A Whole Lot of Delayed Randomness

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted!

There's a bunch to catch up on so I'm going to try and do it efficiently :)

This post will just be a lot of little things that I want to document.

This summer and fall our blackberry bush has gone wild!  We've had such a crop and it's been wonderful!  Although I am allergic to blackberries (my throat gets terribly itchy) I have found a way to eat them and be mostly okay.  As long as I don't crunch down on the seeds and just kind of use my tongue and mouth to pressure the little pods of juice so they burst and then swallow, I can get along quite nicely :)

These pictures were taken just last week.

I don't know for sure but it seems quite amazing to still be harvesting blackberries here in the middle of October.  I'll take them as long as I can get them though.

There have been some pretty spectacular clouds lately...

Josh had a little bit of fun with my phone while we were waiting in line at his parent teacher conferences.

It's strange to walk the halls as a parent of the same middle school where I attended as a student.

It's also strange that I have a seventh grader!

Whenever Ben finds out that someone       exciting (usually Grandpa and      Grandma) is coming to our house, he  runs to the front room and peeks out the                         window.

Sometimes he has waited over an hour.  We try and be careful now not to mention any impending arrivals too soon within his hearing.

We have been seeing a psychologist with Ben the last several weeks.

It breaks my heart, but my sweet little guy has been hitting, head butting etc. for the last several months.  It had escalated to the point where on really bad days, the other kids would run and hide in their rooms.  It usually seems random, like he's not even aware of what he's doing...
We tried hard to correct it on our own but things just weren't clicking for him.
It took a few months to get into this doctor but I'm glad to finally be doing something about it.  Just yesterday though, he admitted to us that he's a bit stumped and we're running out of options since nothing we've done has seemed to make a difference.
The picture of Ben in his car seat is on the way home from one of our sessions.  He had had a cluster the day before so he was exhausted.
Speaking of clusters, they have been coming closer together than a week apart...often 5 days apart now.  Luckily, they're usually late at night or early morning.
Every now and then Ben will pull out all the spices from the spice drawer and line them up and stack them up.
It's pretty impressive how high he gets the towers :)

 A few weeks ago, our church had their General Women's session of conference.

Beforehand, Abby and I went to the Crepery and enjoyed "dinner" :)

I always get the strawberries, Nutella and cheesecake crepe and I love the lavender/vanilla Italian soda!

It was a fun, special night for us and we enjoyed the spiritual messages given during the conference.  It's a blessing to have such inspired leaders

Andy is now teaching at the institute up on campus.  It's fun because his schedule is more flexible than when he was at the high schools.  I'm attending his "Scripture Study" class and love getting to know some of his students.  He's such a great teacher and I am always pleased to claim him :)  I usually end up being on campus three times a week and every now and then we go out to lunch after class.  There's an Indian buffet close by that we love.  We call it our weekly date since we don't often do those otherwise :)

For the longest time I have longed to do a whole bunch of freezer meals and enjoy the benefits for the weeks following.  I finally bit the bullet and got 14 meals put together.  

Dinner time has always been a struggle for me and things have been getting worse so I can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to pull these out and do nothing for dinner other than throwing the contents of the bag into the crock pot. (that was a long sentence :)

Most of them have turned out pretty good too!  My family hasn't complained too much :)

So autumn is second only to spring in my book.  

We had the sides of our backyard landscaped last year and this year I added some half barrels in the mulch and planted some fancy tulip bulbs in them.  I'm so excited to see how they turn out in 6 months.  Planting bulbs is one of my favorite things to do.  It's so simple to just push them down into the dirt, cover them up and then come spring, they pay you back tenfold.

Bulbs are the best!

Abby joined me while I planted and she brought a visitor with her.

Our poor little Honey!

The harness and leash we bought for her are too big and she wriggles out of it.  Consequently, we are scared to take her outside for fear she will get away from us and we'll never see her again.

We feel so bad that she doesn't get out in the fresh air with plenty of space to stretch and hop.

Abby kept a good, close eye on her and she seemed to really enjoy being outdoors.

Here she is snooping around in my flower bulbs :)

You may have noticed that Matt is not mentioned in this post but he has a couple of big posts all his own coming up so I don't feel too bad :)