A family weekend

ABOVE: Dave working diligently on a piece of "armor" for Julia. His goal: having a shirt/vest of maille for Julia to wear for dressup. (he commissioned me to make a liner for it, so it doesn't snag whatever clothes julia wears under it) Very awesomely cool, i am so excited for this. Julia is already thinking of wearing it in her battles against Golliath....although, she must decline using it in the actual battle, for that is what david did.... hahaha. sooooooooooo fun.

We had a lovely long weekend together. and as promised, julia went skating for the FIRST time on sunday afternoon!! :) we had to try out our new skates you see. Dave pulled her around and around and around. Every time they came off the ice, dave with an aching back from leaning over to hold her, and aching feet because HIS skates do NOT fit well (poor man) , Julia would beg to go back out!! ahaha. cute. She had moments of fear( don't we all??haha) but the overall experience was thrilling. I on the other hand, was super paranoid about falling , since i would not want to do any damage to the five month old baby in my belly. i may have been "over" paranoid, but i would never want to jeopardize a good pregnancy by doing somehting irresponsible. (i'm not the worlds best skater you see..... and my centre of gravity is shifting just now..haha) So i did a few circles of the rink, and watched while sipping hot chocolate. mmmmmm.....lovely.
I began some Christmas decorating. A man was cutting his tree down as we drove by on sunday afternoon, so i asked dave to stop so i could collect branches. MY goal: make stars to hang in the windows, from the mantle, and perhaps large ones nailed together for on the porch this holiday season. so far i have three, and i love them! is this picture too dark to see my dear twig-star????
Ah, our large maple just outside our front door has finally let down it's last layer of leaves. Sadly, wind and storm have taken autumn from us rather sooner than i expected. But in that comes a lot of fun, combined with the loss of our colorful skyline. Julia was more than happy to sit in a HUGE HUGE pile of leaves for a loooooonnnnnnnngggggggg time. laying down to rest, throwing the leaves about. Jumping, crunching, hiding, bursting . ah. leave piles. piles of fun.

Today i began bagging our piles....the front yard fit mostly into four big lawn-waste bags....but there is still more....and more....and more.... i didn't want to rake them up because they look and sound so nice, but i needed to. Last thing i want in the Spring is to clean rotting messes of leaves before i can garden, and clearing all the yuck like we had to last year. bla.


Well, off to rest. rest. and write letters and such. loves. from sue and fam.
ps. DAVE IS FULLY RECOVERED. wisdom teeth removal was very successful. no negative side effects. hooray! God is good to us.