Exhaling into November

October is always a crazy-busy month for us. The first weekend is always spent over at duck camp, checking out our duck hunting lakes before the duck hunting season opens, hoping to see some upland birds to hunt during our drives. Getting our time in before the rest of the family descends for weekend after weekend of duck hunting.

The second (and all subsequent, really!) weekend is spent duck hunting and camping at duck camp, with a varied assortment of my husband's dad's side of the family. My work schedule is such that the fall is when most of our construction happens, since that is outside of the irrigation season (ditches turn off October 1st around here), and when our in-water work is least likely to disturb any endangered salmonids. So work life is also busy.

Then there is Halloween to end the month out, and this year to start the month off my parents were here for a week. They visit infrequently (that's what happens when you move across the country then south across the border unfortunately!), but we pack so much into visits that I swear we accomplish more when they are here than the several months on either side of their visits combined! However, it means when they go I need a day or so to recuperate by packing in some down time!

In between this month my dog (the oldest of our three, who has been with me since my university days back (near) home) had a mass surgically removed from her leg near her paw that turned out to be cancerous. She's healing really well from the surgery, although we've had twice weekly bandage changes at the vet's to ensure it heals well, plus twice daily medicine, supervised outside time, and nightly cone-wearing. We're hoping it doesn't come back, although chances are it will. Hopefully at least it will take some time to come back and get to the point of interfering with her ability to walk, so that we still have some time left with her. She turns 11 in January, so I've had a good many years with her, but we are savoring our days with her more now than we have in years, which has been really special.

The pigs were slaughtered and the meat just came back from the butcher today (adding to the good things in November's court - a freezer full of meat!). Then there was deer hunting season, which this year entailed the mister running around the woods with a couple of friends trying to help them get their deer (he got his up in the mountains on an early high hunt). Then my husband's car gave us a bit of a scare this past week, although our trusty mechanic & good friend ran the diagnostics and the warning lights were just due to the gas cap being not quite tight enough (talk about a HUGE sigh of relief!).

Not to mention that my husband's new work schedule is doing it's usual throwing-us-all-out-of-whack, so that we're having to refigure what things get done when! Note to my future self - when he's working weekday days, mama time is best in late afternoons prior to picking Little M up from daycare, on the one day a week that she can stay there until 5 or so! Clearly once both girls are going to daycare, this plan won't work so well... but we'll cross that bridge next year when he is next on this schedule!

All told, I'm looking back at October and heaving a huge sigh of relief that it is a new month. Ah November, already you are exciting me with predictions of snow flurries to come, limited garden chores to finish (although I'm a bit further behind on snow-flying yard preparations than most years), and the promise of weekends at home with the family once the lakes freeze at duck camp! What about you - enjoying the steady approach of the dark, cold, snowy winter months? Stopping to recuperate after a full-out busy spring, summer & fall?