Well...?

What would YOU do if you saw the lights on, the stool conveniently placed, the lid up, and the yellow water beckoning?? This all happened while I was frantically trying to put those last few dishes into the dishwasher (Kara LOVES to climb on the door of the dishwasher and take out the dirty dishes, so I have to be very sneaky). Needless to say, she quickly got stripped down and put into the bath-- that is, after I took a couple pictures...

I'm not sure what is so attractive about these places to climb in. We found her doing this "split style" exploring in her exersaucer and the ever popular toilet again today.

Isn't it just fun to sit in a box, basket, or wagon?

On a completely different note, I've decided that every small household appliance is made to last 10 years or less. Since our 10 year anniversary is creeping up on us, we find ourselves replacing a lot of stuff lately. You know your family is getting big when you need a 4 slice toaster.

In other news, this is Larry's last week of waterpolo! Yay! Larry also had a fun "date" with Lindsey to Disney on Ice. She loved seeing the princesses and dancing in the hallways.

Busy October

Man, I didn't realize how busy our October has been until I downloaded our pictures! So, here's an update- in pretty much reverse order...Last weekend, we went to a pumpkin patch by our house. It was a beautiful October day. We did everything and then Larry came back with the kids to do the corn maze. It took them almost 2 hours to find all the clues to get their prizes. (I'm glad I wasn't there!) The kids were so tired by the end that they just laid down in the dirt, while Larry would ask other people in the maze for help.

The kids were SO excited to be there.

They had this fun little train attatched to a tractor. We filled up half the train ourselves.

While the kids had school off for conferences, we went to Wolf Lodge- a hotel with an indoor waterpark. The kids were so excited to try everything out. Of course, once we got in there, Lindsey didn't want to do much and Kara was tired and wanted to be held most of the time. Larry and I took turns with the kids in the wave pool, water slides and another pool with things to climb on.

After dinner back in the room, they had a short trick-or-treating trail inside the hotel. The kids were thrilled to get some candy. They got even more the next day when they visited the arcade. A few different people gave their tickets to the kids, so they got a ball, candy, and a Halloween decoration. (I was reading my book in the van- so we both got something nice out of it).

Last week, I took Miranda in to get her braces. She did SO well, and they were quick. It took less than an hour. She loved picking out her rainbow colored elastics. She will have these upper braces for about a year and a half, she will also have reverse head gear in about 6 months (she doesn't know about this yet), then retainers until she is older. Probably when she is around 13, "phase 2" will happen with a full set of braces and who knows what. She has adjusted really well, except she hates how it feels when I floss her upper teeth- and she doesn't like that I check to make sure there's no food stuck in there.

We had our Conference Breakfast to watch the Sunday morning session of General Conference as usual. (You all need to live in Oregon so you can come too.) It was fun and yummy, and I even managed to stay awake during all 4 sessions.

I just love this picture. Larry was doing a simultaneous tickle on the girls.

Don't you just hate it when you suddenly realize that it has been "too quiet"? When I realized that I hadn't seen Kara in quite some time, I went exploring and found her in the bathroom sucking on the kids' toothpaste tube and their toothbrushes. She was loving it.

Earlier this month, I decided to be ambitious and make applesauce. I went to a local farm and bought some MONSTER apples. They were almost as big as Kara's head! I had never seen anything like them! It only took 2 1/2 apples to make a quart of applesauce. I ended up with 44 quarts, and I still had a box leftover. After 2 1/2 days of making the stuff, my neck/back muscles freaked out, so I stopped. With a few long massages, heat, and Tylenol, I was finally back to my old self after a few days.

September and October were filled with soccer for the oldest 3 kids. Larry coached Miranda's team (notice that Kara is quite comfy sitting amongst them, looking for snacks). Miranda enjoyed it more than she ever has, but likes playing defense- she's just not aggressive in sports. Spencer loved it, of course, even though I had to ignore him most of the time. He was fun to watch when I got a chance, though. He loved to run around the mob of kids going for the ball, humming to himself, then zeroing in to kick it away when it got close to the goal. Derek enjoyed being with his best bud, Kyler. He liked it, but most of the time when I watched him, he was either playing with his ear or talking to himself or someone else.

So that's about it for us. Larry has two more weeks of waterpolo coaching. The kids are SO excited for Halloween- and I'm going to bed.

