First Half of November

School the Day after Halloween is always a little hit or miss. We tried to keep things light, and of course, incorporate their Halloween candy into math. It's always a win! Sorting, graphing, counting, comparing, etc.


Richie has been mildly obsessed with the brand "Duluth" for a few years now, ordering as much from their catalog as our budget would allow. Imagine his child-like excitement when we were driving on I-15 a few months back, and he sees a Duluth store under construction! He was literally counting down the days until it opened. We made visiting the store a family event. :)


Normally Richie chops all of our wood by hand. However, time is in short supply this year, so we broke down and rented a log splitter. Best $100 we've spent in a while. Besides being unbelievably cool and mesmerizing, it did in 5 hours what would have taken him days. Worth it!


Reason # 52 why I love our neighbors tree that is nearly on our property. It drops 10% of it's leaves on our neighbors lawn, and 90% on ours. :) Perfect garden food, and perfect amount of leaves for jumping into. We spent a good hour outside the other Saturday jumping in the leaves and recording their jumps in slow-mo on my phone, and then watching the slow-mo videos on repeat.


Richie and I have become fairly adept at creating a "Come Follow Me" lesson for the kids on the spot. Like I said earlier...we're short on time. Some hurried ideas are better than others. This one seemed to work well. I labeled dress up clothes with "Good Works", which they got to choose, and then they put on a "clothed in righteousness and good works" fashion show. :)


At this point, we should just sent Richie's paycheck directly to Home Depot, right? It's feeling pretty homey these days. When I just had Benson and Davy tagging along the other day, I had one of those moments where I was struck with gratitude for this life I'm living. One of those moments that I know I'll miss when they're grown. My two, small, toe-headed boys- side by side in the car cart, oohing and aahhhing over things at the store. Most memorably, taking deep breaths of the cinnamon pine cones out for purchase for the Christmas season.


Gwen and lindy- They like to fight. They also like to be best friends and take millions of selfies on my phone.


Homeschool co-op day to learn about seasonal foods. We headed to Peterson Farm and checked out their market, their animals, and play on their swings and in their corn pit. A morning well spent.


This was Miles's LAST pinewood derby! Can you believe it?? Honestly, Richie and I aren't super big fans of these events. It always seems like the parents take control of the cars, spend oodles of money on them-leaving the kids who actually do it themselves way behind in the dust with a mediocre car. We had our neighbor, Gil, help Miles cut out his car this year. Miles painted it himself and did everything else himself. I was proud of his efforts. But come game-time, I was just praying that he wouldn't come in dead last in every race, like the past 2 years. He actually came in 2nd on two of his races this year, but wasn't even in the top 10. And once again, I could not have cared any less about the race outcome, but was overwhelmingly proud of Miles's attitude about the whole thing. This year he seemed to be the most into wanting to win, but he didn't, and still he cheered enthusiastically for his friends who did, and had a fun the whole time. He never whined or complained, even in the privacy of our car, just commented on how he would have liked to win a race, but "Oh well, at least I had fun!" Love that kid.


We got discounted tickets to see "Winnie the Pooh" at the Hale Center in Orem, through Canyon Grove. I bravely (stupidly)took all 5 kids. Benson was done before the play even started (luckily he warmed up to it) and Davy had to be coaxed into quietness the entire show. Whew! Good thing the older 3 all loved it!! You're welcome kids.


None of my other kids have ever caused me so much worry as a small child. If you don't have a constant eye on Benson, be prepared to clean up a huge mess when you find him. And it doesn't take long. I promise. The other day, about 30 seconds after I heard the back door close, I realized it was Benson and no one was out with him. I ran outside and he was happy chopping wood with his "tiny axe" as he calls it. Yeeesh. He's also been known to chase his sisters around the backyard with it. No biggie.


Benson's First Dentist Appointment! He's been dying to actually participate in one of these and not just watch his siblings. He was so excited! :)


Home Remodel-This is the bulk of what's going on in our lives right now. I could write lots about this, but I'm tired and need to order groceries, and pack lunches, and fold laundry and nurse Davy. So... We're putting in new flooring, baseboards, wall paint, ceiling paint, light fixtures and re-doing basically all of our kitchen. Yikes!! We would have done it sooner, since our house really needs it, but you know...Money. Now that we're preparing to move, we decided to bite the financial bullet in order to boost our resale value considerably. So as of now, our house is in total chaos. It's draining. But we're very, very grateful for all the help we've received from family and friends. I had no idea how hard this would be! It will be worth it in the end though. (Edit to add: A specific memory I don't want to forget was Richie and his Dad laying the flooring in the TV room and singing along to Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Two of their favorites!)

Halloween 2019

We started Halloween with a fun homeschool group party up at Makenna's house. She always makes things so fun. Something I'm grateful for this year is that our homeschool group hasn't gone exactly as planned and it's a lot different than in years past. Miles is the oldest by far. He and Gwen don't really have playmates their age and gender in the group. But it doesn't seem to matter too much. They are just as excited to play with the littles there. Makes me feel like something is going right. I don't have a picture, but after the party, we stopped at Dad's work to hand out donuts to his class. :) Always a fun visit. The kids sure got a lot of attention!



