I feel like I was a rather lackluster blogger this fall. There was nothing major ya’ll didn’t hear about, and you certainly heard about plenty of minor things, too.
However, I know there were several things I “normally” would have blogged about, but then various blog hiatuses happened and I never did.
So, in the name of documenting my Very Important Life Story 😅, let’s fill in a few of the gaps!
The boys both went to Homecoming (with friends). For the first time ever, their schools held the dance on the same night (October 3rd).
Asher + friends took pictures at a sort of faraway golf course, and Ethan + friends took some very cute pics at his friend’s house on Lake Mendota.
I didn’t make it to Asher’s pictures, but his friend’s mom sent me a few:
Parents apparently did not go for Ethan’s, but his friend’s older sister took all the photos. There are too many faces to blur out so you’ll have to trust me. 😉
I did get a a few solo shots before he headed out!
Ivan and I took off on a Tuesday in October and toured both Loyola Chicago and De Paul University with Ethan.
Loyola:
He LOVED Loyola. It’s a beautiful campus located right on Lake Michigan, and of course very close to downtown Chicago, too.
De Paul was nice, but a very different vibe compared to Loyola. We did a self-tour there as they don’t have tours on Tuesdays (which of course was the day it worked for us to go….). It’s in Lincoln Park. It does have a quad/ true campus area, but it feels much more integrated into the neighborhood. Overall, he felt like that school was a pass for him.
De Paul:
Did I mention we also had the most BEAUTIFUL fall day?!! We couldn’t have ordered better weather.
Speaking of colleges, something else I haven’t really mentioned: Ethan has officially submitted all of his college applications!!
Yes, the essays did finally get written, and everything was submitted with at least 24 hours of leeway before the earliest “early deadline”. 😅
He ended up applying at a total of, let’s see…. 5 schools. I am not sure he has a true front runner at the moment; I’d say he has a top 3, and the other 2 were more like maybes. Stay tuned! It is an exciting time.
We celebrated Ethan’s Senior Night at soccer.
Okay, I did touch on this one in my soccer tribute, or, um, epistle. But for the record, it was so nice!! The parents who planned it did a great job.
They had the big cardboard cut-out heads of all the senior boys (so fun!), a cute ceremony announcing each senior and reading their (often funny) responses to a Q&A, pretty flowers, high fives from teammates and hugs from coaches, professional parent/ player photos, an adorable pamphlet with a pic of each boy as a little kid just starting out in soccer, great senior gifts (a super nice blanket with the school name on it) and refreshments, cupcakes and balloons after! They really went all out, I thought!
We celebrated my 43rd birthday on October 17th.
I’m not sure if I ever mentioned what we did! It was low key and perfect.
We went out for dinner at a fun, Madison classic- Greenbush Bar. It’s kind of hidden away and is a cute, cozy place – and they keep Christmas lights up year round. I love the vibe.
It was a great night!
We leaned HARD into the Brewers post-season and thoroughly enjoyed their World Series run and HISTORIC WIN!!
I will admit we are more of “post-season” baseball fans than full fledged fans, but man was it fun this year. I could not have been prouder of that group of guys and especially how well they represented Wisconsin. No drama, no big, obnoxious egos, no trash talking or making scenes… they played with class and got the job done the right way. Yay Brewers!! Good people.
It was a real event to watch all the playoffs and then the World Series! It reminded me of World Cup time, when we had a fun game to look forward to most evenings. We went out for some, watched some at home, and went to my parents’ house for one.
I also had so much fun learning more about all the players. I get such a kick out of their manager, and I am a HUGE Contreras fan, too! He’s just incredible.
We had our usual Halloween celebration of chili and cupcakes.
I almost bailed on “doing” Halloween this year – Asher had plans to go to a Halloween party, and Ethan and his friends were going to a haunted house.
I’d had a busy week and was not feeling in the mood to go buy all the stuff and make everything, etc… But then I remembered that next year, Ethan won’t even be home, most likely! And he loves the Halloween tradition (and he even asked me if we were doing it).
So, I changed my mind and did it, and it was great 🙂 My parents came over, also as usual, and we handed out candy (to the handful of trick or treaters we got…) and ate chili and salad and french bread and corn bread and cupcakes! I had a You Tube Halloween music scene on the TV which was fun.
The boys weren’t around after dinner, but the rest of us put on a Halloween movie on Netflix (until my parents were dozing off and I sent them home, haha).
