Halloween

Paige brought her kids over and we decorated sugar cookies and went trick-or-treating.  It was cold and there were hardly any houses participating, due to covid.  We got a total of two trick-or-treaters at our house all evening.  It was somewhat of a disappointment, but that's okay.  Spending time with cousins was fun.

 

October Fun

Nathan found this pair of dress up sunglasses and has been wearing it with the hoodie we found in the boys clothes bin when we were looking for warmer clothes (we had a cold front move in and it's been COLD this week!). It's his "disguise" so that nobody recognizes him (according to him).  So he put it on for us to take Westley and Caleb to school.  We took them to school so that Corey could take Westley's truck to get the transmission fluid changed and check out one other issue.  It's so cute how he thinks nobody will recognize him in the sunglasses and hoodie. 

We had the ward Trunk-or-Treat this week, socially distanced of course.  Although I don't think most people did much social distancing.  It was with three wards combined only there were probably about the same amount of people as a normal year with one ward.  Paige didn't come, and I was disappointed that she didn't.  But Eliza, Jonah, Annmarie and Nathan dressed up and everyone went.  Eliza was an M&M, Jonah was the green ninja from Ninjago, Annmarie was Minnie Mouse and Nathan was Bumblebee.  Caleb walked around with Nathan for a little while.  Travis and Dad handed out candy from the back of the car.  And Westley came in his truck and handed out  his own candy. 

 

Annmarie got to do the announcements at school earlier this month.  She is doing much better in school this year than last year.  I think she has the right teacher for her this year.

 

What a Weekend!

The weekend started with me going to lunch with my friend Heather Belcher from Utah. Heather is actually from Texas (Midland/Odessa area, I think) and her brother recently moved to Fort Worth and she was out helping him with a home renovation.  So I drove over to Fort Worth to meet her for lunch.  We went to In-N-Out only because I knew the dining room was open for in-store dining and I know where all the locations are easily.  It was so good to see her as she was one of my good friends there in Utah.  It was great to catch up and whenever I meet up with an old friend and we catch up, I realize that life isn't so bad and that everyone has similar struggles.  It's nice to not feel so alone.

On Saturday, I used up the cream and half and half in the fridge and made some ice cream with the kids.  We chose to make mint chocolate chip.  It turned out delicious, only the kids thought there were too many chocolate chips.  So I'll use a little less next time and maybe more green dye to make it greener.  But it was definitely a success!

And the biggest news is that Westley bought a truck!  He had saved a good bit of money since working in Utah in the summer.  Plus, his Ireland trip for band was moved to 2022, which leaves him out from going, since he's a senior graduating in 2021, so he canceled it and was refunded a good amount of money that he had put into it.  So, he used some of that money and found a used truck (1998 Toyota Tacoma) for $2000 and bought it.  It's exciting for him to have his own vehicle to drive and it helps us out.  And this gives him a great opportunity for independence and responsibility. 

 

Preschool Pumpkin Patch

We had a pumpkin patch field trip for preschool. We only have two kids in the class besides Nathan because of the pandemic and one of them did not come because his grandparents were in town and they had gone to the same pumpkin patch the day before as a family. So it was just Nathan and his friend Nora (whose mom babysits Nathan in exchange for preschool) and Nora's mom. We had a blast. I also bought a book called "Spookley the Square Pumpkin" and some pumpkin spice fudge, which wasn't my favorite.

 

Spiders, Sticky Notes, Sand, and Snuggles

I was straightening up the front hall and discovered a wolf spider as big as a quarter hiding in my boot. Yikes! I'm glad I found it then and not while I was putting my boot on. I didn't want to smash it only because I hate dealing with the grossness of cleaning up a smashed spider, so I coaxed it into a plastic container and put the lid on and then took it outside far away from the house.  I left it across the street and down a little ways.  Just because it would be my luck that it would follow me back into the house!

I found some sticky notes written on in the fashion that my little reminder notes to myself are written, only in 4-year-old handwriting in a jumble of letters.  It was adorable.

I borrowed a sand table from Eve for preschool but I forgot it was in my car after dropping Annmarie off at gymnastics and when I came to a sudden stop, the sand table flew forward and sand went everywhere!  We got it cleaned up, thanks to Corey bringing the shop vac home from work and Travis being an angel and cleaning it up.  And the kids had a blast playing in the sand table.  I took it back the next day.

