Another one in the books.

The first will likely be tough for me every year. My sweet Audie would have been 10.

I always told him he if he could live forever, I’d be fine with that. I guess, in a way, he is living on through these posts. One of these days I’ll do something special just for him.

This month started off promising.

We started with a long weekend (that the Mister actually had off in its entirety!) and the Oak Grove Butterfly Festival.

Personally, the Butterfly Festival should have been a nice time, but….it was a huge disappointment. First, it was HOT. Like 90°, no shade, 70+% humidity hot with no hydration stations or ways to cool down.

The lines for all the vendors were already super long by the time we got there, about an hour and a half after it started. We stood in line for food for over half an hour and then had to wait another 15 to have it ready. The coordinators definitely didn’t plan for the huge influx of people.

With the massive crowd came a ton of missing kids and people passing out from the heat. We ended up not even staying for the release. It was slated to start at 4pm, so the whole field was full of people by 3pm. Then they pushed the release back 10 minutes to “allow more people to attend.” (and this was never announced, but posted on the Facebook event page). That’s when people started passing out, which, of course, delayed the release even further. We were sick of waiting and our experience up to that point had been pretty negative, so we took the loss and left.

Apparently, that was a blessing in disguise. All the parking was overflowing and people were parking on both sides of the 4 lane divided highway, with no one directing traffic. From what I heard, people were waiting hours to get out of that area. Yikes!

Later in the week, my aunt and uncle stopped for a quick overnight visit on their way to West Virginia. I didn’t get any photos then, but they came back the following week on the way back home.

They hadn’t visited us here before, so it was nice to see them twice in such a short amount of time!

The second weekend in September brought our favorite weekend: the Middle Tennessee Highland Games. Unfortunately, our kilt order was canceled, so we didn’t get to wear them this year. We WILL have them for next year’s games. 

Once again,  we had the best time. The weather was a little warmer than last year so we all ended up with ridiculous tan lines, but the experience was still an excellent time. Awesome food from The Scottish Cottage, great pipe/drum bands, dancers, and vendors. It was significantly busier this year, but the location cannot be beat!

We also hit the Trail of Tears Pow Wow that Sunday. We try to go yearly but with the two events on the same weekend, we had to pick and choose which days. Sunday was a shorter day for competition, but we still got to have delicious frybread and enjoy some awesome dancing.

Little Man had a busy few first weeks at preschool. He has been doing well and already seems to be speaking more clearly and frequently. We are so fortunate to have photos from his teachers every week.

He also had a hearing test that week. Both Ms. Alexis at speech and his preschool teachers had recently asked if he had had a hearing test. He tends to hyper-focus and ignore people when he is locked in, so for this mama’s peace of mind, we went ahead and requested one be done.

Thankfully, his hearing is well within normal range, so we now know he just ignores us sometimes. Haha.

The third weekend of the month was our rare down weekend. It was unexpectedly rainy and a lazy weekend. We only went to Lowes for the monthly workshop and did our grocery shopping. We also got Little Man’s  hair cut so he wouldn’t look like a shaggy dog for school photos.

The 4th weekend of the month was another busy one with Oktoberfest and Barks & Brews.  Why these events always seem to get stacked on the same weekend, I don’t know.

The girls did pretty well with the crowd at Barks & Brews. The weather was pretty nice and wasn’t ungodly hot like it was last year.

Indie was a bit of an anxious mess, but Roxie did excellent. She had no issue with other dogs checking her out and didn’t yank on the leash.

Oktoberfest was a good time, but I feel like last year’s was better from a band and food standpoint. Regardless, we enjoyed our beer and even got into the spirit with lederhosen and dirndl!

The last week of the month was filled with school pictures, speech, and the monthly potluck. We’re still waiting on the school photos to come back.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. October will likely be another jam-packed month with pumpkin patch visits, Halloween, our yearly family photos, the El Dia de Los Muertos celebration/Harvest Festival at Cheekwood, and a visit from the in-laws. Despite how busy we tend to get, this is really my favorite time of the year!

Until then,

Cheers!