When I originally posted this the font and spacing was all weird and no matter what I did to fix it, nothing changed. So here I am posting this again hoping the font will remain the same throughout and that the spacing won't be all funky again!
~A beautiful desert morning~
As October started to wind down I head a few friends exclaim, "When is October going to be over, it's such a LONG month!!", as I heard them saying this I was thinking, "REALLY? It's November already???". I probably felt that way because we kept pretty busy all month long, so I felt like October went by in a flash. We "kicked off" the month with the first soccer games of the season during General Conference weekend and it felt like we didn't stop to breathe again until it was November.
For much of October I felt like we just moved straight from Sunday (since our meeting time for church in 2010 was in the late morning, it felt like the whole process took up most of the day), to Tuesday (Cub Scouts), to Wednesday (evening soccer practices), to Saturday mornings (soccer games). It was during the other days and times of the week that I would try to keep up with the rest of our life: laundry, dishes, pick-up-clutter, church assignments, etc, etc. It's no wonder our poor kiddos took numerous turns being quite sick throughout the month. Stomach flu AND pink eye = NO FUN!
Even with all listed above, we managed to sprinkle in some fun adventures as we always seem to do. Even though it "cooled down" considerably from September, we went ahead and put the pool cover on so we could ensure a few extra swim days before the end of Fall. At the end of October it was lots of fun to get in Saturday afternoon before J-rod took the kids trick-or-treating.
~Another beautiful desert sunset~
The Family member run-down:
~Too sick to enjoy pumpkin carving,
Li'l J has a Pedialyte Frozen Pop instead~
Li'l J got to attend a birthday party for one of his best buds (form both his class at school and church)--this was the first time I just dropped him off...he is such a BIG boy now! Later in the month due to his being sick, Li'l J not only missed a soccer game but also two more birthday parties AND trick-or-treating, such a bummer for our poor lil monkey!!
~School Projects~
M signed off quite a few achievements at a fun Cub Scout Day Camp our stake held; worked on some school projects for the books his class was reading Treasure Island and Gulliver's Travels; and then for the remainder of the month put a lot of his time and effort into getting ready for his Fall Piano Recital in November.
J-rod and I went on a date to see a performance of the Broadway musical Beauty and the Beast when the National Tour came to town (and then we had dinner for the first time at P.F. Chang's--YUM!). Going to see the performance got me SO excited to get my hands on the newly re-released movie on DVD (it's one of my favorite Disney movies and we have never owned it).
~C-sta's many "pretties"~
And last but certainly not least, it seemed like little C-sta was all of the sudden "not-so-little" anymore! Her hair grew well past her shoulders and she began to sit better and for longer stretches when I fixed her "pretties" though still would pull out the hair-do's I gave her if she was bored (usually when riding in the car) or tired. Though still pretty "whittle" for her age, she did seem to have gained some weight. Each time J-rod, I, or any of her adoring fans at church would go to carry her, we each would comment on how much heavier she seemed! Throughout October it also seemed like each day C-sta would say something new, or more clearly. While she used to refer to herself as "Ya-ya", towards the end of October when we asked what her name was she replied un-coached: "Lee-C-ah!" Another day she brought me the Cinderella DVD and said, "ah-nt Ya-ya" (want Ella"). It was at this point that it became clear "Ya-ya" was beginning to edge out Dora as her favorite.
Halloween:
~At the school fall festival~
Li'l J: Batman;
M (a friend):
Basketball dude with CRAZY hair;
M: Jedi;
C-sta: a Ladybug
The school Fall Festival was fun and well attended. The kids and I met up with some friends for dinner at the festival while we waited for J-rod to join us there after work. Once J-rod made his way through the crowd and found us, we let the kids loose to have fun at all the great game booths. At the end of the night we had some tickets left-over so we helped out the 7th grade earn money for their Washington D.C. trip by trading in our tickets for LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of "smell-cils" (scented pencils)--yay!
For most of the Halloween activities we participated in, the kids dressed up as "BYU Thing 1, 2, and 3". Summer 2010 while at the BYU Bookstore, the kids found some fun fuzzy blue wigs in the clearance bin. We got one for each of them which they then wore with jeans and t-shirts we made up using iron-ons we drew-up on the computer. M carried around his foam "claw" that says "Go Cougars" on it, and C-sta wore her blue and white tu-tu over white leggings with white sneakers. Since C-sta refused to wear the wig expect for when she was actually trick-or-treating. The other times she wore the costume she just wanted to hold it which was okay as she ended up looking like a cute cheerleader holding a big pom-pom.
For our ward trunk-or-treat activity J-rod and I got in on the act a bit by wearing BYU t-shirts but when J-rod took M and C-sta trick-or-treating on Saturday, he wore a red and white "Cat in the Hat" stove-pipe hat from the kids dress-up trunk. Since we managed to spread our Halloween celebrations throughout the month, our kids had a lot of Halloween fun even though we didn't do too much on the actual day.
For Halloween 2010 we--
*kept up our tradition of decorating our house:
~I love decorating for the season!~
*had fun at the ward "Trunk-or-Treat" (J-rod's award winning chili won first place in the chili cook-off contest). One night for FHE we took the kids (in costume) to pick out pumpkins at a local pumpkin patch:
*watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" while carving our pumpkins:
Now that our boys are getting older, gone are the days of carving simple jack-o-lanterns...they've grown up SO fast! Since the boys wanted to carve "fancy" pumpkins, we looked online for templates that would allow us to comply with their requests. Luckily we found some that worked. J-rod was able to carve a pretty cool "Darth Vader" face for M:
and I carved an outline of a "Dry Bones" face for Li'l J:
Sadly, Halloween night someone walked off with Li'l J's pumpkin as well as one that belonged to our neighbor. Uh, say what? Who does that and WHY?? My guess is that it was because we turned off all our lights and didn't hand out candy since Halloween fell on a Sunday. Oh well! Lesson learned: if we're not going to be out front on Halloween night, neither are our pumpkins!! Instead of trick-or-treating on Sunday, or handing out candy, we had a yummy dinner together then snuggled on the couch and watched "The Wizard of Oz."
*went Saturday Trick-or-Treating:
~BYU Thing 2 was not well enough to trick-or-treat,
but happy enough to pose with BYU Thing 1 & 3~
I stayed home with Li'l J during trick-or-treating and played a fun game of Mancala with him to keep his mind off of not being out there with the rest of the family.
*had some SPOOKY "finger foods" for lunch on Halloween:
*carrot fingers with raisin & craisin fingernails
*monster mouths: apples, peanut butter,
and rice krispies cereal
*mummy dogs (which we dipped in "blood": ketchup)
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