The Flood

 It rained A LOT in the early hours of Saturday morning. We've had such a dry summer and then it rained so much all at once that it actually flooded our back yard and went over the spillway at the end of our pond and into the park. It was very exciting. I had to go to school as a volunteer for the flu shot clinic, but I was quickly able to get out and explore a bit with the kids before I left. Later, Zac found a high water mark on our firepit another foot above this, so we actually slept through the worst of it. It went down pretty quickly and was normal level a couple of hours later.

Scary Monsters

 

1. Compost bin monster

2. Praying Mantis Monster Devours Bee

3. My children

Our neighborhood did a a fun Halloween activity this year, sort of like a chain letter, where you leave a bucket of Halloween goodies on someone's front porch, and if you get "booed" you do it for two other families, and so on. It's supposed to be an anonymous surprise. The only problem with these sort of things is that it requires going shopping. I took Alice to the dollar store and we picked out a bunch of stuff to put into Boo buckets for our neighbors. We ended up doing Andrea and the neighbors at the end of our street, since they hadn't been booed yet. (You put a sign "We've been booed" on your door so there aren't repeats.).

Eno River

 We took a family trip to the Bobbit Hole part of Eno river, because it was such a beautiful day. The kids always like to play in this same place.  Luckily, it wasn't very crowded. Simon fished and kayaked a bit. Alice wandered around, and then we read in the hammocks while eating lots of snacks. It was a gorgeous day.

Simon's September fish

 A sampling of this month's catch. He's so happy every single time he catches a fish!

Fun with friends again

Once Alice was released from her Covid isolation, she could resume all the fun activities of life with friends. It was really hard being banished from society for a couple of weeks.

Her school had an ice cream social and fundraiser that her teacher said she would attend, so Alice really wanted to go so she could meet Ms. Leen's dog. 

She went hoverboarding with Liam to the park, where they befriended some other random kids and played tag and hide and seek while I walked in circles around the park.

We got invited to Natasha's for a fancy dinner.

Another weekend Izzy came to our house, where they baked banana bread and painted pumpkins.

We also get together frequently with Jess, Rosa and Anna. Usually for a fire.

Second Canoe Trip

 For our second canoe trip, we launched from the Robeson Creek boatramp, where the Haw River meets Jordan Lake. Our goal was to go up the river a bit.  We had a good paddle, with far less motor boat traffic than last time. We went up the river as far as we could, stopping at a cool little island/peninsula to explore for a bit (even finding a watermelon!). We reached a point where the river narrowed and got really rocky and we couldn't paddle against the current anymore. We went to a spur of the river and let Simon practice his whitewater rafting skills a bit.

The hardest part about canoeing is getting the canoe off and on the van.

Simon in 3 scenes

 

Simon's stitches

 Zac and I were in the backyard discussing landscaping and Simon was at the pond playing with a few other neighbor kids. Suddenly, he ran up the backyard frantically to the house, sort of crying but not really explaining. A moment later he opened the deck door screaming for help, and we ran up to see what was the matter. It turns out he'd torn the back of his hand open on a rock or piece of glass (he doesn't know) at the pond.  The wound seemed wide enough to warrant stitches, so we bandaged it up as best we could and Zac drove him to the urgent care. I stayed home and cleaned up the bloody mess he'd left everywhere that made our house look like a crime scene. (Apparently he thought he could just put a bandaid on it, but so much blood was gushing out that he couldn't, and that's when he called for help.)

Kayaking Eno River

 

Zac took Simon to Eno River to fish and kayak.

Canoe's maiden voyage

Zac finally had time to repair the yellow canoe we got from Cam a long time ago (it had suffered a serious injury in a garage fall). So we took it out for a spin on a cool-enough-but-warm-enough day. I hate the idea of canoeing the summer: just sitting there baking in the sun. So today was perfect--warm enough to wade in the water but cool enough that we weren't cooking.  We also took the little blue kayak for the kids to take turns in. The trip was mostly a success--we just launched from the New Hope boat ramp at Jordan Lake and went around the shoreline.