Life Lately (in Mostly Pictures)

Blogging has admittedly not been my number one priority for the past few months. I pop on once a week at least, but I haven't been exceptionally diligent about posting three or four times a week, which is my ultimate goal. It isn't that I don't have post ideas, because I do, it's just... time. I'm always complaining about this issue, so I thought I'd share what exactly has been taking mine up this past month: 

Halloween with a little kid apparently takes up a lot of time and energy.... and it's definitely not even my favorite holiday. We had like four different "events" between trick-or-treating and a few things for his school, plus our annual Knott's Spooky Farm trip. Sawyer loved the season so much, minus the scary stuff, so we'll call it a success.

It's fall in Southern California, meaning it's in the seventies and eighties, so I've been loving being outside (minus the smokey days). I've also been doing my normal daily workouts inside, so I've been getting tons of steps.

I've been reading, but not enough by my standards! I've been trying to squeeze in a few minutes during lunch at work, which is always nice (but difficult to remember to do sometimes). My issue right now is that the two books I'm currently reading aren't fabulous in small snippets, so it's been hard to get in larger blocks of time. 

I've been embroidering a ton, both for my Etsy shop, myself, and for gifts. The top hoop was a gift for a friend and the bottom one a pattern I purchased, since I got such a kick out of the damn koala. I recently designed several small ornaments for my Etsy shop, which I hope to get out in the next week. 

Work is crazy this time of year, between what we're doing curriculum-wise, my kids applying for college and needing letters of rec (I wrote four students applying early-action to Ivy Leagues and Stanford!), and just the general burn out we are all feeling this time of year. We went back at the beginning of August, and after three months straight we all need another break. It's hard to articulate how draining the profession is, and I don't want to complain, but between teaching all day, grading whenever I can sneak some in, meetings, grades reporting, and just being supportive of over 100 kids, it takes a lot out of me. I do love it, though, and my students and colleagues are awesome. I'm just really, really tired. 

Home-related things! I think I've made four batches of pumpkin muffins- Sawyer loves them and they're really easy. I've also had the plumber out, an unfixed dishwasher (we've been doing it old school... sigh), and a lawn guy who has an emergency supposedly come up every time I need him to come do what I pay him to do. Sigh. 

I hope everyone enjoys their extra hour this weekend! I know mine won't be spent sleeping, but it's still nice to have extra time.