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.

 

Perfect Fall Day

We had a gorgeous fall day. Nathan started to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. Eliza roller bladed. We threw around the baseball, played some basketball, Jonah climbed the tree, and we just had fun playing outside. Westley was at work and Caleb hanging out with a friend. Corey had to work that night. But it was a glorious day, one of those days that you just want to capture in your mind forever.

 

General Conference

General Conference was this weekend.  Back in about May they decided that they would not hold a regular conference at the Conference Center but hold it virtually like they had done in April.  We watch it in TV anyway, so it's hardly any different to us viewers.  But I cooked up a storm just to have some delicious food.  We had pulled pork with homemade buns, salads, and I made two pies--apple and pumpkin.  I love food.  We also set up some puzzles and bought some conference treats like we usually do.  Corey was only home for the morning session on Sunday.  He worked Saturday day and Sunday night (starting at 3:30, so missed the afternoon session that day).  Eliza and I went to Paige's for the women's session and then got ice cream at Braum's afterward.  We met up with Sarah Ewell and her daughter Emma for the treat. 

Afternoon Walk

Nathan asked me if we could go on a walk with Willy. So we did! It's so nice to have this time to spend with him. This was all before the bad news broke out. I got an email just a few hours later that Westley had probably been a close contact to someone who tested positive for covid19, so he had to quarantine from school for two weeks. He went to work anyway but when he got home, Corey told him that he needed to quarantine from work too. With Corey being a store manager, if Westley were to get covid and knew he should quarantine but didn't, Corey could possibly get heat for that. So Westley told his work and plans on taking sick time for all the time he won't get to work. I'm super annoyed by it because there's no way to verify he was close to this person. Just supposedly he was. At least he will be back for when the band performs at their first football game of the year (only barely though, he can go back on October 15th, and that's the day they perform!).