I brought back my window painting skills and starting doing the wall art at my gym in exchange for a free membership.
We love the homeschool PE class the rec center puts on! We've attended many sessions. This day was archery. :) I love that I can drop the kids off at the rec center, and have just Davy in tow. I'm guessing it's what it would feel like if I had the kids in school! The kids feel grown up that they get to hang by themselves for hours at the rec center. They bring books etc to keep them busy when it's not their class's turn, but Miles usually doesn't get to read. He's generally the cool older kid who entertains the littles.
Miles's last football game of the season. I never thought Miles would want to play football. He's such a tender heart. But trying this different, growing opportunity was so great for him to develop some grit. To help him know it's ok to be tough and aggressive, as well as kind and thoughtful. Something about a naturally occurring growth spurt and the physical aspect of the football season helped Miles mature in leaps and bounds. I felt like I was watching a time lapse video of my son growing. We went to and supported as many games as we could. After this game, he said it was the best experience of his life.
We made a trip down to SLC so that we could be apart of apple cider pressing. It's such a fun tradition. I'm so glad Mom and Dad Garner purchased that apple press and we get to participate in such a cool, fall rite of passage. Of course, the kids loved playing with their cousins! While we were there, Richie also got to go to a James Taylor concert with his Dad!!! Lucky!!
Then Richie headed back up to Idaho, and I took the kids down to SG for a little bit more fall break time. It was so great. We did crafts with grandma, and got fast food and ate Eggos and watched TV with grandpa. Grandpa also took Miles shooting and Miles totally got a bullseye!! Grandma hosted another grandkids art/talent show. She helped my kids work on some art pieces to present and The girls performed a dance they had choreographed. I got to see my good friend Sam! We took the kids to see where Aunt Jenn works as an actual librarian, which they thought was pretty cool. Aunt Jenn always has the best book recommendations. On the way back up to Idaho, we stopped in SLC again and set up some play dates for the kids to see old friends. Miles hung out with Parker and Colton, and the girls and Benson hung out with Aimsely, Becksley, and Riggin. :)
Halloween! The kids became obsessed with the Annie movie and music this year. They had all the songs memorized and have seen every version of the movie. So this year's costumes were a no brainer. Luckily, Aunt Laura down in Bluffdale has access to thousands of costumes. She had the perfect costume for every kid!! Miles was Rooster, Gwen was Annie, Lindy was Miss Hannigan, Benson was Daddy Warbucks, and Davy was Sandy. Halloween was on a Sunday this year, which is always so weird. Do you go trick or treating on a Sunday or not? We decided we'd try and go Saturday. It was absolutely deserted! We found one other family trick or treating. It felt so weird. If Halloween is on a Sunday in Utah, you can basically expect everyone to go trick or treating on the Saturday before, and then get a few stragglers on Sunday. Not here! When we went trick or treating on Saturday, we even had people refuse to give us candy, telling us to come back tomorrow. Then the actual Halloween day felt lackluster. I tried to make it fun by having a festive lunch and doing some Harry Potter spells I found online, which were super cool. But it just didn't have the right feel to it. We decided to get back in our costumes and go reverse trick or treating to some of our friends. We took cookies to Bonnie and Trudy and a couple others.
