Halloween 2023

 While Halloween has definitely changed from the days when the girls were young, it's still a fun day and something they still look forward to as teenagers.  Lucky for them, school was off on Halloween (teacher workday), so that was a bit of a bonus.  Lyla was planning to go out and collect candy, and Nina and her friends were planning to hand out the candy at our house, but regardless of the plans, they all wanted to go back to the days of the nostalgic Halloween party foods.  This wasn't even all of the Halloween food they had, but suffice to say, it was a pretty epic throwback of some of their old favorite party foods from the past.

Lyla and Bobby headed out to collect candy and got quite a bit while the rest of us stayed behind at the firepit in the driveway to hand out candy.  I love still having these memories with the fam. as the girls get older!

  

Update

 Well, after a long time trying to figure out a problem to my blog issue, I have a solution that's not really a solution.  In the past year, Google has stopped supporting the site that I used to create and compose my blog posts.  As a result, after I would create posts, the pictures would disappear.  Blogger's basic ability to post blog posts with photos isn't great (which is why I was using a third party site to create blogs), however it's the only way Google will allow photos to stay without disappearing.  So, things are a bit more cumbersome using this current system, I don't have much freedom to be creative with my blog layout or photo layouts, and my pictures aren't uploading as crisp and sharp as they are actually, but if I want to continue to log my memories here, this is what I've got to work with.  So, if you're a friend or family member who likes to keep up with us here, I'll be doing my best to catch up some posts from the recent past, and eventually (maybe) go back and try to repair the posts with the missing photos, but if things look a bit more basic than they used to, sadly that's kind of the way things are at the moment with this current posting situation, but thanks for checking back in!

A Trip to the Zoo

 In the girls' lifetimes, we've been to the National Zoo quite a few times.  I took them when they were babies and toddlers, we went back most summers when they were kids, and we went on field trips.  The zoo is always fun, but since they've gotten older we haven't been as much.  However, this past October we went back to say a final farewell to the pandas who would be permanently moving back to China come December.  

Despite having gone handfuls of times in the past, it dawned on me this latest trip that, while I probably "survived" the trips when they were little (as was the rite of passage of most young moms), this trip as an older mom with them as teenagers was so easy and enjoyable.  I wasn't worried about losing anyone, there was no one that needed carrying or pushed in a stroller, there was no crying, everyone could use the bathroom by themselves, and I could leave all the snacks in the car.  There was a bit of nostalgia for me as this is probably the end of our "zoo era" but we all definitely enjoyed a beautiful fall day in the city.