What to write, what to write, what to write...
I have run out of things to talk about.
You're thinking, really? Naw, Mary's sooo talkative and always has so many important ideas to discuss. She's just setting up some clever intro into a funny story.
Because she's so clever.
And funny.
Sorry to disappoint.

We had a lovely weekend.

The Zoo Boo event was crowded. But for less than two hours, (thanks to a Halloween candy overdose) I managed not to completely flip out and go all claustrophobic in response to the intense congestion of strollers and toddlers. And for short spurts of time, I enjoyed the atmosphere.
Saturday night we took the kids to Tim's old high school for a haunted house the students put together.
Good thing it was only $5 because Daniel, on the brink of entering the first haunted classroom, heard the blood curdling scream on the other side and said "No, uh uh. I'm not going in there." (he's no fool) And after that one, the other kids were done too.
So we got our money's worth in cookies and painted pumpkins.

Sunday was beautiful.

It's about time we did this.

It's important to me that the kids jump in a pile of leaves before they are too aware of all the skeevy things that live in the leaves.

That happened to me prematurely and now I feel cheated out of decent, quality leaf-jumping time.

The kids are still young enough to think raking is fun.

Katie was so dedicated, she climbed this tree and pulled the still-green leaves off to put in the pile.

And a nice (but too short) visit from out-of-town family capped off a nice weekend.

Nice.

It's a highly underrated word.

Sometimes it just sums everything up perfectly.

I used to cringe when I was described as 'nice.' It seemed so boring and flat.

But I really like it now.

Because the words that run through my head on a typical day are along the lines of: frenzied, crackbrained, deafening, deranged and cuckoo.

What's wrong with nice? Nothing. It's perfect.