Spencer is Five!

An interview with Spencer of his favorites:

TV show: Scooby-Doo

Color: Blue

Parent: mom!

Sibling: Miranda

Foods: Sandwiches, Yogurt, Strawberries

Drink: Applejuice

Treat: Cake that's blue

Toy: Legos, puzzles

Things to do: Ride bikes, find bugs

Thing at school: Art, PE, and reading, recess, and music, and going on the bus

What do you want for Christmas? The Death Star ($500 Lego set) and 2 more MTTs

Where do you want to go on vacation? A playplace and Disneyworld and Utah and my grandma's house.

Favorite animal? Dogs and Cats

Favorite Book? Scooby-Doo books and animal books

Blubbs and Glubbs

As Spencer is tipping the large yogurt container over to put some on his plate, he comments, "I only want one Blubb of yogurt". Apparently it is a large glob of yogurt that falls out of the container at the same time.
Lindsey was looking at some of the board books at the library. One of them had pictures of household items, clothes, and food. When she saw the picture of the orange, fuzzy gloves she exclaims, "my Glubbs!"

Kara is One!

Kara had her first birthday almost a month ago, so I thought I'd write a little bit about her. Here is Kara trying so hard to get outside to play with the squirrels that run around out there. If anyone leaves a door open, she totally bolts for it. She's made it down the driveway twice and out into the backyard a few times before we knew where she was! Yikes! She absolutely loves being outside. After watching a few soccer games, she even has been crawling and kicking balls. Now that she is walking, she loves to kick and throw balls as well.

She loved when Larry blew his whistle for her. She is such a fun baby to have around- she is so silly lately and loves to laugh.

For her birthday she absolutely demolished her cake (my first child to do so). This girl LOVES to eat. She will eat anything, although she definatly has favorites- watermelon, PB&Jam sandwiches, and other fruit.

Since she has really been walking for about a month now, she is everywhere and into everything- including the toothbrushes and toothpaste that she found in the kid's bathroom. Yum! She also loved finding the drawer with ziplock bags- those were sure fun to pull out one by one. She loves musical toys and has even started to dance. It's really cute. She can say "mama", and she has said "Da," and "Ditty"(kitty), a couple times. She also signs, "All done" when she is done eating. She still has her beautiful gray/green/brown eyes and now has 7 teeth. She LOVES animals and has crawled/walked across a whole soccer field to stand right next to a few dogs. She is fascinated by them (and really doesn't even care if I'm within a hundred yards of her- she is fearless).
Kara is RAD!

First Days of School

Ah, it's so nice to have school back in session! Lindsey is still wondering when she gets to go to "the big school", even though we have had her preschool twice already. Since I'm the first mom to teach, I think she thinks it's just a playdate with three of her friends. She is enjoying it, though.

Spencer was pretty quiet the first morning that I dropped him off for Kindergarten, but he was just bubbly afterwards. I think he didn't quite know what to expect, but now he really likes it. He even gets to ride the bus a whole block home.

Miranda and Derek are really enjoying school. I think it's turned out better than either of them thought! Of course, they haven't started having daily homework yet. I'm enjoying the quieter and cleaner house. It will get even better when I get two mornings a week with just Kara- imagine that!!

10 Year Anniversary Trip to Mexico!

After almost a week of getting back to normal life, I've finally gotten the chance to catch you all up on our very fun, exciting trip to Cancun, Mexico! This is the balcony from our little condo. It overlooks the beach and all the other hotels. It was so HOT there- about 95 degrees and 90% humidity. We had fun on the beach and playing in the waves (which knocked Larry and I down a few times-it's pretty rough). Our condo was by all the dance clubs and some malls, so we explored those a little when we first arrived. Our first day of adventures began Monday at an ecopark called Xcaret. They have lots of animals, snorkeling in caves and rivers, and Mexican heritage shows. It was all a lot of fun and it made a very full day. We left at 8 am and got home at midnight.

These guys hung upside down from a giant pole and did all these cool tricks.

Ah! Air conditioning! I felt like I was totally melting a lot of the time we were there. I felt like I was constantly drinking water the whole time we were there. I don't think I've ever sweat that much in my life- I didn't even dare wear makeup because even the sunscreen on my face would drip into my eyes. It was THAT HOT.

This was one of the performers in the huge show that they have at night.