Ethan VOTED for the first time!! 🎉🎉
Ivan and I typically always just vote on election day instead of doing early voting, because it’s always been so easy and we’ve never had to wait at our polling place. So, that was what we planned to do this year, too. 🤷♀️
Well, I knew we were assigned a new polling location this fall, but I had NOT realized that our city also reduced the polling sites from 8 to 4!
When the 3 of us arrived to vote, the line was wrapped around multiple times and OUT THE DOOR. Oops!! Ethan was like omg what is this?!?!? Hahahaha. 😬😬😬 Not joking, we had to wait for an hour and a half. (Thankfully he was all registered at least in advance.)
When it was finally our turn, the poll workers made a big deal of Ethan being a first-time voter and rang a bell loudly and announced, “WE HAVE A FIRST TIME VOTER HERE!!” and everyone in the room clapped and cheered. 😅 He loved that. 😉 On the way out the poll guy said, ” Well, did we sufficiently embarrass him?!” lol. 😆
What a milestone!!
I got sick, twice. (Well, once was a couple weeks ago, and once is right now!) I don’t know what’s going on. I usually rarely get sick, and now I’ve been down twice in a month?! I guess I blame stress and just persistently over-stretching myself.
Thankfully neither time has been too terrible, though last time I felt really lousy and weak for days.
Right now, I mostly just have a bit of a cough and sore throat and pretty swollen lymph nodes. I’ve been up and about here today, but sadly opted to not go to my volleyball “Friendsgiving” that was supposed to be tonight. Obviously it’s not very friendly of me to pass around my germs right before everyone goes home for Thanksgiving…
I helped plan and organize the end of season soccer banquet.
It was last Sunday evening and whew, I’m glad that’s done. I mean, it was a lovely night. I just am glad to be done with the committee meetings and all the extra tasks and all that jazz.
We ended up having it catered with MEXICAN food, from the restaurant owners Ivan and I know. They put together quite the spread for us- chicken, steak, carnitas and veggie fajitas, rice, beans, chips and guacamole, tacos dorados, churros… It was awesome!
We got so many compliments on the food. 🙂
I had to get there early to help decorate and then was busy directing the food and helping serve, and then of course clean up after.
I was too distracted I think to feel too sad about the whole soccer ending thing; anyway, I think I got that all out of my system now. 🙂
The coach said some really, really nice words about Ethan during his speech about each of the seniors. 💕
Whoops, we ended up overshooting the food order by quite a bit 😬 and brought home two huge trays of food.
Therefore, we invited my parents for dinner on Monday night for fajitas! haha.
Good thing it was really yummy. Ivan took a bunch to work, dropped some off at his sister’s, my parents took some home, and I still ate fajitas for lunch every day this week. 😅
Ivan and I went to a work Happy Hour at Top Golf last week Friday.
It was Ivan’s thing and I just tagged along, but they had rented several bays and had an amazingly delicious spread of food.
I didn’t actually know anyone well at this event, so I opted to not golf (mostly because I do not know how to and decided to just stick with my wine).
It was fun, though! I’m thinking maybe we should do this for Asher’s upcoming birthday! He’s so into golf, so it would be perfect, and we could get a group together with my parents and some of Ivan’s family and eat there instead of going out for dinner.
We’re in the homestretch of our brief “in between sports” lull– high school swim starts a week from Monday.
I actually don’t feel like I really had a break, either, with the soccer banquet planning and then last week I had to help with the Pre-Season meeting for the swim team. I’m on the board, so I had to make the sign in sheet and order form for suits and caps.
I am also the one who had to contact the swimming store and get the price list for the team suits and caps and sizing kit and then place all the orders.
I have another board meeting for that on Monday night, and then the in-season volunteering will start… hopefully shouldn’t be too bad.
The swim team does have a lot of “team meals” though, so I feel like I’m constantly signing up to bring food, buying expensive food, dropping off food or doing something with food.
There are also quite a lot of meets.
I’m not really sure what to expect this season as Asher has not swum since high school season ended last February. YES, can you believe it?? My little fish, the one who used to swim 5-6 days a week…. no more. 😔 (I think I’ve mentioned here before, but he quit year-round club swim to focus on golf and other things and is mostly just doing high school swim to have fun with his friends, who are all currently seniors. He’s actually saying he might not even do swim next year, during his senior year, since all his best swim friends will have graduated by then.)
Okay, well there you have it- a bunch of things I never blogged much about from the past month or two. 🙂
What’s happening with you? Any big fall events in your world?
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful that I’m not SUPER sick this time… just annoyingly sick, mostly.
