As I sit here and drink my first cup of coffee, I’ll chat with you for a bit and fill you in a few of the things happening here. Nothing terribly exciting…just coffee chat stuff.

Over the weekend we added more members to our growing family. We took a field trip on Friday to the Wings of Wonder bird rescue, and we adopted two green-cheek conures for Isaac and Amelia. The birds are over 20 years old, but since parrots are long-lived, and since these little guys seem to be in such great health, we felt it would be nice to enjoy their company.

Isaac has named his bird Jack Sparrow, so we call him Jack most of the time. Amelia keeps changing her bird’s name, so we don’t know what to call him. He’s been Huckleberry Pie, Cuddles, Fluffy, and who knows what else. His original name was BamBam, so I call him Bambi most of the time.

Our church has its annual Fall Festival on Sunday afternoon. The kids loved going from booth to booth doing things like the bucket toss, spin art, face painting, and getting snow cones. They collected fun little prizes and came home exhausted. The favorite activity for most of the kids was the cake walk. Almost all of them came home with a plate of cookies, cupcakes or something yummy. Isaac played and played and finally gave up without winning, so he has had to rely on the generosity of his family in order to enjoy some treats. Miguel got the top prize with a whole chocolate cake all to himself. How often does a 4-year-old in this family get to claim a whole gooey chocolate cake??? Not often. We have had cake crumbs everywhere, and everyone has been enjoying the goodies.

We started our second week of school yesterday. It’s still a lot to do in a day, and we’re still working through our routines, but all in all I think we’re on the right track. Today I want to start a little art class with the kids, so last night I bought sketch pads from Hobby Lobby (at 25% off!) for the four oldest kiddos. I’m eager to see if they like this new addition to our day.

Yesterday afternoon we spent another little bit of time at the Monroe house, working on getting more things carried to storage, more things packed into boxes, and a few more things loaded into the van to bring “home”. Oh, I forgot to tell you! On Saturday Michael built some wonderful shelves in the garage, so now we have a great place to put things and to be organized. I’m so grateful that he tackled that project and saw it through to the end. I was ready to take a nap after the first half, but he persevered, so I begrudgingly gave up my rest to hang out in the garage and help hold boards, etc. How could I complain? He was doing the project I had requested, so I didn’t feel right abandoning him.

(Please excuse me while I to get a refill on my coffee…)

Ok, now where was I?

Hmmm. Not much else to report here, I guess. The cool weather has been a great relief. Makes everything feel refreshing.

Judah continues to get into more and more mischief. I like to blame his ingenuity on his father, especially things like when I caught him yesterday taking the register cover off and examining it. We’ve never had registers before, so he hasn’t seen anyone else do that!

Something you may find interesting is to read Roy & Mary’s blog of their adventures in Taiwan. Yesterday we read Mary’s report and we then discussed each of the five senses and what she talked about that fit those categories. What a fun way to remember her report!

The children are waking up and wondering what’s for breakfast, so I’d better close this up and figure out what to do with them. Miguel is asking for hot cocoa, and he wants a piece of his cake for breakfast. We had cake yesterday for breakfast, so I’m thinking I shouldn’t do that two times in a row. Still, Miguel is a persuasive lad, so I might just cave in to his request.

Have a good day!