Halloween and October Happenings

One of Cassie's favorite toys is the heater vent cover. She takes it off all the time and throws stuff down there. Fortuately, the vent narrows and bents just under the floor so there's no chance of her disappearing down there. And I can rescue all the crayons, cars, and play jewelery.

We had fun decorating our kid pictures for Halloween. And no, these weren't their costumes.

In early October, my parents came out for the weekend, and we went to the local apple farm. It was a little rainy, so my kids had the bouncy apple house all to themselves. They went wild!!

Then, the next day, we went out to a fun pumpkin patch and corn maze. It was really fun to do it all, and I was surprised how much the kids liked the maze.

Here are my crazy boys...

Princess Kara...

And my cute girls! (Sometimes I still can't believe that I have 4 daughters)

We went to Wolf Lodge the next weekend. They loved all the waterslides, wave pools, magic wand quests, and being with friends.

We had a ward trunk or treat on Saturday, and then dinner and carnival-type games at Larry and Lori's Sunday night. The kids had a ball!

Larry and I dressed up as the crazy Chilian guy in Kid Histories 3, Kara was a Bunny Kitty, Lindsey was a cheerleader, Spencer was Darth Vadar, Cassie a frog, Miranda was stripes, Derek was Darth Cow.

BYU lights on Morrison Bridge

Yay for school!

So, a figured that an update was WAY overdue. Can I just tell you, I am SO, SO, SO glad that the kids are back in school? It has made such a huge difference in my sanity and enjoyment of life. The older kids just really need that extra structure and the exposure to classmates and teachers to be happy. It has been really nice to just have Kara and Cassie at home in the mornings until Lindsey gets home. I've started exercising again, and the house isn't a wreak all the time, so maybe that explains why I feel so much better.

The little girls and I have been enjoying harvesting the stuff from our garden. This year we experimented with corn, and I was amazed that I grew about 40 ears fertilizing only a couple times. Unfortunatly, I waited too long to pick them! So, they didn't taste very good- which is a ttragedy after all the work. Maybe next year we'll try again. Since the weather has suddenly changed to cool, wet Oregon, I don't think I'll be getting any more red tomatoes, but I've still got a winter squash plant, carrots, onions, potatoes, and beets in the ground. I need to harvest the rest of them soon, but I don't know where I'll store them all! I need a cool, Utah basement or root cellar or something!

Here are my messy girls! Kara just loves to eat, and Cassie is joining in! Cassie is really showing a lot of personality lately. She makes tons of sounds and a few words- mama, da, and kitty. Her favorite foods are pizza, noodles, peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and peaches, and milk and jjunk food, of course. She just started walking between Larry and me (maybe 8 steps), but she gets really sad if she falls, so that must be why she never really tries on her own. Mostly, she crawls around on her knees so that she can hold stuff. She loves our cats and when the other kids play with her.

The kids are really liking school this year. Miranda has the same teacher she had a couple years ago, and she is excellent. She loves the whole social network and doing social studies. She is very curious about all sorts of different things. Lindsey started morning Kindergarten. She likes her class and her teachers and feels all smart because she can already read. She also gets to ride the bus home (for 30 seconds), and she likes that. Spencer is enjoying school and playing Wall Ball at recess. I think he gets a chance to be a leader at school, which is hard a home with 2 older siblings who also want to be leaders. Derek is doing good, and is probably going to skip this grade and move into 4th grade next week. We meet with the school councellor, TAG person, principal, etc tomorrow morning to make a final decision and access his IQ test. He has been going into 4th grade math the last couple weeks.

So, we had our 3 birthday run right before and during the first week of school. Kara's birthday brought something unexpected- and UNwilling birthday girl! She was at a father/daughter campout the morning of her birthday, so I sent brownies along. Larry said that she started crying when they sang Happy Birthday to her! Later that night, we had friends over for a football game and tried to sing to her. She did NOT want it. I finally convinced her to sit by the cake. She agreed as long as Lindsey blew out the candles. The next day at grandma's house, she wouldn't even come to dinner, but had a tantrum in the hallway for about 45 minutes. We decided to skip the whole cake thing, and so straight to presents. She only agreed if I opened the presents for her! Luckily, after playing with a few gifts, she finally got into it and opened the rest and had her cake and ice cream!