That night for dinner we had mummy dogs and...other stuff I'm sure. We wanted to eat first, then head out trick or treating early since it was going to be so cold this year.


I couldn't pick just a couple of pictures to post, they were all so cute! The kids became thoroughly obsessed with "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" this year, so we voted on these costumes. Miles is Charlie Brown (complete with a kite in back), Gwen is The Little Red Headed Girl, Lindy is Sally, Benson is Snoopy (or as he would say "Snoopy da dog" or "Snoopy the Flying Ace"), and Davy was Woodstock. My neighbor crocheted them these adorable hats! I went out with Davy, thinking I'd only make it through our street, but he was a trooper and we went with Richie and the kids almost the entire way! Our neighborhood rocks! People handing out donuts, hot chocolate, full sized candy bars etc. Plus it was so fun to see everybody! If nothing else, I love Halloween for that. Knocking on people's doors you normally wouldn't, getting to meet new people, crossing paths with all your friends from the neighborhood and everyone chatting with each other. It really was so fantastic!

Second Half of October

Bingham Mines! Another homeschool field trip in the books! I remember coming here as a girl, and it being a lot more impressive and interactive...but that was a long time ago. It was still very cool to see the huge open mine, but not as...interactive as I was anticipating. It didn't help that we came on probably the windiest day in history!! Ha!


Davy Cuteness!



Gardner Village- We made our annual stop at Gardener village to hunt for the witches! We took the kids "cousin" Reese with us, which made it lots more fun. And we just so happened to go on a super busy day. I've never seen it so busy, or had to pay for parking etc. But still a good time. I love that my kid's expectations are relatively low, so they were pretty happy wandering around looking and everything, and then getting a 50 cent snickerdoodle- and never once complained about not doing the bouncy houses and countless other extra things.



It was time to put our garden to bed for the winter. We finished pulling out all the old plants, which turned into an old tomato fight...naturally. :) Richie knows how to make chores fun. :) The kids had such a blast and there were minimal tears. :) Since all viable plants were now gone, we let the chickens in to search for food. We've been letting them in the garden a lot lately, and they are in total heaven!!




I planned for us to go on a little hike for homeschool group on Thursday, only to find that the trail was closed! So we quickly regrouped, did our little discussion and craft at the Draper temple, because they had lots of leaves to choose from. The kids started using jackets to carry big piles of leaves to one central location, and then took turns diving in. As with a lot of homeschool plans, it wasn't what I was planning on or expecting, but this ended up being much better. Such cooperation and excitement! Eventually we pulled them away to take a very small "hike" on another close by trail, just so we could see some pretty fall leaves.


There's an account I follow on Instagram that I've really grown to love. Ralphie from @Simplyonpurpose shares such great ways to be a positive parent. She does workshops throughout the country, and months ago, I saw she was coming to Lehi. Long story short, I snagged two tickets for Richie and I. He graciously consented to go, although it's not his favorite thing, and even though it was really expensive. I loved every second and was a little star struck to see/meet her in person. :) Hopefully Richie and I are both better parents for it!




Davy in the sink. Clean baby in one side, dirty dishes in the other. :) That's how we roll.



Carving pumpkins!! Always way more work than we feel up to, but we still do it every year anyway. It's worth it. Both Gwen and Lindy chose scary faces, Benson wanted a dinosaur, and Miles carved his own Charlie Brown design. :)


If one of my kids was ever going to get picked up by the police, I'm not surprised at all that it was Benson. It was a super cold Tuesday, Richie had taken the girls to extracurriculars, so it was me and the boys at home. Benson whined and whined to ride his bike out front. But with no one to go with him, I kept saying no. Eventually I gave in and told him he could ride it up and down the street once, and then to come inside because it was cold. I felt pretty confident in his ability to follow those instructions. He's never once gone past the end of our street. I watched him go half way up the street, then I bent down to help Miles look under the couch for some lost Money. When I looked up, Benson was gone. I strapped Davy to my back to walk up the street-still nothing. I brought Davy back inside for Miles to watch him because it was so cold. I did another run up the street and saw nothing, so I started to panic. I jumped in the truck and starting driving around and also called my friend Mandy. She immediately got in her van. When I had checked 2 culdesacs, I came back to ours and started knocking on my police neighbor's door for help. Right as I did, another friend called me and said she had him. A minute later, they came down our street in a police vehicle. !!!! He had decided to ride his bike to find Lindy at Karate, and was almost to 13400S, a major intersection. Luckily 2 neighbors saw him, stopped him, and called the cops (before Sarah realized who he was) He was upset and scared, (good! So was I!) but after the terror wore off a tiny bit, I snapped this picture for posterity. HAHA!! He got several lectures from Mom and Dad, and a teddy bear from the police officer-which he loves and calls his police bear. :) Please bless this never happens again. It was terrifying.