Staying home

This will go down as the weekend that wasn't. I was supposed to go to Grove City for homecoming and my ten year reunion, but at the last minute (hours before I would have left) I finally decided that I wasn't going to make the trip. Believe me, I could make a long story (b/c you know I usually do) out of how I went back and forth over the course of the week but all I'll say is that while I was bummed to miss out on time with some dear friends, I felt confident that I made the right decision.

Today we did a lot of yard work, cleaning out flower beds, weeding out the creek, trimming the hedges, work on the patio that Matt is building (for lack of a better word). At one point all of us were out on the bridge in our backyard and Matt froze and told us all to go up to the house. I started to freak out because just minutes before we had seen a LARGE spider in the pile of leaves and bark that I had been gathering up and tossing in the wheelbarrow. I still shudder to think that there's a chance that spider was in my hands.

Anyway, it was just a snake. A tiny snake. We showed the girls thinking they might be scared, but instead they were pretty unimpressed. When Catherine finally was able to see it she just said "oh, that?" Matt tried to shoo it into the creek (which put a damper on the weeding I was doing in the creek bed) and the girls both started yelling at him "don't kill the snake dad" and "it's just a baby snake". Who knew they'd have any reaction other than running away screaming?

All in all it was a good day, lots of time together, getting some work done, but also having fun, like painting pumpkins and heading to a local fall festival.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends and this gorgeous (but slightly warmer than typical) fall day. I definitely enjoyed having a weekend with my family (although I missed my GCC girls!)

Before I go, one last thing to share with you, if you have a minute or two, check out this post by John Acuff called Raising Dorks. As a mother of two girls it really resonated with me. At one point he says "And although I make about 47 dad mistakes a day, I have learned one secret about childhood: You can fast forward childhood, but you can’t rewind it." Amen to that. When you read the post I have no doubt you'll agree!