Spencer's birthday party was with family, so he had us all go over to the school and do races and play freeze tag. It was fun. We also played some board games and had dessert. He REALLY wanted a telescope for his birthday. When I brought out the pile of small gifts, I thought he was going to cry, but he tried to put on a brave face. Finally, when he was done, Larry brought out his big telescope. You should have seen how huge his eyes got and how big his grin was!! It was awesome.

Lindsey turned 5 and got lots of girly stuff. I think her favorite gifts were some new shoes and a frilly pink skirt from grandma.

I feel like I've got so much done these past few weeks. My resolve to not channel surf and not really watch TV have really opened up my time. Also, I seem to have more energy now that I am not pregnant or nursing. I feel like all my projects that I've put on hold for so long are finally getting some attention. I love getting projects done and making our homelife work better.

Meanwhile, Larry is in hyperdrive, scrambling around with his things- stressful work, waterpolo, Elder's Quorum, soccer, and home life. He enjoys it, but it is hard for him to stay on top of it all. Luckily, soccer ends next week, and waterpolo ends around Halloween.

What Have We Been Doing All Summer?

So, what have we been up to the last couple months? Lots of random stuff. Like going to garage sales...

Picking strawberries and making jam for coming year...

Looking extra cute at Heidi and Blake's wedding...

Hosting a pirate party for friends...

Planting the garden...

Having a "coolest rock" contest in a cave in Utah...

Turning 1 year old...

Visiting BYU campus and Utah relatives...

Pulling Cassie in the wagon...

Looking at a snake while hiking...

Watching the garden grow...

Watching TV...

Fencing (Derek- on the far left)...

Rolling around in a giant bubble ball...

Learning how to go potty...

Going for a walk in the forest...

Painting the kitchen (before)...

And after!

More to come soon!!

Funny kids and Cats

Kara has been pretty crazy the last few weeks. She has started being obsessed with shoes, and wants to wear them to bed and all day long and trade them throughout the day. She has stopped napping early in the afternoon, so she is very randomly tired and falls asleep in the late afternoon in weird positions and places. We basically did nothing exciting during Spring Break because, frankly, I was scared to take them all somewhere by myself! The only place that we went that was out of the ordinary, was to Noble Woods park about a mile or so from our house. There's a little wetland, some forest areas, and trails throughout. We walked around for about an hour.

Kara's craziness led to her falling off a table onto the corner of the bookcase and giving herself a black eye. It happened on Saturday afternoon about 10 days ago. She had a big goose egg, which gradually went done to puffiness until Tuesday, when all the swelling went away. It looked like she was wearing purplish/black eyeshadow with a greenish yellow up into her eyebrow and out like a triangle on the side of her face.

Now, it is just a dark red line in the crease of her eyelid! I'm just happy that it didn't do serious damage to her eye!

Cassie is just SO cute! I hope her eyes stay blue!

Spencer wanted in on the picture. He thinks he looks so awesome like this...

Then Derek started doing his "bottom dancing"- that kid can really move his hips!

In other news, Derek had his first Pinewood Derby. He put all sorts of Star Wars dudes on the top. Larry was quite anxious to try to do it right. Anyway, something must have worked because he placed 1st or 2nd in all the races he was in. He had a really fun night.

Derek also got 2nd place in his school's 1-5th grade Spelling Bee! He won a pretty sweet-looking pencil.

4 kids in a tub! This was Cassie's first time in the big tub with her siblings. She wanted out pretty quick. The water sure got high after everyone got in!

Yesterday, Intel had a special Blazer night. We got to meet Patty Mills, wander around the Rose Garden, eat tons of food, get airbrushed with Blazer symbols, and play games. It was very fun!

Miranda is SO psyched for her birthday. We made this dog bags with her invitations inside. It's going to be a dog-themed party. I'm going to be face painting all the girls as dogs, we're making ribbon collars, eating dog-bone cookies, and doing other dog-related stuff.

Kara and Cassie are sure growing up so fast. Cassie is crawling now, and her first tooth just broke the surface. She's 9 months old and the most content baby ever...

This video was taken after Cassie had been playing with Shadow's tail for at least 5 minutes. Every time that she grabbed his tail, he would swish it around and she would giggle. I think he finally got fed up with it.