Hello Cleo Followers!
Sorry I didn’t post in September; it was a crazy month. My husband and I were optimistic enough to bring our two young sons, ages 20 months and 4 years old, on a 17-day adventure to England and France. We took lots of pictures of us smiling at all the amazing sites, but let’s just say that when we landed back in the States, we were tempted to kiss the ground, vowing we’d never travel out of the country with young children again. If you’re signed up for my newsletter, I shall share some of our scary, funny, and hard times we endured there. We can now look back and laugh at most of the situations….most.
Anyway, October is my and my husband’s favorite! The Pacific Northwest is stunning right now. I went on a run yesterday evening and stopped in my tracks several times, gawking at the sun setting over a vast, bright green field. My kids and I picked about 100 pounds of apples in the past couple weeks. Most of which I turned into applesauce and apple cider. I’ve got tons of apple cider in my deep freezer. We’re saving it for Thanksgiving when our family will come to visit. I made butternut squash soup with squash from our garden and also made a ton of pumpkin puree to make all kinds of pumpkin goodies. But I probably made a mistake letting my four-year-old have full access to all the seeds we scraped out of our pumpkins. I found him running all over our yard with a spoon, “planting” all the pumpkin seeds. I guess we’ll see if our lot is covered with pumpkin vines this time next fall.
Halloween is just around the corner! What are you dressing up as? My older son and I have been working on his costume all week, building an ark and carving a staff and making him a beard so he can be the biblical Noah, and his brother be one of his animals on the ark, a tiger. Last, I love this month because my husband and I got married this month 7 years ago. We attended a wedding at the end of September and as the bride and groom were exchanging their hand-written vows, we realized that we had never written our own for each other somehow. So, this year we wrote our vows and read them to each other on our anniversary. One of my favorite gifts yet.
I started my book club back up for the school year and in the
month of October we are reading the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a short story by
Washington Irving. And since that story is so short, we are also reading
Rebecca, By: Daphne du Maurier.
My husband and I read Sleepy Hollow together in two nights. It was beautiful
writing, but nothing like the gory or scary I was expecting like from the
movie. I started reading Rebecca yesterday, and oh man am I hooked. Read it
with me!
I am happy to be getting back into my routine, especially since I’ve made so
much more time to write. I’d say I am only a couple months away from having my
first rough draft of the second Cleo book! I’m so excited. Keep in touch for
more updates.