nonewsisgoodnews

You haven't heard from me in a while.

So there is no bad news to report.

We've been pretty busy, getting the school year kicked off.  I was hired back at the school, this year helping with the computer lab and library for the K-4th grades.  It's been a new experience, teaching first graders how to log on to a computer.  I've also learned how to check out/in books using the library computer - which isn't hard in itself, only when I have to keep about 25 kindergardeners under control as I do it (all by myself).  It's been a challenge.  I'm also doing at least an hours worth of recess duty throughout the day.  Yes, I come home and pretty much de-compress for about an hour.  A cold diet Pepsi has become my medicine of choice.

 

Tom has been trying to keep up with the garden and yard.  The weather hasn't exactly been cooperating with him.  We've had a bit of rain and wind, which has brought in the cooler temperatures.  We've been slowly trying to harvest what we can from our garden before it freezes.  Here's some of our bounty...

Peppers!

I roasted these babies up with some garlic and then preserved them in olive oil.  They're pretty spicy!

Today we harvested this gigantic acorn squash.  I'm the only one that eats these things.  I hope I'm hungry when this one gets cooked.  Winston looks so jolly holding that squash.  He's probably thinking "I hope she's not feeding this to me."

 

Preston started his senior year at WSU.  So far he's been doing well, going to classes and labs and doing a bit of work for the athletic department.  He had to do some overnight security a couple of weeks ago that got interesting.  Let's just say some college boys (probably frat bros) made off with one of the Coug flags before Preston could stop them.  Crazy college kids - stealing stuff.  That's the first time that's happened on Preston's watch.

 

Keaton has been taking some 'fun' classes and 'interesting' classes.  One of his classes was 'Ultimate Frisbee'.  He also signed up for a class thinking it was a marketing class for design.  It ended up being a fashion class.  So he's one of just a few guys in a class FULL of girls.  I told him maybe fashion is where it's at.  He is also making more political cartoons for the Daily Evergreen newspaper.  He does at least one, sometimes two, a week.  This is his latest one, and one of my favorites...

It was for an article about smart phones.

 

Our nephew Trenton has been staying with us, and is attending our high school with the plan to graduate here.  He has joined the varsity football team, and after a little bit of paperwork and craziness (a-hem... we had to prove he wasn't being recruited) he is finally getting to play in some games.  This Friday will be the first home game he will get to play in.  We are looking forward to rooting him on!  He's been doing great, and we've really enjoyed having him around here.

 

Winston is plugging along in school.  He's a big fifth grader now.  He's grown out of all of his clothes.  We had to make a special trip to the store to restock his wardrobe.  He wears the same size shoe as I do now.  He's still drawing lots and lots of pictures of everything from houses to boats.  Right now he's really interested in the 'tiny house' movement - probably because his Mom is interested in it too.  We like to look at tiny houses on the internet together.  Here is his newest school picture...

Such a handsome fella.

A couple of weekends ago Tom, Winston and I took a trip to Bend to visit Tom's Grandmother & Grandfather Cribbins.  It was Grandfather's 88th birthday.  We hadn't been to see them in a couple of years, so it was quite overdue.  It was really great to get to see the Cribbin's clan again and enjoyed a wonderful birthday dinner at Tom's Aunt Cheryl's home.  While we were there we stayed at a hotel that had a swimming pool - Winston loved that!  Then later that evening we got a call from the front desk telling us that a car had backed into our car in the parking lot.  The rear-passenger door and quarterpanel got a bit dented in.  Unfortunately the party who did it was on their honeymoon, and was quite upset about it.  I kind of felt sorry that it happened - partially because now we have a dent in the side of our car.

Other than that, we've just been watching the wheat harvest come to an end and the leaves turn colors.  There's been lots of things that I haven't posted about yet - just haven't had the time.  Maybe in the next week or so I will get some more blogging done.  Here's one of my favorite things from this week...

I had Preston take this picture of Daisy and Jellybean, just chillin' out together, watching the back yard on an autumn afternoon.