still waiting for fall to arrive

I am wondering why I even bother putting up fall decorations in my house.  It was literally over 100-degrees yesterday, on the first day of October!  Heat induced insanity definitely should be a diagnosable condition (it at least got me out of cooking dinner, I complained loudly enough to joe that we went out to eat - granted it was at church, but I'll take what I can get).  Today is a "cool" day at only 92!

Here are some pictures of the past week, I'm going in reverse because I want to end on a good note and I'm still angry/ in disbelief over what happened to my walls yesterday...

It does not take an advanced degree to figure out how these marks got on the wall (hint: the markings are about 36" off the ground in gabe's current favorite color), but what I can't figure out is how to get them off.  Gabe and his friend Luke both found some markers from a recent b-day goodie bag and went to town marking up our walls.  Let this serve as a warning: if you ever receive markers from any source that isn't clearly marked "washable" immediately throw them away!  I have learned the hard way and now have permanent markings down the entire hallway, on every door, and each space in between.  What is the real kicker is that when I caught them in the act I was proud of myself for not reacting loudly, but asked them what they would like to do about this problem and let them figure out how to take care of it.  They found a water bottle and rag and started cleaning.  I knew that I would have to likely use the magic eraser, but it had never failed me before and wasn't too worried about their art work.  Let me just say that not only did the magic eraser not work, but neither did any other cleaning product in my house.  They might as well have used a sharpie.  

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I loved attending Parent Participation Night at Gabe's preschool, a very special night where the kids get to be the teachers and show us around their classroom.  The teachers had some neat activities set up for us to do together, but my favorite was asking the parents to write on a ribbon what their hopes and dreams are for their child.  These ribbons will be woven together and hung up in the room.  This is what we wrote for gabe: "Dear Gabe, we hope you will become a compassionate man of faith and influence. Love, mommy & daddy".  It's hard to sum up all your hopes for your child in just 12-inches of ribbon

Saturday morning sports class has started again.  Gabe has had all of us doing ready-set-hike drills all week.

After buying new sneakers for the kids (i had no idea how fast kids grow out of shoes!), we met some dear friends for pizza near the beach and then walked to cold stone.  They were smart and packed pj's for the kids, our kids got to sleep in their pizza-ice cream clothes.