On Tuesday, we did Selvatica. It was a group of 8 of us that did zip lines through the jungle, swimming in a cenote (underground pool), and lunch. Here we are all suited up. We did about 12 lines, and it was fun. Larry did a couple upside-down, and I did a couple "superman"-style.

Larry really wanted to use a Segway, so he rented one to take to the cenote- the rest of us went in the army truck.

The cenote was perfect- nice and refreshing. They had a zipline into the pool and a diving platform. They had a fun rope to sit on and walk on, and even a little bat cave on the side. After the cenote, we had a yummy lunch and then were back to the condo. On this day, we took the bus to the super WalMart to stock up on groceries for the rest of the trip.

Wednesday was awesome. We went snorkeling with Octavio in a reef about 10 minutes out into the carribean. We started with a practice session in a pool for about 30 minutes, then we went out on a little boat to the reef. We quickly got in and descended. Larry was pretty nervous about it, but the practices went so well, that we both felt comfortable quickly. We did 2 dives, the first one was down about 20 -30 feet, the second, around 30-40 feet.

The first really cool thing that we saw was a Baracuda! He even stayed still while we posed.

All the fish swam right by us, and I could ALMOST touch them...

Toward the end of the first dive, I started feeling a little sick and like I needed to eat, so we surfaced and I quickly ate something to calm my stomach. We quickly realized that I was motion sick. After throwing up my little snack over the side of the boat, we suited up really fast to get back into the water (the boat was rocking SO hard, and down in the water, it was nice). On this dive, it got cold, so I stayed a little higher part of the time. The coolest thing we saw on this part was this big sting ray and baby ray. They glided off before we got too close.

We saw lots of schools of fish, lobster, tons of cool coral, and a lot of diverse sea life. It was SO worth the 10 minutes of motion sickness. After coming up, we quickly zipped back to the lagoon, and by the time we got there, I was feeling totally normal. Although, my hair wasn't...

Salt water does weird things to hair...

On Thursday, we went with an LDS tour guide, Helaman to two archeological sites- Equin-Ha? and Chichen-Itza. The first one was cool because we could climb up all the temples. Here was a baptismal font. There were many similarities to see. Helaman was so great with pointing out and explaining the possibilites.

Here's Larry at the top of the main temple. As you can see, there is jungle EVERYWHERE! It was so interesting to also see the mounds of rock and overgrowth on the parts of the temples that they haven't restored yet. At both sites I was amazed at how anyone could fit all the pieces together to reconstruct these sites.

After the best meal on the trip- Lime soup, Chicken fajitas, fruit and lemonade, we visited the main temple at Chichen-Itza. They had all sorts of accessory buildings, including where they play that basketball-like sport with the two tiny hoops up on the wall. It was so interesting to learn about the symbolism.

On Friday, we cancelled our last excursion (another zipline/archeological site/cenote), to just hang out at the beach and pack for our early flight the next day. Larry and I had a lot of fun going out in the early evening looking for shells. Larry loved putting on his goggles and finding shells. We took lots of pictures on our waterproof camera- so we'll post those once they get developed. We also both read a Brandon Sanderson book (Mistborn was so excellent), and I even forced Larry to watch all 6 hours of the BBC Pride and Prejudice!

We left our condo at 5 am, with music from the dance clubs still going strong. We flew into Dallas around 9:30. Larry picked a great hotel, with free shuttles to the airport, awesome breakfast, and within walking distance of the stadium, six flags, and our new favorite place to eat- Steak and Bake. After some yummy burgers, Larry went to Six Flags, while I napped (Heaven!). We met back for dinner, then took a taxi to the stadium. It was absolutely UNreal how huge that place is. We were surrounded by Sooner fans everywhere we went (it was at least a 10-1 ratio). They were all SO NICE to us and many congratulated us afterwards. After wandering around for at least 30 minutes, we found our seats. We sat in one of the corners with most of the BYU fans in the sections surrounding us. It was such a crazy, awesome game!! The perfect end to our anniversary adventure.

Sunday, we picked up the kids from Larry and Lori's house. They didn't miss us much at all- they were having too much fun with grandma, grandpa, Lucy, and Andy. It really was nice to be together again after 8 days. Although, I have to say that I was a little surprised at how little I worried about the kids while we were gone. It was nice to have an adventure with just me and Larry. Maybe in another 10 years we'll get away again...