Fall

I love fall!  The colors are so beautiful, the weather is pleasant (mostly), and it is the start of the Holiday season.  We have a beautiful maple tree (I think it's a maple) in our front yard.  The tree that seemed so tiny when we moved into this house almost 6 years ago has gotten quite a bit bigger and drops a significant amount of leaves in the fall.  The kids have been watching the tree and waiting for the leaf pile to get big enough that they could go out and play in it.  Well, a couple weeks ago the kids took a extra long time to come inside after welcoming Carson home from school (Lincoln and Lily like to wait for Carson at the front of the house and welcome him home from school every day).  When I looked out front to check on them I found all the kids busy at work trying to bury Carson in the leaves.  Then we got an unexpected surprise when Nate arrived home form work early, and decided to jump in on the leaf action.  The kids had a great time jumping, digging, and throwing the leaves everywhere (although I think the boys maybe regretted some of the throwing as they had to rake up the leaves as part of their Saturday chores).

 

Halloween

For Halloween this year we had a dragon, a tiger, and a soldier.  I think from the pictures you can tell what child got most into his character.  We had a really busy Halloween this year.  The kids ended up going to the ward trunk-or-treat and trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.  Needless to say we had oodles of candy.  Nate took the kids through the neighborhood while I stayed home and handed out candy.  He thought it was funny that Lily wanted to keep trick-or-treating despite the fact that by the end of the night her bucket was too heavy for her to carry.  This year I let the kids keep 15 pieces of candy, and then I payed them a dollar and donated the rest of the candy to the military.  This went over surprisingly well and I think we will make candy donation a new part of our Halloween tradition.  We had a great Halloween this year!

Other October Festivities

We also made time this October to carve pumpkins and have a family Halloween party with all the cousins.  Carving pumpkins was a huge mess as usual, but the kids always have fun, which is why we keep up the tradition.  To be honest  Nate carry's most of the burden of the pumpkin carving.  He pretty much helps all of the kids design their pumpkins and then he carves all of the pumpkins.  I am pretty much only responsible for carving my own pumpkin, and for taking pictures of the event, of course.  Also in October Lincoln came down with a  very mild case of the shingles, you can see them on his stomach in the second picture.  Poor kid apparently he at some point had a very mild case of the chicken pox (Which he got because not everyone is vaccinating their children. GRRRRR!)  And now he had a case of the shingles, poor kid he always has the most unusual health issues. The weekend right before Halloween we got all of my siblings and their kids together for our Traditional Halloween party.  All the kids dress up and we have festive and creepy Halloween meal.  I also usually try to get a picture of all the cousins in their costumes.  I don't think I have gotten a good pictures of all the cousins yet. Oh well,  it is always fun and the kids look forward to this little party.

pumpkin patch

This year we took 2 trips to our favorite pumpkin patch.  We went once as a family and Lincoln and Lily and I went once with Lincolns preschool. It was fun to go to the pumpkin patch with the preschool and see all of Lincolns friends.  He is so social, once all of his friends arrived he mostly ran around with them and left Lily and I to check out the pumpkin patch for ourselves.  When we went to the pumpkin patch as a family I had to deal with a lot of picky pumpkin pickers.  The kids get so picky about their pumpkins!  I guess technically Carson is the main one who is extremely picky, but he holds up the whole gang.  We had to walk around the pumpkin patch forever, so that Carson and could find the perfect pumpkin!  In the end though everyone found  something they liked and we all had a good time.  The kids chose a few activities they wanted to do at the pumpkin patch. The kids mostly loved the petting zoo.  Some of the animals were a bit aggressive, which made Lincoln very nervous. I ended up having to save Lincoln from an overly friendly goat and sheep, but once the kids all got to the smaller animals (like the bunnies) they loved it! I  they both loved.  Lily and Carson went on a pony ride.  Which I was kind of surprised they wanted to do that as one of their activities, but they both loved it. Lincoln opted to go on a little tractor ride, I think he was done with animals after the petting zoo. Top off the evening with some homemade yummy doughnuts and I think our family trip to the pumpkin patch was a success.