Hola October.

What to blog and where to start?

The weather here has been G.L.O.R.I.O.U.S. So glorious, in fact, that we've been walking to school. Brisk mornings, sunny afternoons. Love days like this, when God's handiwork glistens in all its wonder and amazement.

No winter on the mountains yet, but the colour of fall surrounds us.

And every day the warm sun and crunchy leaves beckon to us after school, making the idea of staying indoors to do homework seem completely unreasonable.

So outside we go.

Oh the fun.

But the rain is coming and apparently plans to visit us for a while. This is Vancouver, after all. And rain'll be fine. We've got three days of Thanksgiving Conference ahead of us in a beautiful big auditorium that has oodles of interior roaming space. No need for me to be worrying about the rain.

In Grade 4 Music this year, Alana's learning to play the violin. Which, in these early stages, means listening to ten minutes of string-picking practice every night.

Not exactly therapeutic.

But last night, in the process of trying to block out the noise, I recognized the tune. Good King Wenceslas. Ah. I love that guy. And Stephen too. And the jolly season they bring. Good progress, Lannie.

Monday was a Grade 4 Class field trip to a local nature park, coinciding with their study of Habitats and Food Chains. Educational, and I think the kids really enjoyed the hands-on outdoor activities.

The young program host, however, NOT being from this country and therefore NOT having English as her first language, had an unusual accent and often mispronounced words during the classroom presentation. Definitely added an element of entertainment for me (come on, I'm sure you've done it too.... and I'm pretty certain that lots of folks chuckled at me and my odd Spanish this summer in Nicaragua!). But we were taught how "CORNivores SERVive in a predoMENTly meat-INhabITed enveerOment". It was comical.

The worst part was that her spelling lacked, despite the fact that she had the correctly spelled words on a printed sheet in front of her. Bad spelling bothers me. Especially in a teaching environment.

Nor was she too favorable to the polite one-on-one correction from the classroom teacher.

Honestly. Some people.

A few of the students even noticed her misspelled words. Which, I guess, was a good thing.

As most families do, we've had a double dose of kid challenges in our family lately. The spirit of self-will has raised its ugly head and is running rampant, so we're back to basics again. The importance of putting others first. Effectively resolving conflict. Confessing to wrong-doing, which appears to be, ahem, a big one. "Wasn't me!". Really? Anyways, all of this calls for varying levels of discipline and a temporary loss of privileges. One of the little ladies in our house has earned herself some cardinal punishment this week. Hopefully change ensues. Positive change. Fast. Because I'm truly weary.

Subsequently, I'm enrolled to attend an autism training session in a few weeks and was discussing this with Stew one night after supper. Kayleigh, overhearing part of the conversation, stares at me in sheer disbelief and asks, "Mom, you're gonna go to school for five days and learn how to deal with kids?!" Um, uh-huh. That's exactly what I'm going to do.

And maybe five days isn't enough.

See this guy? Love, l.o.v.e. him.

He did the grocery shopping for me this week when I was stressin'. Replenished the fridge with the basic necessities, and bought us some bread. Filled the fruit bowl with yummy fall apples. Thanks babe! You're the best. Love the goodies and love you.

Homework definitely seems to be on the increase this year, so our evenings have become more busy than usual. And tiring. Good thing the idea of grilled cheese sandwiches for supper flies around here. And cereal. Because our dinner menus these days are definitely NOT gourmet.

Today is Thursday, and we're school-free. Tomorrow too. Love those Pro-D days.

Then a three-day weekend for Thanksgiving.

Bliss.