Florida

 Fall break has come to an end and none of us are very happy about that.  But we had a good week!  

Evie has been coming to church with me every other week so that she can acolyte (not every week because we are keeping the number of people limited and she is willing to sit out so someone else can come if they want to).  I am running the camera now that we are livestreaming the service, so Evie and I sit together in the back of the sanctuary and during the sermon, she sits in my lap and I rock her with my knees, or she lays her head in my lap and I braid her hair.

We took some time last weekend to go shopping for some things for thee house and while we were there, we let Evie look through the Christmas stuff.  Normally I despise Christmas things being out in stores this early, but this year, when there's not much to do or look forward to, I was fine with it.  Evie was quite amused by this Santa.

On Monday, Seth and I were getting ready for work (because of course, we're not on fall break) and Siouxsie, our poodle, started barking.  Evie said to her, "Siouxsie, stop it.  It's fall break."  I'm not sure what that had to do with it...

On Tuesday, we were all set to get our early voting done.  We drove to the early voting location and then we were really confused why no one was there.  Apparently it didn't start until the next day.... So we went Thursday so our votes would be counted before we left for our Florida trip.  There were only a couple of other people there and all were wearing masks and following protocols for distance.  The workers reported they'd been really busy all day, though.  Evie was really happy to get to push all the buttons for me.

Friday morning, we loaded the dogs in the car, dropped them off at the vet, and headed to Florida for a weekend with my brother and his family.  Evie has been dying to build a sand castle ever since she wasn't able to on our road trip, when Lake Michigan beaches were too crowded in Madison, WI.  She was even more excited, of course, to spend the weekend with her cousins.  We had planned to mask up the whole time, but quickly realized that it would be a difficult thing to keep up all weekend and we decided to just go with expanding our bubble of people for the weekend.  All the kids got to sleep in Addie's upstairs bedroom and play together all day.  We spent some time at the beach and the pool, and just relaxed.  It was a wonderful way to end fall break and I know Evie feels more normal after having some time with other children.

One of their activities was facepainting and Evie said of Addie's work, "She gave me a uno-brow!" (yoo-no)

Sand castle in progress

I found some mermaids!