (funny) and woke up to help everyone go to bed and ATE THE REST OF A BAG OF PRETZEL M&MS and fell asleep without brushing my teeth. Yuck on so many levels).

2. WATCH the saturated fat-- I see this consumption creeping up as I dive back into cheese glorious cheese, so I need to rein it in.

3. Run every single day. So far, so good on this one, and it is a major change for me since I always worked out 5 days a week and was happy to skip a couple. I have started jogging every day for at least 30 minutes and I love this habit. It really helps me have reasonable weekends instead of hedonistic free-for-all days, which has really helped with weight loss maintenance even as I eat more food. Plus! Running FEELS GOOD. I  cut out all bed rotting, get up, and run in the dark every morning.

\

4. Keep eating 30 grams of fiber (mostly from fruits and veggies) every single day, and keep my protein consumption over 70 grams. This is starting to be really easy to do as I develop better habits, stock healthier food options on the regular, and develop easy go-to meals and snacks.

5. Strength training for 20 minutes 4 days a week. YES YOU GUYS, I know I need to increase this portion of my work out, but! This is up from 10 minutes a day, so yay me! I am doing a trial of the Apple Fitness app for better workouts because I was just doing free stuff on YouTube and it was a pain to find stuff that met my specifications, etc. So far, this is great and very searchable-- we will see if I get bored with it before I have to pony up for the whole year.

I would also like to take a barre class, take a yoga class, and do the daily move in the Calm app on my long days at work.

Also thinking about Botox, so text me with your recs.

Hoco!

For as long as I have had a Blogger blog, I have dealt with pictures in picture-heavy posts uploading in a totally random order and making my write-up of family events even more disjointed than it would naturally be. AND TODAY IS NO EXCEPTION.

The tl;dr is that we went to Peoria for Bradley's homecoming and had an absolute blast.

Minnie cheered SO HARD at the Red and White basketball game

She also loved the lighting of the Bradley Hall B and the fireworks that went with it.

Here we are waiting for fireworks

Dorothy, posing with some river front Peoria art on our way to dinner. (She also fell in a bush of burrs and had to be de-burred at the table-- it was ridiculous. She was lagging behind us on the way to the restaurant, so Ben turned to see where she was and goes WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH DOROTHY. I turned to look, and she was, like, zombie walking with stiff legs and her arms stretched out-- she had burrs all over her feet and ankles and somehow also in the sleeves of her sweatshirt)

Big red chair on the quad

We used to smoke on this bench outside the comm building

Minnie has wanted to have her face painted forEVER, and she finally got the chance before the red and white game.
 

Did I mention that there were balloons?

LOL

So glad I got to hold this doll all day

The guy behind Cooper loved the hat

These pants were much cuter than pictured.

Twinning!

Getting pumped for the game

Oh! Look! We're back to Friday night fireworks on the quad

Minnie got to meet Kaboom!

And there was ice cream! How could things get any better?

We also saw a  women's volleyball game, and Minnie goes, "Wow! I didn't know volleyball was so aggressive."

We enjoyed adorable photo opps

And we got to see Ben in his professional home

Plus show off our silly college sweetheart Lydia shirts

And! Bonus! The kids and I got to see my mom at her office-- for probably the last time since she RETIRES on 12/31!! Woo-hoo! She has been working for the Department of Children and Family Services in IL since my little brother was in first grade, more than 35 years ago!