My pictures are sparse from September, probably because there was a lot going on! After we got back from MV it was Labor Day and we went right into the start of school. The kids refused any sort of back to school photos and I decided they were old enough to make that decision… but I did snap this one pic of Blaine walking off to middle school.
A more minor milestone was my first post-pandemic concert, which I went to with a friend visiting from Florida at an outdoor venue in New Haven! We had the best time. It was the Death Cab / Postal Service tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of the Transatlanticism and Give Up albums — Ben Gibbard’s most creative year.
On 9/12 we somehow managed to talk our way into the middle school, which seems to be totally off limits out of regular school hours. A very kind custodian helped us get in to set up Blaine’s locker with some shelves and stuff to help him stay organized. He also has a fancy fingerprint lock!
The kids were so excited that we could finally take out the basement bouncy house after two years of being off limits. They’re a lot bigger now, unfortunately.
I also went through some old boxes of stuff and found this motor I built in a freshman course at Dartmouth, which still works! Sarah was pretty impressed.
We also had this giant tomato plant going in our front planting bed — we’ve never been successful with intentional tomatoes, but this interloper somehow managed to thrive and gave us a huge number of cherry tomatoes.
The weekend of 9/24 we drove down to Great Falls to visit Gram and Grand-dad, and to say goodbye to the giant pandas at the National Zoo who were being taken back to China. On the 24th we visited the Air and Space Museum and got to see the actual original Wright brothers’ plane (the one we saw in NC is a replica).
Gram made this awesome cake for the kids to decorate in honor of the pandas.
On the 25th we went to the Zoo in the morning to say our goodbyes. Sarah wore her red panda sweatshirt to celebrate, which she got on her first trip to the DC zoo back in 2016! Hard to believe it still fit, 7 years later, but it was a last minute purchase to compensate for some carsickness en route to the zoo that day. 🙂
For comparison, here’s a pic from the 2016 zoo trip:
After the zoo we had some lunch with Uncle Fran and Aunt Jane and then drove back to NY!
The other major event from September was a giant rainstorm on 9/29 which caused some flash flooding and chaotic school dismissals in our area. The middle school basically sent the kids out with no guidance, and the ones on foot or bikes were going through this deep water in Flint Park! It was knee deep the whole way around and I had to wade through to find Blaine and bring him back to the car. Very exciting, but not handled well by the school district.
