Raising Our Family And Trying To Remember It All: October 17-23

The biggest news of our week was that the insurance company has declared Todd's truck a total loss. A small part of us wished for it to be totaled after the accident, but neither of us thought it would actually happen. We paid off the truck in March and were planning to keep it for a long time on top of buying a new smaller car for Todd to drive to work sometime next summer/fall. So, now that our plan has been shot, we have started the research and have a few ideas for new cars to look at. Todd has contacted a lawyer to help him with the settlement to make sure we get the value of the truck and we have to wait on that dust to settle before we actually go and make any purchases. Our hope is to get enough out of the truck to have minimal to no car payment to make on the new car, but we'll see how that goes.

Fall weather made its appearance and begrudgingly I even turned the heat on this week. While I am sad to see the warm weather go, I am excited to get out the warmer clothes and shoes, despite not being able to wear most of my fall tops at this point. The weather has been perfect during the day, which was great for our weekend activities. We met my dad on Saturday at the McGuire Nuclear plant where he has worked since it opened in 1981. They had their 30th anniversary celebration and he invited us to tag along with him. It was a little festival complete with a bounce house, carnival games, and yummy food. Aubrey had a field day in the bounce house and the slide while the adults enjoyed watching the sail boats come by on the lake.

Enjoying the slide

I've always wanted a picture of her in this chair and was excited to see one while we were there. But this is about the best she would give me.

The sailboats on the beautiful lake.

After the anniversary celebration, we drove to another part of the lake for a birthday party for Aubrey's friend Henry. She was sad about leaving the anniversary celebration, but the sadness was mostly forgotten when she saw the playground the birthday party was being held at. She had a blast playing on the playground, using Henry's dump trucks, and running with the other children. She was also introduced to dirt cake, which we have not stopped hearing about since. (It was yummy but I think she just likes to say she ate dirt!) Poor Aubrey was worn out after these adventures and only got about a 5 minute cat nap on the way home so she passed out at 8:00 pm and I had to go wake her up at 8:00 am this morning so she would take a nap today.

Eating her dirt cake

Thrilling Todd to pieces with her tomboy side

Today's adventure was going to the Hodges' Farm and Pumpkin patch. We've gone the past few years with Aubrey to pick out a pumpkin and to see the farm animals and she has been asking me for 2 weeks when we were going to get a "pumpkin patch" so she was excited to finally get to go. Her excitement over the pumpkin patch faded when she saw the farm put up a bounce house. That is all we heard about the entire time we were there. Unfortunately, there were way too many big kids playing in it by the time we were ready to leave, so we broke her little heart by not letting her get in. We did manage to pick out 3 pumpkins and enjoy the animals and sunflowers while we were there.