I don’t have anything particularly fancy to say this week. But we did enjoy living it! So here are some pictures of what we enjoyed.

On Monday, while Fay was at school, Carter, Portia and I played in some leaves as we were raking them. I would say that approximately 80% of the leaves in our yard did not come from trees in our yard. But they are still fun to jump in! The kids pretended they were in the swimming pool in Florida. They have pretended to be in Florida and/or asked to go back to Florida every day since we have been back. I guess they had fun!

One of the days this week Fay got an empty diaper box and turned it into a rocket. She drew flames on the back, wings on the flaps, and control buttons on the bottom of the box. This is her in her “space-suit” flying to somewhere wonderful in her rocket.

On Friday it rained all day long! It was all quite exciting!  Carter wanted to go out and play in it from the moment he woke up. He went out by himself for a while in the morning, but got cold pretty quickly.  When Fay got home from school all three cuties ventured out together.

After about 10 minutes in the rain, they all got too cold to enjoy it anymore and came in hoping to warm up. I gave them some hot chocolate and it basically made their day! And watching them all joyfully warm up together basically made my day!

I am really grateful for simple moments like these ones with the kids. I wish I could report that I always enjoy my children this well; but I have lots of ordinary-type moments and a decent handful of pretty lousy moments with them. My hope is that we will all remember the sweet moments together more than the other ones.

 

This past week we spent at a family reunion in Florida! The weather was absolutely glorious most of the time, and a little on the hot side one of the days.

We are really cool (aka: not cool) and hardly took any pictures. But here’s what we’ve got.

First we rode on an airplane. Carter said this was one of the highlights for him.

While in Florida we saw some really cool things like manatees!

There were actually a ton of really cool animals at this animal rehabilitation facility, all of which are native to Florida except the hippo. But the hippo was the most exciting hippo I have ever seen (Others I have seen just sit there and stink, this one did lots of moving around and cool-noise-making along with stinking.) so we were glad they made an exception for him.

We also went to a beautiful spring of which the water was 99.8% pure H2O! A lot of people tried the water and said it tasted exactly like water. The bottle never made it to me, but I believed them. We also went to the beach (where the water was full of salt, believe it or not) and enjoyed the waves and sand and sun. Plus we hung out a lot at the house which had an ice-cream shaped pool in the back yard which was loved by all.

There were also cousin activities.

Josh described the cousin olympics as a “contest to see who was oldest.” Fay was a little saddened by how much of an edge the 8 and 9 year old boy cousins had over her. But there are only so many ways to involve all the ages in a single activity.

One exciting moment from the reunion came when Portia found my make up bag. 🙂 Everyone was impressed by how very obviously intentional the locations of make up application were. I was probably the most impressed because I know how infrequently she ever witnesses somebody applying make up. She must have been watching very closely that one time I did it this year. 😉

So many more memories were made than have been shared here!

When we got home Fay lost her first tooth! Truth be told, I pulled it out without asking her express permission and she was very distraught about it (I blame the 10 solid minutes of bawling on fatigue). But by the next day she was quite pleased. And now that she has put her tooth under her pillow and the “tooth fairy associates” have replaced it with money and she has replaced that money with a new toy from the dollar store I would say she has pretty good feelings about the tooth-losing process.

And one last, very important, thing happened this week. Yesterday we were working on household projects and Josh asked if I wanted him to start on the bench for the table. I told him that I would love it and by the time we went to bed, look what my man had whipped up!

He really is so good to me! I told him I might ask him to make me fewer things except that he just keeps delivering! Also, he keeps claiming to enjoy the projects I give him.

Anyway, I am super grateful for this past week! And I’m still grateful for this season of being grateful!

 

We had a crazy whirlwind of a final week of October.  We had parties literally every night but one and we also had the stomach flu. So, not everybody attended every party, but still. Plus, we had our annual Halloween production, if you will. Check it out!

First, our costumes. I made/assembled all the costumes except Josh’s. He was the mastermind of his own attire!

Carter and Fay each had parties at school and little parades to show off their costumes. I only took a video of Fay’s and it isn’t great. But here is Carter’s adorable preschool class!

I also didn’t manage to take any pictures from the party we hosted. But it’s okay, because the party was really all about The Haunt. So here is a little tour of Josh’s creation!

First, he set the stage as you arrive at the house with a grave yard!

Then you see the official sign for the laboratory!

Next, the grand entrance with the terrifyingly evil Mad Scientist!

When you walk into the entrance, you find yourself surrounded by questionable experiments.

Next, you move through a maze of creepy hanging items accentuated by a flashing strobe.

Followed by creepy, radioactive activity. (None of these pictures are doing the experience justice, by the way.)

Finally, you enter the final room where the Mad Scientist himself greets you and then explains what his laboratory is all about. BUT, there is a problem! And only YOU can save the lab!
Josh always makes it an interactive game experience along with your standard fun, creepy haunt. I feel like it sets his haunts apart from the others I’ve seen.

Anyway, we were all very pleased with how it turned out! And we’re even back to parking in our garage again, so we’re even MORE pleased. 🙂

While all of this excitement was going on at home, I got to take the cuties trick-or-treating. I LOVE taking them trick-or-treating and watching how excited they get with each new candy put into their bag! I was enjoying it so much, in fact, that I didn’t document it at all. One of my favorite parts this year was watching Portia just munch on the candy she got from the ward trunk-or-treat in the wagon instead of going to collect more treats.

I have a tradition of allowing the kids to eat all the candy they want between trick-or-treating and bedtime. I feel like it is good for a child’s soul to just get exactly what they want every now and again. I think it is also good for my soul to be able to just say yes instead of being responsible.

Here are the kids enjoying their sweet freedom!

Anyway, we had a marvelous Halloween season and Halloween day! And now we are enjoying taking moments each day to share the things we’re thankful for!  I LOVE holidays!