Updates...and a BIRTHDAY!

From this: To this:

And then to this:

Ugh, it's been a week. We've had a nasty flu running throughout our house for the past three weeks. It started with Trevor, then Matthew and Megan at the same time, and then finally me. It kicked my butt hard. It is the worst that I have been sick in years.... high fever, aches, sleeping all day and the works. The worst is, one of my worst high fever days fell on Megan's 11th birthday. The poor thing, she's been looking so forward to her birthday and with every reason. You only turn 11 once. We had big plans since they also had the day off of school for part of fall break. Sadly, she spent the day taking care of me. She's such an amazing girl and did so much without me having to ask. Including cooking and making sure her brothers were fed. I owe her big time.... thank you sweetheart.

She's always a reminder of how much richer my life is because of her. Honestly, the world is a better place because of her. She is an amazing little thing.

Today we were driving down Richwood and Megan said, "I can't remember a prettier fall." In one way I thought it was funny because as far as a real fall goes and living where it does look like fall we really don't have a lot of years to compare it to. But there is something about this one.... this one especially is beautiful. I can't tell you why or what makes it different. The trees are insanely beautiful and look like they are on fire. Especially on days like today where the sun shows through them, and the roads are sun dappled and the leaves are falling and swirling. You can't help but stop breathing at the beauty of this place this time of year. (Until some rogue piece of falling fruit falls on the hood of your car jolting a car full of people wide awake wondering if you hit a deer or something. But there was some sort of fruit smushy sauce on the hood...whatever it was.)

There are beautiful multi color trees, mums everywhere, trees with bright red berries on them, bright green grass before the snow comes, and the contrasts are just gorgeous. - And the horses and cows are getting fuzzy. They look so cute!

So today I took everybody to Toys R Us since Matthew already has a birthday check to spend. (Thank you Aunt Kim! He picked out a Star Wars Lego set - go figure. Pictures soon!) and Trevor is telling me about his PowerPoint project he had to do in class this week. He had to do a report on the West. I asked him if that was kind of cool since he was born in the West...you know, Arizona. He looks at me confused and says, "Mom, Arizona is NOT the West, Arizona is the Midwest."

Huh? We live in the Midwest dude. Smack in it. I'm pretty sure of that. Plus I grew up in Arizona and spent 30 + years there.... I'm pretty sure I know that Arizona is part of the West.

"No, where we live now is the NORTHEAST. Arizona is not in the West."

OK, so I have to find out what sort of funkified books that boy is learning from. He can tell you what 4,398 and 1/2 is, divided by 3.5 without having to think about it.... but he still believes that Arizona is not located in the West. And that we don't live in the Midwest. Hmmm.

He says, "My teacher took a class in college about geography, so she should know."

"OK, well I still grew up there, and took lots of classes on Arizona history so we'll see." If you want to get technical, I'm sure it is the Southwest but that seemed to throw him off even more.
My jaw dropped. He's really arguing with me about this. So we have a wager, which I cannot wait to collect on. If I'm wrong, I will clean his room top to bottom. If I am right, he cleans the entire house top to bottom. I have an email into his teacher to settle it.

And what sort of grade did you get on your "PowerPoint report on the WEST???" An A. Hmm.

Mike is coming home Mid November. This time for real. Long story short. But we are really looking forward to it, and seeing what happens from there!