Things not as they seem.

Today we hauled our last load of pumpkins. With a little bit of musical vehicles, I was able to take both Hyrum and Sariah in "Squirt"---Grandpa's little white pick-up that has three seat belts. That's the funnest part, to all sit together. Sariah informed me, "Since I'm five, I know everything." That was followed by, "When I'm ten I'll go to college."

At the patch, it wasn't quite so gleeful. It was raining and I had two very muddy kids, one of whom kept getting tangled in the vines and crying. I wasn't too sad that it was the last load.

We then went to Grandma's house, but there was no Grandma. Grandma's house isn't the same without Grandma. A little bit of lunch and then we snuck away to the "guest room".

The guest room includes a crib but since Hyrum "knows better" now and the floor is hardwood I decided to try his first nap in a bed. He was so tired it worked. It was hard for me to crawl out from between these two snuggly bugglies to go do what I needed to do to finish up the harvest of indian and broom corn.

Not a great photo, but I didn't want the flash because it negated the whole dark and cozy effect of this snuggly afternoon at Grandma's house.

We got home just before the boys. Bryant was in tears. He'd accidentally banged into a fence on the way home and broke it. Of course it was the fence of the man who yelled at Sariah when she was just a wee three-year-old in pigtails when she held out her hand to feel the rhythmic tapping as she walked by. Bryant was crushed and I wasn't excited about going to make amends, but we both knew what needed to happen. When we got there I discovered he had simply slipped some vinyl off of some blocking, but as meticulous as this man is, it was obvious he had already noticed. We continued our approach. We had to wait for the power tools to cease so he could hear our knock on the wood shop door. We were both relieved when none other than the good St. Nick answered the door. He was so kind, grateful for the apology, forgiving, inquisitive about how school was going for Bryant... He said us he'd show us to the gate. As we were leaving he said, "You're not going to have any more kids are you?" (Sariah and Hyrum were with us.) Smiling I responded, "I hope so, we sure love 'em." He said, "Three is quite enough." At this point Bryant tried to inform him there are actually four, but I don't think he heard. I smiled all the broader. In fact, I smiled all the way home. Sometimes, things just aren't as they seem.

Didn't even make it to pack night tonight. Bryant was out of sorts at 6:15 and was on a time-out on his bed when he fell asleep. Talmage had a toothache (I hope it's just a loose tooth) and it was obvious a few late nights of homework were working on his stamina. With James gone, I just threw in the towel and called it an early-to-bed night.

Hyrum wouldn't give up scratching at the door after he was put to bed. I laid him on Sariah's bed and watched him fight his heavy eyelids until they won the battle.

James was so relieved that his group meeting for his class was changed from Starbucks to the public library. He really didn't want to meet in Starbucks.