Ten Months

 

Paul is 10 months old today!

Happy Halloween!

Roasted pumpkin seeds and chocolate Halloween cupcakes

Half-term fun at Temple Newsam

George did a lovely job of pushing Paul gently on the swings and Paul loved it!

More half-term fun at the National Railway Museum

Halloween!

George wore his face mask under this beard for the actual trick-or-treating

Contactless trick-or-treating--we went to houses of  George's classmates and collected candy from bowls. We also carried along some of our own candy and I gave George a piece every time he spotted a jack-o-lantern!

Our election maps--I had George draw one of his own predictions. It's a lot more mixed than reality!

And here's mine. I was wrong about Florida and Missouri, and George and I were both wrong about Georgia. So amazing to see it go blue!

I wrote to people who might not turnout to encourage them to vote with Vote Forward. It was such a fun way to do something and feel involved from a distance!

Election night watch party--Paul stayed up until about 1am, and I went to bed just after the 4am calls--it was still unclear, due to all of the postal ballots there were left to count, but I felt fairly confident that Biden would win. I just needed them to call it officially before I could relax!

After days of checking my phone constantly for election updates, we went out to Oakwell Hall for a walk and got Starbucks to-go--and while I was ignoring my phone, the election was finally called for Biden!

Our last gardening project of the year: we tore down the fence and replaced it with holly bushes!

Lockdown walk at Kirkstall Abbey

George has been very into arts & crafts--he drew all of these Transformers characters and we cut them out

For his first Thanksgiving, I put Paul in the same sweater that George wore for his first Thanksgiving!

George enjoyed his Thanksgiving dinner! He loved the sweet potatoes, turkey and cranberry sauce, but wasn't crazy about the green bean casserole or the cornbread stuffing.

Paul had a go at the turkey and pumpkin pie

We went for a walk up on the Chevin--these ruins were the Keeper's Cottage, where the gamekeeper lived.

We had a great Halloween, thanks to the other parents in George's class sharing addresses and doing socially distanced, contactless trick-or-treating for the kids. In November, we were put into a 4-week lockdown, so we did a lot of autumnal walks with takeaway coffees. On election day, I had one last pre-lockdown meet-up with Carly and Zoe, then went home and did some gardening to keep myself busy and avoid checking the news (with the time difference, I knew there wouldn't be any actual results until about 11pm at the earliest!). It was a long night and a long week, waiting for the results, and I felt so relieved when Biden was officially declared the winner!