As good as my intentions are to write on here more often, life has been getting in the way and I haven't been making the time for the blog. Teenagers are busy, which means their parents are busy. They're also pretty emotionally volatile which is just exhausting. The thing is, I can't get too upset with them for causing all that stress and exhaustion, because I remember doing the exact same thing to my parents. So I guess I'll just take this like a grown up and try not to complain too loudly.
We've had an amazing end to summer and start to fall here in Denver. We broke a heat record on the last day of summer officially hitting 92 at DIA. The first day of fall started off pretty warm, but the temperature plummeted in the afternoon and we've had highs in the upper 50s for the past few days. For the first time in months I've been able to sleep at night again. Some people were complaining about the cooler weather, but I have been absolutely loving it!
My family tends to plan in advance, and generally we stick to those plans pretty closely. But this past (wonderful, cool, autumnal) weekend didn't work out that way. We were excited to see my daughter's first competition of the marching band season on Saturday evening. This particular competition requires parking quite a distance away from the venue. So we parked and my husband, mother, nephew and I trudged through pouring rain on our way to the stadium. When we were almost there, a gentleman stopped us and told us if we were headed to the band competition that they'd called it. We thanked him and turned around to head back to the car. My daughter called while we were walking back to let us know that it was cancelled. She was extremely disappointed since she was looking forward to showing us their progress.
By this point we were soaked and got back in the car to head home, where we didn't have any power. After a quick dinner by candlelight, my mom took my nephew and my son to her house to spend the night. My daughter called to say she was going out with her best friend, so my husband and I started a fire and enjoyed an evening at home with just the two of us and no power. The power didn't come back on until around 10:15 at night. It was almost like a 19th century evening, except that I posted our fire on Instagram.
On Sunday we were supposed to head up to the mountains to see the changing colors. However, my daughter's homework load was extremely high along with her stress. We decided that it wouldn't be responsible to leave her at home and head up to the mountains where we wouldn't be able to step in and help if she needed us. So now I'm not sure if we're going to be able to see the colors in the high country this season or not. I guess it's only one year if we don't manage to get up there, but it still feels a little sad. We will be making the time for the pumpkin patch next month, come hell or high water! As much as I love watching my daughter performing in band because she loves it so much, I don't love the fact that marching season eats into our family fall traditions. But I remind myself that high school is only four short years. Of course my son starts high school next year and as of right now, wants to do marching band also. So I guess it'll be seven short years. At the conclusion of which the kids will no longer be living here in the fall so will be unable to participate in our family traditions. Sigh...
