September 2018

Labor Day weekend has come to mean our annual trip to Amarillo to visit with Aunt Sara and Uncle Gary. Clifton was meeting us there, flying up from Dallas.  I'm just saying if you have to road trip alone with your kids, no problem. Give them each a DVD player with headphones and a big bag of gummy worms, and it will be the quietest seven hours of your life.

The girls love their annual trip to Wonderland Park with Uncle Gary and Aunt Sara who patiently hang out as kids run from one spinny, nausea inducing ride to another.

You know this one? The pirate ship? It's a Railsback girl favorite.

They try to get the back row so they can get to maximal height, and then look how delighted Sarah is to have her hands in the air...

And we love celebrating Aunt Sara's fake birthday with her!

And we always stop by the cemetery in Amarillo, so that the girls can more concretely remember the grandparents that made their daddy who he is, who are part of who they are. I am sure that when they are feisty and brave, this is their grandma. And when they are intentional and kind, that's their grandpa shining through.

Look who turned eight this month. EIGHT!

Sometimes your family birthday celebration falls on the same day that your family is processing 100 quarts of applesauce. So you take a break from churning boiled apples, blow out some candles, eat some carrot cake, open a gift, and get back to it.

 For Annika's birthday party with friends, we went on a photo scavenger hunt all over Longmont -- solving clues, taking silly photos, delivering treats to police officers, eating yummy treats ourselves, and fighting over who got to sit where in which car.

The Parsons came over to celebrate one night as well. No shortage of birthday celebrations for this kid.

  

Soccer in September can be super hot. And I'm not even the one running around.

This is what our freezer looked like for three weeks in September. That's Big Orange, our favorite fish. The girls were devastated and wanted to give him a proper burial. But that requires remembering to bury him. Sure I could've just done it without them, but I was trying to not minimize their sadness. So if they ever, ever accuse me of not taking their feelings seriously, I'm going to haul out this photo and remind them of Big Orange staring me down every day for three weeks.

So if your kids are at school and it's your day off, there really is no reason you can't skip out on laundry and vacuuming to go to a Rockies game with great friends and have a couple beers.

Erin even caught a homerun ball! If you could see the footage of this, it would show me diving out of the way. I'm a wuss.

This is what 42 looks like. Maybe 42 should put on some lipstick next time.

Naomi got a typewriter for her birthday from Amelia. She loves it. Who can blame her? Such a soothing sound to hear the rhythmic clickity click of the metal hitting the paper. 

This is what I found on my pillow one night... She was so proud of her "old school emoji" that she felt the need to explain to me, like I might not have ever seen this stroke of genius before. 

By the way, finding a note like this will totally undo all the stress and chaos in your world -- for at least seven seconds. Go leave someone a note. Trust me.