Salem 2024...

This year, we started what I hope becomes a brand-new tradition!

The morning after Halloween, we woke up before the sun, hopped on a plane and headed to Witch City! Salem has been on our bucket list for quite awhile now, and this was the year we finally made it happen!! Last minute, Brittney was able to make it work and so we packed our bags full of sweaters and boots and off we flew... not on broomsticks, but a girl can pretend, right?

Day one had us arriving around noon! We dropped our bags off at our hotel and walked over to our lunch reservation at Rockafellas, right in the heart of Salem, on Essex Street! The restaurant was actually in an old bank building, and we got to eat in the vault! The crab cakes were the best I've ever had, the drinks were spooky and the grilled cheese and tomato pesto hit the spot! 

From here, we went into any and every shop we saw! Everything was still decorated in all things Halloween and the weather was fall perfection. I stumbled upon the cutest tea house that sold bricks of loose leaf and even spotted a little tea party that was most definitely photo worthy! We popped into a haunted house that had us squealing like a bunch of school girls, we found a spooktacular graveyard and we even tried our hand at foliage modeling. We really had the very best time, laughing, strolling and just soaking up an afternoon of being together!

For dinner, we had reservations at a place called Ledger's, which was also right downtown. The drinks were good the squash bisque was to die for and the salmon I split with Brittney was delicious! Our 3am wake-up call had us all craving bed.... until we spotted a little red light in an alley on our way home. Don't worry it was still in the very central part of Salem. Turns out, we had stumbled upon a speakeasy, and, it was goth night! Y'all, the people watching, and the laughing, we couldn't believe the things we saw!

We did eventually tucker out and once we made it back to our room, we all piled in the king size bed and turned on Halloween to commemorate our first day in Halloween town!

*In case you can't tell, we really don't take ourselves too seriously and we typically do anything we can to get a laugh out of each other! Did I mention how much we laughed?! 

Halloween 2024...

This was the year I finally got my wish.... no school the day after Halloween! 

It is always such a late night, that school the next morning is miserable! However, most all of the boy's friends (especially Remi's) had a football game that night, so it made things a bit tricky!  Roen started trick-or-treating early with his buddies that don't play football and then as the night went on others joined in on the fun and it kept growing and growing and growing! They really didn't want to dress up at all, so the going theme for this year was a black ski mask. I'm not sure any of Remi and his friends even trick-or-treated, but rather just house hopped! I think at one point I had like 30 kids running around doing everything from watching scary movies, playing hide-n-seek, playing ping pong and we even caught a little under the blanket snuggling! It was Halloween chaos!

This year, we didn't carve pumpkins, we didn't have an adult costume party and things were definitely different, but there was no shortage of fun... or children!

High School Golf Tournament, Decatur...

And just like that, fall golf has come to an end! The Wildcats won all three of their tournaments and had so much fun together! Remi placed at two of three tournaments and though he didn’t end the season with his best round, he did end the day with 3rd place individually (shooting a 91).

Lots of work to put in to get ready for district this spring, but on the way home from the tournament, I could hear Remi and Bennett talking about their goals and where they needed to be come spring!

Way to go, Remi, now go put in the work!

Getting his permit...

On October 23rd, Remi finally got his driver's permit!

He ended up having to wait an extra month because when I scheduled his original appointment, we didn't have the golf schedule yet. Remi was not happy about having a tournament the same day, but honestly, getting him another appoint that fast was pretty lucky!

It's kind of crazy that he could just do a bit of studying on an app, take a test on his phone, print it off, show up at the DMV, give them a few documents and then be able to start driving just like that! But, it really is that easy, and he has been driving any chance he can get! He is very cautious, prefers me to be his co-pilot, listens to every critique I give, asks questions and stays very calm. I think Remi is going to pretty great little driver... not that I really thought otherwise! 

Micah seems to be little bit nervous about being a passenger, but so far, Remi has given me no reason to doubt that he knows exactly what he is doing!

Remi may have come into this world as a rootin' tootin', wooly, little, wild thing, but his teen years have been pretty wonderful!