And the last picture of Nathan sleeping on Corey is from when Nathan came into our room in the evening after we had gone up to bed.  He comes into our bed almost every night and we are too old and tired to care.  The older kids never got away with it.  But Nathan does.

 

 

Another Driving Age Child

Caleb turned sixteen on Friday. We weren't able to do a special birthday breakfast because of serminary (which they started in-person seminary this last week! yay!) but I did take him his lunch from In-N-Out. However, dinner and cake that night weren't happening because of gymnastics (Annmarie goes from 4:30-7:30 and Jonah is 6:30-7:30) and Westley was working. So we did his birthday dinner and cake on Sunday. He still has to finish driver's ed, both the written course and the driving time AND the written test and the driving test before he can get his license. While he does occasionally drive to church, he hasn't logged any driving hours yet and needs to get a total of 44. So it could be a while before he gets his license. He did get his permit last December and I think that's good until he's eighteen. Hopefully we can at least get him his license by the time he's seventeen. It's all up to him to work on it though.

 

Marching Band Performance

The first home football game was cancelled due to covid19 cases and a lot of the football team being quarantined.  We were disappointed because we were looking forward to a football game and also the band was going to play at the game.  But the band and drill team decided to have a performance that night anyway since they didn't have the quarantine numbers that the football team did.  So it was called Band and Pacesetter Night and we got to see the band perform what they've been practicing for the last two months.  We couldn't find Westley and Caleb in it at all though.  A few times we thought we saw them but weren't sure.  They are supposed to have three more home games to perform at but there's always a possibility that those games might not happen.  We'll see.  And they have a marching contest in November, so I hope that still happens.  We shall see.  It's been a disappointment for Westley's senior year, that's for sure.  

Lacey

Aunt Paige had a parent teacher conference with Autumn's kindergarten teacher (my conferences were last week). She dropped off Autumn, Brock and Lacey at our house for us to babysit.  Usually she takes Lacey when she has me watch the kids because Lacey is super attached and always screams and screams when she's not with her mom.  But I told her she needed to go to the conference kid-free and I could handle it.  

Lacey did scream for the first 10-15 minutes, but then we got her distracted by some of our toys.  And she really took to Annmarie, so much so that when Annmarie left the room for something, Lacey started to scream again, but as soon as she returned, Lacey stopped.  So I guess Annmarie has the magic touch!

 

Voted

Corey was off today so after Travis' appontment, we slipped over to the new college and voted, taking Nathan with us. I didn't get a picture of Corey because he was still in voting and I was hanging out with Nathan waiting for him. I'm glad to have that done!

 

Cleared to Play

Travis had an appointment today with the orthopedist to check if his shoulder is healed anough to finally get back to playing tackle football. He was thrilled (and so was I) that he is now cleared to play! And perfect timing too, as I then took him back to school to be there for athletics and a game this afternoon. We are looking forward to seeing him play and hope that they will put him in.

 

Random Fun

Nathan is becoming quite the little artist. Randomly, he drew this picture of Daniel Tiger, a character from a show he likes to watch. It's actually pretty good, and he's only four years old! He has started drawing a lot during play time too. Westley and Jonah have both done this at this age and they are both still artistic. 

Annmarie started preteam in gymnastics this month.  She wasn't able to go her first night because she and Jonah both ended up staying home from school that day with strep throat.  At least it wasn't covid.  That was Westley's first official day of quarantine and his throat was still hurting (he had been dealing with strep since the beginning of September) so I took Jonah, Annmarie and Nathan all in for strep tests and Westley as well.  The three  younger ones came back with positive tests but Westley's was negative.  The doctor recommended waiting until he had symptoms of covid to test him for it.  So we'll see.  He still hasn't shown any symptoms and it's been about 11 days since his "exposure".  Anyway, I got to watch her at preteam her second week.  She's doing pretty well.  I guess she is following in my footsteps.

Since Eliza started violin lessons, I've been playing more myself.  Her teacher recommended that we put the violins on the wall.  Then we are more likely to pull them down and practice.  I had bought a 1/4 size violin for Annmarie last year.  She wasn't big enough for it yet.  But since Eliza's lessons, I have taken a little bit of time (not much, honestly) and helped Annmarie with her bowing so she can practice that.  I don't really know how to teach violin though.  We'll see how far we get before I decide to put her in lessons too.

And lastly, it took about a week after conference, but the kids finally finished the 500 piece puzzle they started working on during conference.  So I snapped a picture to commemorate their hard work before taking it apart and putting it away.