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Reasons Why I’m Excited It’s October!!

October is here!!!! Because of this, in my mind it means that the weather will finally cool down and I’ll be able to wear light sweaters and sweatshirts. In reality, today the high is 86…whomp, whomp…

Today I thought I’d do something new and share a few reasons why I love October! And don’t worry, I’ll be sharing a recap of our Disney trip soon!

1. It’s my birthday month!

I love celebrating my birthday! Growing up, my mom made our birthdays so special. She didn’t spend a ton of money on them, but it’s the things she did that mattered most. She made it feel like the entire day was about us. We had to make our own bed every morning growing up, but on our birthday, my mom always made out bed. It was a big deal back then ha! She also decorated the kitchen and I loved waking up and walking into the kitchen to see all of the decorations!

October is not only my birthday month, but it’s also my sister’s! Her birthday is 2 weeks before mine!

2. It’s the last month I enjoy my fall treats

During September and October (and let’s get real, August now, too), I let myself enjoy candy corn and PSLs! These aren’t frequent treats, but every once in a while during these months I’ll treat myself and it always feels so special because it’s seasonal.

3. Fall TV

During this time of year, I love watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with my kids or putting on You’ve Got Mail while I’m doing something else. It’s fun to watch something that we save to watch during a certain time of year. It makes it feel extra special.

4. My fall music playlist

I have a playlist on my phone I named Cozy, and I always listen to it in the fall. It’s full of jazz and old standards, and something about it just makes me feel like fall. We also like to listen to the Great Pumpkin soundtrack at home since it’s all instrumental.

5. Fall activities

There’s a pumpkin patch train ride I want to take the kids on (we took Harrison the fall before Banks was born). We also have our fall festival at church that we look forward to each year! While I’m not a big Halloween celebrator, we’ve made a tradition of eating a special meal before we go out trick or treating. Two years ago, my sister started coming over to go trick or treating with us, and now she has a little boy old enough. We will eat a special meal Halloween night and then go trick or treating in our neighborhood! I love that my kids will get to grow up spending this holiday with their cousin.

Happy October!!!

Why I LOVE Our Air Purifiers (And Why You Need Them, Too!)

Last Thanksgiving started over month-long sicknesses that our family kept passing around. We could. not. get. over. it. My breaking point was between Christmas and New Year’s when we all passed around the flu and had to miss Christmas with family and New Year’s with friends.

I had been looking at air purifiers for a couple months by then, but it wasn’t something that Dustin felt like was a priority like I did. (Isn’t that usually how it goes? LOL).

BUT once we all got the flu, I mentioned the air purifier idea again, and at that point, he was ready to try anything to help us all stay well. He did a bunch of research and my only requirement was that it also filtered viruses and bacteria. We settled on a more expensive one for the open living area (bigger square footage so more expensive) and less expensive ones for the bedrooms.

This is what we got for our open living area! Is it cute? No. But within maybe 30-45 minutes of turning it on and connecting the app on our phone, we could tell a difference in the air in our house. It felt crisp and clean. Weird to say, but we both made that comment to each other haha!

This is a picture of the top. When the air is completely clean, it reads as a zero. The boys had just gone outside and opened the back door when I took this picture, so you can see that even though it’s reading a 1 and still clean, the air wasn’t the cleanest.

When we first turned it on, I think it read at a 100 or so, and it kicked on to clean the air. It’s interesting to see what types of things cause it to kick on and clean the air. Also, the filter life has been pretty good and since we bought it after January 1st, we’re now down to 35% filter life left (the app tells you this!).

We put a small one in Merritt’s room since I felt like she was staying sicker than her brothers. Her room is small (like maybe 11×12 or 12×12) so this size is perfect! It’s staying at this wall until I move her crib out and big girl bed in.

And this is the one in our bedroom! I’ve already changed out the filters in both Merritt’s room and ours. It was super simple and I just ordered them from Amazon.

Why do I love them so much?

Whether it’s purely coincidental or not, we haven’t passed around any sicknesses since we got these air purifiers! I think 3 of us has been sick 3 different times and it’s something that we’ve caught at school or daycare but it didn’t get passed around to the rest of us! That is a big deal in our house! I really do attribute it to getting air purifiers (and especially this one in our open living area) that filter out the viruses and bacteria.

I highly recommend adding an air purifier to your house and you’ll be amazed at how clean your air will feel! And maybe be amazed at how little you get sick!

A List of My Favorite Podcasts Right Now 2025

I absolutely love listening to podcasts! I wish I could remember when I started listening to podcasts–I think it’s when I first started teaching. I love listening to podcasts I can learn from, too.

My list is ever changing and I go through phases where I listen to a certain podcast all the time and then I grow bored with it.

Today I thought I’d share the ones on my current rotation. Some of these I listen to frequently while others I will listen to an episode randomly. I’d love to hear what you’re listening to because I love finding new podcasts to listen to!

I just recently came across this podast so I’m excited to dive in and listen to her older episodes. I’m aware of her mission, which is to get kids to spend 1000 hours outside each year, but I didn’t realize she had a podcast with lots of episodes.

I looooove Al Mohler and really respect his opinions. He’s the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and puts this podcast out every day of the work week going over some major news headlines from a gospel worldview. I listened to an interview he gave where he said he records each episode before he goes to bed at night, and sometimes it’s at 1am. He doesn’t use notes either! If you haven’t listening to this one, I highly recommend it because each episode isn’t too long either.

I’ve been listening to Knowing Faith for a very long time. I love the banter between Jen, Kyle, and JT. I love how each season they teach through a subject–once it was The Apostles’ Creed and recently it was Revelation. You’ll learn a lot listening to this one.

This year is maybe the 250th birthday of Jane Austen (I think it’s that number) so the Jane Austen House (her house in England that’s a museum) is putting out a podcast once a month to celebrate. It’s a soothing podcast and I wish the episodes were more frequent and longer!

I always learn so much from Mark Hyman about my health. He’s a functional MD and I’ve even made Dustin listen to one of his episodes about acid reflux in the car before.

I’m a Meghan fan so I’ll listen to any of her podcasts! This one is newer so she doesn’t have a ton of episodes. I will say, the one that bored me was on coding because that’s just not something I care about, so I don’t think I finished that episode.

I’ve been listening to Sally Clarkson since before Harrison is born. She’s someone who is so encouraging about motherhood and her voice is really soothing, too. I listened to her a lot when Dustin and I were trying to become parents because I wanted to be prepared for motherhood, and I remember one of her episodes where she talked about her kids doing quiet rest time after they outgrew naps. I thought that was genius and tucked it away to remember when I got to that point in life. Well, Harrison has always been a great napper but obviously had to give up naps once he went to kindergarten since they don’t nap anymore in K. Now on Saturdays (I still make him nap on Sunday because Sundays are so busy with church and small group) Harrison has quiet rest time upstairs where he plays by himself while the babies are napping.

When the world is telling women that motherhood is too hard or not worth is, Sally is always encouraging about how children are our first mission field and that even though motherhood is hard, our strength comes from the Lord.

This podcast is interesting to listen to because she’s a retired teacher who went into blogging full time. While I don’t always agree with some of the things she says (she’s not a believer), I do enjoy her podcast overall.

This is a podcast for Harrison and I love it, too! The storyline of TJ and his sister Tori going on weekly adventures keeps Harrison engaged all while learning about God, too.

I’d love to know what are some of your favorite podcasts are in the comments!