What happened in October?

At the beginning of Oct. (and actually all the way up until this past weekend) the weather here has been BEAUTIFUL -with the exception of that one day that it snowed :)- so we have been able to enjoy a lot of time outdoors at the park, taking walks, playing on the "hill" by our house (their current favorite place to be-and will be awesome come sledding time!), and going to the Logan River trail. It's a mile long trail that is about 2 min. from our house and runs along, non other than, the Logan River. It is pretty and the kids love to find the perfect walking stick, run their little hearts out, and throw rocks into the river.

We don't get out of church till 4:30 on Sundays and since Kylee misses her naps these days we're always trying to find something to do to keep her from 1. falling asleep the second she sits down and 2.to keep her attention on something so she doesn't have a melt down every 5 minuets because she is soooo tired. (we are eagerly anticipating our time change in Jan.!) So walking the Logan River trail was a fun family sunday afternoon activity that we did several times.



The kids love to stop at this point along the trail and throw rock after rock into the river.




Here Tyler had his first lesson in how to skip rocks. Bobby is really good at skipping rocks and first he told them they needed to find the "perfect" skipping rock...


Showing tyler the proper form to skip a rock


Every week after nursery Kylee came home with her name on her back. I'm guessing since we're a new ward this was the way they learned the kids names but Tyler never had one. 2 Sundays ago was the first time she didn't have one. It really took them 3 months to learn her name? I'm not judging...just wondering out loud. :)


The next few are just random pictures that were on my camera in my Oct. picture folders...

Proof that these two aren't always getting into trouble! :) They both love to look at books, so sometimes when they're being quiet it's a good thing!




I love when we say, "Kylee you're so cute" she bends her knee in, cocks her head to one side and gives a shy little smile.


Oh shorts and flip-flops how I miss you!


*In the middle of Oct. (oct 15-18th) my mom, Alena, Alisa and Nate came for a visit. It was UEA so Alena was out of school and we were SOOO happy they spent their time off with us!! We had lots of fun but that's going to be the next post!

*Then I cashed in, what was debate-ably, the best gift ever; a trip to St. George ALONE to hang out with my mom and sisters! A weekend away was my mother's day gift from Bobby and I just now had the chance to use it, but it was worth the wait since I didn't just get a weekend but a whole week! I drove home with the family on Monday and rode the shuttle back to Salt Lake Fri. night. A HUGE thanks to Mindy for watching the kids several days, and of course to Bobby for being willing to take over and give me a much needed and appreciated break! (more on this to come in the next post)

It was a good thing I took a break then because from the second I got home it has been non-stop crazy until just this past Fri where all I did Fri night was watch show after show after tv show (i heart hulu). And then it's back to work blogging trying to catch up on it all before the next wave hits at the end of this week!

I came home on the 22nd and that next Tues. we had pre-school here for that week (the week before Halloween) and the week after-the first week of Nov. I think before I mentioned that in our "rotating pre-school" each mom teaches 5 times, but it's actually 5 weeks so it's a total of 10 times. 4 down...6 to go. It was SOOOO fun! Kinda exhausting, but seriously fun! I loved planning, putting things together, and using my brain in a way I haven't for awhile. We have a really great group of kids and they are so funny. I'm really glad I got to observe Tyler amongst a group of other kids his age so I could kinda gauge where he's at respectively and see what things I need to work on with him. I am so thankful for this group though as his social skills have drastically improved. Not that he was a social outcast before, but he's always been a relatively shy kid and in groups has always preferred to play by himself. I've noticed since his pre-school started he has really come out of his shell, for example on the playground now when there are other kids there he will be the first one to walk up and want to play with them. He stands up for himself when someone takes something from him or when he has an opinion or an idea where he used to just walk away or let the other person boss him around. He still is okay to play alone, but he LOVES to play with his friends (who is anyone he meets) and his imagination has just exploded.

So the first week our Theme was Autumn and Halloween. The Thursday before Halloween they all dressed up in their costumes (there's only 4 b/c one was sick and the other was at Disneyland).


Tracing/writing the letter of the day


For Rug time we talked about why we celebrate Halloween (because when the Irish Immigrants came to America they were afraid of ghosts so they used candles to scare the ghosts away, then masks were added, then costumes, to what it is today). So I gave each of them a candle to hold during our story in case a ghost came so they could scare him away!


Good thing too because there DID just happen to be a ghost wandering around our house!


The kids are yelling, "Go away Mr. Ghost, go away!" as they shake their candles at him.


To finish our day off we painted some pumpkins!


Now here's where I get really bad. That week was crazy, with planning pre-school, making costumes, babysitting, and visiting teaching, my brain was gone so I forgot to bring my camera to so many of the other fun things we did that week too. Like the pumpkin walk which is a huge park in logan where there are displays of different things that include pumpkins. This years theme was "toon town" or something like that so each display (which is huge) was a scene from a movie or book and the creators had to use pumpkins as part of the scene-totally cool!

And Mindy and I took the kids trick or treating to the dorms on campus and then to a party over where we used to live...no pictures!

But after that we went home, grabbed Bobby-and the camera!- and went to the place we went last year to pick pumpkins and go on a hayride, only this year they didn't have pumpkins to pick so we just did the spooky hayride...

Mindy and Kylee waiting for the wagon


Tyler excited about watching Ichobad Crane on the big projector outside




Kylee's hands were freezing so Mindy let her borrow her gloves






On Sunday (Halloween morning) Bobby helped the kids make pumpkin pancakes! (ONE nice thing about not having church till 1:30 is that Bobby always makes us pancakes for breakfast!)






Tyler rockin' the witch hat, snow boots look.


We got pumpkins before Halloween but ran out of time to carve them, so Monday night after Halloween for FHE (well minus Kylee who was already in bed) we carved them! One day late isn't too bad right?!








And then it was November...