Decking halls and colored balls

Two trees again this year.  The front room tree has become the mature girl tree decked out in Victorian style with reds and golds. And we scored a sweet unsheared natural looking tree for the main room from a family lot near the house.  The unsheared tree was decorated in memories and adorned with ornaments of past years.  Each ornament of a time in the kids life or new adventure.  Hazel just lazed on the couch but strangely Oliver was only content when he was right in the mix.  Each passing year means fewer ornaments broken by the kids during decorating and sadly more found broken in the storage boxes.  Grace has taken over full duty of Herbie and plans to hide him in mischief each night for us to find.  Still a few items to put out of the season, the garland and the village. But having the trees up makes it feel like the season is closing in upon us.

Something for everyone....

 Merrick and I hit the woods early on Friday morning for the opening of gun season.  The tent was set up and the wood stove was stoked as we laughed with the gang and told the stories of old while we made hay for the stories of the years to come. We saw a buck on opening morning and two more sneaked in before sunrise of the second day. There were no deer to take home, but plenty of memories were made and enough day dreams to get us to the next season.  Grace skipped school too to spendFriday hanging out with her Grammy and ended the weekend with a massive pep rally for the basketball program.  Ella of course had to support the festivities and keep everyone singing along to all the pep band songs

Rites of passage....

The first snows have arrived but most of our excitement has been indoors as of late.  While it is still officially autumn Grace has started the Basketball season and played a 3-game round robin tournament over the weekend.  Some new rules for a new age bracket including full press, so there was plenty of running.  Combining all the running with the first time back on the boards and it made for a tiring day of play for her.  She played strong and put up some points as her team works out its new chemistry.  Ella added another milestone to her teenage years and received offers from two universities this week.  Now it is time for her to start to 'interview' them and see what the best option is for her next four years and beyond.  Merrick had his braces pulled off today and made him look just a little bit older and happy to chew gum yet again.