Site Title

 

Whenever we run errands, Meg invariably finds (and gets attached to) some beanie boo that she can't afford (since all she has is a few coins!)  Sometimes it pacifies her to take a picture with it, sometimes we just have to leave the store in a blaze of glory.  It depends a lot on what time of day it is.  (I'm pretty sure this was not a pretty exit, even with the pic!!) 

I got to go to Meg's school for her Mother Goose program – she performed "Little Bo Peep" and did a darling job.   (She wanted to dress up as the sheep, not Bo Peep)

Look at that handsome 7th grader!  He humored me by wearing a collared shirt for pictures but chose the grey underneath himself. 

A sad goodbye to a puppy at Target (also, it looks like we are buying a lot of Pringles!)

  

My dad needed some extra hands on a job on Saturday afternoon, so Zach went to help him for a few hours.  If how dirty he got was representative of how hard he worked, he must have done a great job.  

Then, after we rushed him back to shower and head off to Priesthood Session with the Adams boys, the other kiddos and I went to their dinner of choice – McDonalds.  Which is better now that they serve breakfast ALL DAY!  (Yep, I had a sausage McMuffin for dinner.)  We took this picture because there was a beautiful rainbow over the mountain – but it didn't show up!

And the next morning we got up early, loaded everyone in the car and listened to conference on our way to a week long family vacation to CA .  The kids got their first taste of the ocean (only Zach and Emma have ever been and they were 3 and 15 months when we took them!)  That is a bunch of posts in itself… but I will mention here that Carter hopped out to use the bathroom before we left and shut his thumb in the car door, so that was an exciting start to the adventure!  (A month later he is starting to lose the nail, which has been equally dramatic.)

We headed back to real life (and all the catchup for school and laundry!)

We started "ponderizing"

Beautiful fall days call for princess picnics for lunch!

Zach ran x-country and we watched a meet (and missed a meet that moved too quickly for us to make it to …)  It sure is awesome to watch him push himself and do his best.

Not sure why we took this pic but I sure love this girl!  

 I went on a field trip to CornBelly's with Carter's class – I thought it was a Thanksgiving Point museum field trip (inside) and we froze a little bit for the first hour, but then we warmed up.  

 It was really, really fun to go with Carter.  Although this "corn beach" smelled so much like FEET.  ick.

We picked out pumpkins in the dark (in the nick of time before they closed and right before Nate flew out for a work trip)

Meg took Ella for a walk and collected leaves to make rubbings. 

We drove Carter to and from a lot of football practices (3 a week) that all ended with the "we are the Titans" chant. 

Zach had his first choir performance – it was awesome!  He was so fun to watch.  He has made great strides in how fully he participates in things like this in the last year!!  We loved it.  (Also, Meg might have inherited some of Grandpa B's picture faces… 🙂  

(I loved that Zach was so embarrassed of his sparkly bow tie that they all had to wear that he covered it with his hands the entire drive to the school so that no one would see it through the car window – but the embarrassment fades when 50 other kids have the same thing on.  :)

We missed Emma at the concert with us (and Nate was out of town) but she had a great time making this awesome cookie at Activity Days.  (It fell on the ground, but we were able to patch it up pretty good, don't you think?!)

Emma gives a thumbs-up after making it to get our flu shots by the skin of our teeth – after remembering about our appointment all day, I forgot about it in the hour before until my phone went off at 6:50 saying "Flu shots now".   Much credit goes to the kiddos for getting shoes and in the car in record time, and we made it to the office before they closed up shop (we were the last appointment of the day.)  Emma is our bravest shot getter – I winced, Meg cried, and Zach and Carter chose the mist (Zach made sure to tell the nurse it wasn't because he was a whimp. 🙂

Zach wrote a cool paper for science extra credit about a new antibiotic that was recently discovered, and did lots of background research so he would know what he was talking about when he presented it to his class.  Those things are cool to share with Dr. Dad.  

Meg and I met some neighborhood friends at the zoo one chilly morning, and we got to see lots of animals that usually aren't awake up and active!  (And ride on the snow leopard, of course.)

My darling and talented friend took our family pictures – no small miracle that we were able to find a date that worked between football and Nate's work and her schedule and the weather – I am so glad we did and so excited to have family pictures to put on our wall!  (The last one we took was taken with a timer and the camera propped up on Emma's toy ironing board.)

Running errands is way more fun when you bring your own shopping cart (I felt a little funny hauling it out of the back of the car for her to push around, but it made her happy and didn't hurt anyone, so…)  

and when there are photo ops at the store!  

Carter made this awesome Frankenstein cup at his class party!

We finally made it to an OLY football game.  The boys couldn't wait.  The girls did not want to go.  With the fun atmosphere, the snack bar, and the hot chocolate, Emma declared "it was so much more fun than I thought it would be!"  Meg was not convinced.  :)

And, we had the last soccer game of the season.  

This is not a great picture but it shows Emma's no-fear attitude going to get the ball.  She is a fantastic goalie and it has been so fun to watch her this season.  

Whew!  What a month!  Hard to believe it is November already!