Living in Munchkinland

For Halloween I sent out letters to my neighborhood (I'm HOA chair) with Covid guidelines and asked for feedback. We decided to have a Halloween Parade with open hours for trick or treating and then shut down the neighborhood at dark. (we were in tight restrictions). Michael and the boys (and garrett!) built a super cool candy chute and we had lots of fun decorating our front lawn. Because we had limited the number of trick or treaters to our neighborhood I was able to buy full size candy! Sam had worked tirelessly for MONTHS on his cosplay and looked AMAZING. We started the day with a school parade and pumpkin carving contest and then enjoyed our neighborhood parade. We ended our day

We did Sam's birthday in two parts. First, we had a party. We hosted the party a month early, in late October, so that the weather would be good enough to host a group outside. We had an outdoor nerf party in the green space. Kids wore their masks and played. We served pizza and hostess treats on the back porch and opened gifts outside. Then Sam got to have the Danielsons sleep over afterwards. I felt like we did a pretty good job keeping it safe and within the current covid guidelines. On Samuel's real birthday, we were in high Covid restrictions. We ended up making his birthday fun in a creative way! I spent days leading up to his birthday creating hourly surprises. Then I cut up paper strips with the surprises in them and put them in a gingerbread house advent calendar. Every hour he got to open a new surprise! Some were gifts and some were activities. He had so much fun with this! We ended the evening with a surprise drive through Christmas light exhibition! The Danielso...

We hadn't seen Marth and Clark since the new year, but at the end of October, we all estimated the risk, and decided to take the plunge and have a visit! We had missed them so much!!! They flew in and spent the week with us. We didn't go out, but we had lots of fun just being together. They got to watch Sam's outdoor birthday party from the upper deck and see Sam's cosplay creation. We played games and watched movies and had lots of time to visit and chat. It was a wonderful week just being together. I am so grateful for the time we had together!

For fall break, we drove down to Taos with the Danielsons. Our friend Joel brought his trailer and his son Alex and their friend Donovan to ride mountain bikes with Davis. We ate takeout from Orlandos, played ping pong, hiked Williams Lake ( and donovan and alex hiked wheeler peak with no water or food or jackets!!!), rode Angel Fire (not me), rode a single track trail on the enchanted circle (adults), played at the playground, got lots of chocolate from the Chocolate shop, grilled, made s'mores, built adobe fairy houses, played dominoes. It was chilly at night, but lovely during the day. Taos was pretty shut down, but we made the most of all the things to do outside. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful place to go!