Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We stayed here instead of our usual trip to Virginia (stupid pandemic), but we cooked the traditional foods and had a nice time anyhow.  Our friends dropped off some delicious desserts (pumpkin roll, yum!).  And it turned out that they had not taken their ham out to defrost in time, so we were able to return the favor by sharing some of ours!  We had intended to have turkey, too, but the store only had big ones -- they were sold out of the smaller turkey breasts. But that worked out well as we had a delicious dinner even without it.  

 

Poet

 James's poetry was in the middle school publication. He even got a nice certificate to celebrate it!  :)  

New Glen

The covid cases in our area are rising pretty dramatically, so it's likely that we'll be headed into a shutdown of non-essential businesses in the near future. So, we dropped off some of the clothes the kids had outgrown at the Goodwill while they are still open -- and apparently lots of other people had the same idea, because the person there told Mike they had already gotten 180 donations that day!  

On the way home we stopped at a section of Glen Park that we'd never been in before -- it's a little play area across the street from the main park.  The boys liked climbing on the big logs, but James found the grafitti (see picture) a bit disconcerting!

 

Mini Summer

We had a couple of beautiful days with temperatures in the 70s -- rather unexpected but very welcome in November!  And the sunshine was an especially nice antidote to a very stressful few days of watching election results. :)  I took a walk with a friend on a trail near the campus -- I hadn't been there before, but it was beautiful!  Tons of people were out, but it's a big area so it wasn't crowded at all (except the parking lot!) 

 

Pandemic Halloween

Our town recommended that people not do trick or treating this year because of the pandemic. The kids didn't really mind and weren't interested in dressing up just for around the house, so here they are in their "6th grader" costumes!  :)

Halloween morning was cold -- 25 degrees! -- but sunny. James's last outdoor soccer game was rained out last week, so they rescheduled it for this week.  I assumed they might cancel it again due to the cold, but nope, this is Buffalo, so they played it!  He had fun and said the temperature wasn't too bad. (He ended up playing most of the time but had his winter coat for the sidelines.)

In the afternoon we went and did early voting. We had good timing; the line wasn't too long and it moved quickly.  Even though they were doing some social distancing, it felt a little crowded inside, but everyone had their masks on (and we were in Clarence, which has tended to have pretty low rates of covid all along -- although our area has unfortunately started to go up in case numbers again).  It wasn't as joyful to vote as it has been in previous years (never before have we had to worry that a president will try to avoid a peaceful transfer of power), but we are glad to have it done.  

We put up a few decorations and put out a bowl of candy in little individual bags. We don't have many trick or treaters in a normal year, so we didn't expect many this year either. There were at least a few, because the candy disappeared, but we didn't get to see them!  We had a nice family movie night, too.

 

Apple Picking

We went apple picking yesterday after school at Blackman Farms.  It was a beautiful sunny day, probably the warmest one we'll have until spring!  (Temps were in the 70's yesterday, back down to 50s today.)  James was a bit grumpy about having to go because he wanted to play chess instead (the group he plays with has sessions on M/W/F), but I told him he'd have plenty of time to play during the long cold winter!

There was definitely an end-of-season feel to the farm -- as you can see from the pictures, "Pumpkin Alley" was already empty of pumpkins! It was a bit disappointing, as they usually have a good selection. (They also didn't have the hay bales out for kids to run around on, which is usually James's favorite part -- I'm guessing that decision was due to social distancing.) The apple trees were pretty well-picked as well -- there were only a few that still had apples on the lower branches. But, the kids didn't mind using the ladders. This time we picked Johnagolds, Red Delicious, and Yellow Delicious (the Yellow Delicious were the last trees we found --  it was too bad we didn't start there, because they are the best-tasting!)

 

Campfire

Our friends have a fire pit, so we've had fun roasting marshmallows with them and sitting around the fire while the weather still permits! Tonight we added hot chocolate to the mix. :)

Fall Falls

The fall colors were nice at Akron Falls this weekend, although the photos don't do them justice.  Mike was hoping the waterfall would be bigger after some rain last week, but nope!  We also met a very cute Berner-doodle -- Bernese Mountain Dog and poodle mix.  (They said he was the "titan" of the litter -- the biggest one, the opposite of the runt!)