October 2010 (as written in November)

Well, I skipped October completely and here we are in November.  Here is how our October went in a short, condensed version.

The first weekend of October we went to St George to see my mom and brother-in-law run in the St. George marathon and see Steve's parents.  It was a great weekend! Except the whole stomach flu part but we won't get into that...  My kids love going to St. George and sleeping in the living room. There are a few battles of who sleeps where but then they cuddle up and fall asleep.

Saturday we got up and watched part of Conference before heading over to the finish line.  It was HOT. 95 degrees hot.  My poor mom had had a cold for over a week but ran anyway. This was her 13th marathon. Ben did great and even beat his time!!  He had to leave my mom near the beginning because she knew she wasn't doing well. 6 hours and 10 minutesish later she made it across the finish line. I was so proud of her! And relieved she made it in, unlike the thousands of people that weren't able to make it. Sad!  We walked her back to her car and helped her get her shoes off and flip flops on and we headed on to Wendy's for lunch. Its tradition for us to eat there after their race. :)  Steve had to run back to his parents to continue working on a project for his consulting job.  We enjoyed lunch and then my mom and sister and her family all drove home (in 2 separate cars).  All 8 hours after running for 6 hours....

 We went shopping afterwards.  My kids got to do a little service while we were out and about. There was a big nasty windstorm that came up and they all helped bring in all of the stuff from outside at Down East Basics.  And they didn't stop until it was completely done. I was very proud of them. It was Jakob's idea and he did a great job.  :)  We went and enjoyed a quiet evening with Steve's mom while he and his dad went to the Priesthood Session. It was a very nice night. Oh, I forgot the part about shopping for school clothes (love the outlets so we waited till we were down there) with 6 kids... That was fun. But we got some great stuff!

Two weeks later we headed off to Idaho for a nice, relaxing weekend.  We went on the potato harvester, pumpkin patch(where we picked out our own pumpkins!), Ashley played soccer with her cousins (and scored 7 goals), went to the school carnival, had a hot dog roast, played volleyball and relaxed.   Know those times when you wish the world would just STOP for a little so you could breathe? I got one of those moments that Friday night.  We were outside roasting hot dogs. It had been windy all day.  For just a moment the wind stopped and it just felt still and quiet and the world was good.

Halloween was wonderful - except for the part where we couldn't find the perfect Alice dress for me. But that's okay because I was Mother Nature, a princess and an 80's girl at different times during the festivities. Which ranged from Jakob's school's carnival, a party at our friends' house and trick-or-treating. Our poor little Gavin had a fever for Halloween so we did his trick-or-treating for him.  And sadly I didn't get any pictures for Halloween!!

Thus ends our October - it flew by quickly!  Here are some random pictures from the months of October. I wish I had more in St. George but my poor cell phone camera just doesn't cut it sometimes:

The kids had so much fun in St. George they were just plain tired!!  Ethan snuggled up with Grandpa and took a nice little nap.

Here are the kids helping pick up rocks by the shrubs so we could move them to the fire pit for a hot dog/marshmallow roast. They had a lot of fun - the youngest loved to dump the bucket in the wagon!

Here are pictures from the pumpkin patch we went to. The kids LOVED picking out pumpkins by themselves!!

The theme for the Oakley carnival was The 80's. I had fun dressing us all up. :)

Gavin made a 'Snowman'.  He begged and asked and yelled and begged for us to go down and see. If you look closely you can see the crayon legs.  I love the imagination of a 4 year old!

This was at the school carnival in Saratoga Springs. The kids are gearing up for a donut eating contest. 

You would think this is Heidi's Halloween costume. You would be wrong.  Heidi had a lovely blowout at the store and I had to find SOMETHING for her to wear until Steve could get to the store.  I tried a handkerchief first but it wasn't quite modest.  Then I found the cape. It ended up as a dress of sorts. She didn't care. She had a ribbon to chew on! Luckily Daddy saved her from her mom dressing her funny just in time for Kirby Heyborne to show up for his front room concert that night!

AHOY Matey! This is the one photo I have of my kids for Halloween this year. Sad. But he's sure cute!!