What's New and Exciting over here

Linking up with Kristen and Gretch today for their monthly "What's new with you" link up. Since I missed the link up in September, I was determined to get a post up for this month!

If anyone who saw me this week asked me, "what's new", I would first tell them this ridiculous story. I left the house on Tuesday morning with the kids at 7 am and Brian left at 10 am to go to the airport. He was going out of town for work for one night. Typically, I am not an overly anxious person, but I do sometimes feel a bit of anxiety being in the house overnight with the kids on my own. However, I wasn't feeling that way this day. I came home from work with the kids at 4:30 pm and when we pulled into the driveway, Molly said "hey, why is the front door open?" and I looked up to see that our front door was, in fact, WIDE OPEN. Cue panic. I called Brian right away and asked him if there was any possibility he could have left the door open (not unlocked, OPEN), and he said "well, yeah, maybe." SERIOUSLY?! I was fuming and freaked out. I left the kids in the car and went through the house and everything seemed fine but I was still pretty freaked out. Move on to the rest of the evening and I am finally coping with the fact that our house was in fact safe all day long despite the front door being open for 6 hours and living on a bus route street up from a high school. Then I call my parents and tell them about it, and my dad says "I hope there aren't any mice or rats in the house" and there comes another panic attack. #thanksdad I made Brian go on a pretty big hunt just in case any got in while he was gone. I am beyond grateful that we have a guardian angel somewhere keeping watch over our home because holy smokes would my husband have been in trouble if our house had been ransacked...haha.

Anyway...September was an absolute whirlwind, as I knew it would be. Molly starting school also meant a change in daycare for Molly (before & after school care), which was a whole transition in and of itself (and remains to be). As expected, our little scholar absolutely (seemingly) LOVES school. She is loving French immersion, she seems to really enjoy her teacher and has made some friends. She is happy to report on all parts of her day at suppertime each night, which I love. It has been wonderful watching her flourish in this new daily routine. She originally (and still) isn't the hugest fan of the new daycare, but I think it's growing on her. September also means that Brian is busy for 3 weekends straight with extracurricular activities, but I think that will be changing next year because it was insane this year.

Here's a bit of a recap in photos:

Molly started school and a new daycare

Molly turned 5 :)

We went to see Beauty and the Beast at Neptune Theatre

We went apple picking near my sister's house in the Valley (1 hour away)

I ran my final 5k of the year (I am missing one in October to go to Calgary) and it was a fantastic race. Cool weather and finished it in 30 mins. Brian brought the girls out to the finish line and surprised me there, which was sweet.

Other than that, I also signed about a thousand papers for Molly's school (I did NOT realize how many handouts she would be taking home), we revamped our closet to accommodate organizing all of the new paperwork, we went to a parade and saw a truck convoy (200 trucks!), we spent a couple of hours at the beach (loved it) one afternoon, and had a few movie nights at home. I also got my hair cut, which I am looooving. Here it is, straight, but I usually wear it wavy ish :)

I also flew through a ton of "fluffy" books in an effort to escape the stress of everyday life AND because I had a cold for a week. It was wonderful and I'll be talking about all the books I've read lately on Tuesday for Show us Your Books.