It seems fall has fallen, which means more time for fun outdoors. One thing Hannah wanted to do this weekend

It seems fall has fallen, which calls for more fun outdoors. One thing Hannah decided to enjoy this weekend was a “mud day,” where we wet a patch of dirt in the backyard for her to slip around in one sunny Saturday. This was apparently something that required the whole family to be involved, so mommy and I obliged to get our feet dirty for a bit before hosing off.

Then that evening, we headed down to Ditmars Orchard for a Balloon Glow. The weather was a perfect 72 degrees, so the kids got to run around a bit before the balloons sailed in to land. Then when the sun went down, they all lit up with flames for our amusement as we walked around among them. The band Clean and Easy played a variety of cover songs as well, and Aaron was excited enough by them to spend sometime sanding in front of the stage with a few other little ones.

In other news, I’ve been having fun with a few do-it-yourself projects. The first is playing with a Raspberry Pi, which is a tiny, cheap computer that people buy to do all sorts of things, from running classic video games to running Lego robots (and other useful things, too). I got mine mostly for games, but I found it was remarkably easy to install a default operating system with LibreOffice software, giving our kids the chance to try out a word processor for the first time, with a $5 mouse and keyboard from Goodwill.

One other project is giving our house a fresh coat of paint. It’s been a couple years since we’d had it painted, and there are a few spots flaking off, so I finally got out the scraper, matched some paint, and started touching things up. The results weren’t bad, but a wasp nest did give me a bit of trouble when I found it wasn’t as vacant as I’d first expected. Ouch.

In other news, Hannah’s plush kitties got married.