After I made Maggie’s Bills top, Annie demanded asked for one too. Luke also pointed out that I hadn’t made him anything in a while (not true – by the way) and mentioned that he’d like a pair of Bills pants.

I spent my morning correcting the injustices my poor neglected children had been experiencing.

So they were all ready for tonight’s game – and nice and cozy too.

These three love playing outside in the snow.

“The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

– National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman –

The older three kids are back to school today after a three day weekend. So how about another flashback from Maggie’s first day of school? Maggie goes to school every day while the boys alternate between in person and at home learning.

What else would I make for her first day of 2nd grade but a #2 pencil dress?

She wanted to be sure I got a picture of her pink nails.

“Let’s pretend I missed the bus and I hafta run to school.”

Of course a dress this special had to have pockets.

I love how she dotted the “i” of her name with a heart.

Thankfully, her teacher is super nice because I learned later that this dress shed glitter everywhere. Oops.

Also – I really need to work on my bow tying skills.

Mags was super excited about her new leopard print backpack with its matching lunchbox.

And it wouldn’t be the first day of school during a global pandemic without the obligatory mask photo.

She loves her new school and her teacher and has been having a fantastic year.

Dave commented that I should have included some pictures of our leaf piles with the pics of the kids. Children included for size comparison.

We get a lot of leaves here.

On Wednesday, Maggie told me she wanted to wear clothes made by me every day this week to school. She was on her way to meeting her goal when she found out that Friday was Bills Spirit Day. She was torn, did she keep with her mama-made theme for the week? Or wear her store bought Bills shirt?

I decided to help her out and took a quick trip to the store for a yard of Bills fabric. I gave Maggie two pattern options and after the kids went to bed, I got to work. Thankfully the pattern was a quick sew.

Maggie was thrilled when she woke up and found this super cozy, one-of-a-kind, Bills sweatshirt (with pockets!). I think I’ve mentioned before that Maggie does all of her own posing. She’s recently taken to offering photo editing suggestions as well, “Mom, can you make it look like I’m saying ‘Let’s Go Buffalo!’ and then send everyone this picture?”

She’s pretty awesome.

We get a LOT of leaves here. The kids let me take some photos of them back in October, prior to Dave’s raking and leaf blowing.

Maggie was really hoping for a shot of her throwing leaves into the air – unfortunately that turned out to be beyond my skill level.

Annie spend a good chunk of today pretending to be a ballerina kitty cat and asking me to play catch with her. My favorite part is her pre-throw wind up.

I made Annie’s cat costume for Halloween. It started as a super cozy black blanket.

I tried to convince the kids they should dress up as contestants on The Price is Right, but I was outvoted. They decided to go with a classic Halloween theme this year.

Maggie was a witch, to go along with Annie’s black cat.

Luke was a werewolf (his hood started out as a blanket too). One of his cousins was also a werewolf, so they had matching costumes. When I checked with Denny to make sure it was okay, he was thrilled with the idea because “werewolves are pack animals.”

And Adam decided to be a vampire.

They did look pretty cute together.

Maybe my Price is Right dream will come true next year.

Maggie thought she was the coolest thing ever today when she went to school with a stripe of pink “hair.”

She told me that her friends really thought she dyed her hair pink, but she told them it wasn’t real.

She did look super cute today though (not that she doesn’t most days). I made that rainbow cardigan (using leftover fabric from her last birthday dress) for school picture day.  Since slacker Sandy never shared those pictures, here you go:

Poor Luke needs to work on his fake smile, he’ll be taking advantage of the retake option next month.  🙂

Is it just me? Or does Maggie look way older than she did just a few months ago? It must be the pink hair.

I’m going to try to get better about posting here more frequently (I know, I know, we’ve all heard that before). This has been a weird year. We haven’t been as busy as normal – no sports or extra curriculars for the kids and no fun family outings (thanks covid). But we’ve also had a lot of big things going on around here – we moved, the older kids started in a new school district, Dave retired from the military, I did my student teaching and wrapped up my work on my master’s in school librarianship. And those are all important things that are definitely worth documenting, but so are the little things like how Luke says “star chasm” instead of sarcasm. Example: “The Bills are playing today, woo hoo. I didn’t mean that in a star chasm way.” So I am going to work on that, we’ll see how it goes.

We’ve been playing a lot of games around here lately. Adam got this super fun card game for Christmas and it’s one of out current favorites.