October Fun

It didn't take long for Dallas to become a climber.  He reminds us a lot of Carter when he was a little boy.  We would always find him climbing on top of tables and counters when our back was turned.  Dallas is the same way and it is hard to keep track of this little man!

He has mastered climbing in and out of the tub now too and this is how I found him one morning when I walked into our bathroom.  Apparently he was thirsty and wanted a drink and was not going to wait for me to get him one.

These sweet brothers are becoming better friends each day.  They love to play together on the days that Beckett doesn't have preschool.  Beckett still really misses Carter and Rylynn when they are gone at school but he is starting to discover that Dallas can be fun too!

Beckett is always such a ham and he loves dressing up.  Even in his lion towel!

One of Dallas' favorite things to do is to watch what's going on outside.  Anytime he sees something interesting, he points and says, "oooooohhhhh!"

We spoiled the kids and took them to dinner for FHE at Don Pedro's.  Beckett was sporting these crazy glasses he had chosen from the treasure box at school.  Carter ate his whole plate of two enchiladas(of course) and then proceeded to finish off everyone else's plates!  He is such a big eater these days especially when it comes to Mexican food.  We always tell him we hope he gets called on his mission to Mexico so he can eat all the Mexican food his little heart desires.

Beckett's class learned about Johnny Appleseed and made these adorable pot hats!  He wore his all day long and kept telling everyone that he was Johnny Appleseed!

Dallas has become notorious for stealing his sibling's food!  He seriously roams the house and just takes food out of everyone's hands.  He has even been known to fish apple cores out of the garbage can and gnaw on it until I catch him and throw it away.  He stole the above carrot from Rylynn.

Here is the thief in action!  Apples are his very favorite and if anyone is eating one he walks up and squeals with delight until he gets a bite.  Beckett was very nice to share with Dallas but he wanted more than the bite he offered so he climbed right up on the couch and tried to steal the whole thing!

Carter came home from school excited about making Halloween decorations!  My kids seriously begged for weeks leading up to October to be able to put the halloween decorations up and I was able to hold them off until the weekend before October 1st! Carter made these cute decorations all by himself to add to the festive decor!

We are really loving the extended falls here in St George and Dallas and Beckett and I had lots of fun park days while the kids were at school.  

Beckett pulled out his halloween jammies to get in the holiday spirit!  

There have been a lot of dress up being played around this house.  It seems like everyday each kid tells me that they are going to be a different thing for Halloween.  I love reusing costumes so I hope they stick to the ones we already have.  Carter is modeling our pirate costume here!

The kids had a STEM week full of science experiments and the final activity was watching how a hot air balloon gets filled up.  Parents and siblings were invited to this cool event and Beckett was thrilled to get to sit with Carter's class and be a big boy! Carter was so excited to have his little brother there with him.  

We got to visit Rylynn too and of course she was so excited to show off her little brothers to her friends and teacher Mrs. Davis.  

In the fall spirit, Rylynn really wanted to bake an apple cake!  She had found a recipe in the back of one of her books about fall and had been begging me to bake it with her so we finally got around to making it and it was delicious!  She did all the baking and decorating herself.  I just assisted when she had questions.  She was very proud of her first baking creation!

Poor little Dallas got into trouble with his climbing when he climbed up on the desk and fell off and broke his collar bone!  Garrett was gone hunting for the week and I had just gotten all the kids off to school when he fell.  He did one of those cries when he didn't breath for almost a whole minute so I knew something was really wrong.  I took him into the doctor and she confirmed that he had broken his collar bone and that it was a really common injury for his age.  Unfortunately it was the same bone that was broken when he came through the birth canal so she said it may have been weaker because of that.  There is nothing they can do as far as casting for collar bones but she said they heal quite quickly on their own.  He was really sore for the first couple of days but he was pretty active and happy after that.  The kids and I enjoyed the beautiful fall evenings by taking walks and bike rides and just being outside as much as possible.  

We had to make carmel apples for an FHE treat and the kids clearly liked the toppings the best since they just ate all the candy off of the outside.

Beckett insisted on putting on a different halloween costume to play every hour or so while he was home from school.  Here he is sporting the pirate costume as he dug in the neighbor's dirt!

This is one of the halloween crafts he made at preschool and he was so excited to take a picture of it!

I love lazy mornings with these two cuddle bugs!

Grandma Allred spoiled us and sent Rylynn and me to a concert at the celebrity concert series.  Rylynn was very excited for a girls night out with Mom and she got tons of compliments on her sparkly hat!

Sarah invited us on a field trip to the farm with Alethia's preschool class.  We had a great time!  We got to see lots of animals and ride a hay ride and pick pumpkins from the patch.  It was a beautiful day and the boys loved it!

Beckett had to be inside the boxes of pumpkins to get a close enough look!

This was a lazy saturday morning with the four cuties I love the most!

First day of school

Beckett was so excited to start preschool this year!  My friend and neighbor, Andrea runs a great preschool out of her home and we were lucky enough to get Beckett in her class.  He was so sad he had to wait a couple of weeks after Rylynn and Carter started.  Everyday they went he would beg to go to HIS school.

Finally, after labor day, the big day arrived!

He wasn't nervous at all!  I dropped him off and he started playing and having a great time.  His best friend Cache is in his class so he was really excited about that too.

This was when I picked him up.  He was proudly wearing his Jonny Appleseed hat he had made.

This year Carter started 1st grade!  He was so excited that the day had finally arrived where he got to eat lunch at school. We sent him well prepared with a star wars lunch box and water bottle.  

He was excited to be in his best friend Matheson's class.  His teacher was Mrs. Waldvogel.

Rylynn started 3rd grade in Mrs. Davis' class.  She was thrilled to have her best friend, Annie in her class again.

It is always so hard for me to send my little ones back to school.  There is so much out of my control and I miss them all day long!  I wish school could get out at noon every day.  I also wish there was some way to stop my little ones from growing up!  

Summer snippets

We had so much fun this summer.  Many of our nights and days were spent in the pool.  The kids couldn't wait for Daddy to come home to throw them and do floppies in the pool.

Rylynn mastered her front flip by the end of the summer which was something she worked on a lot.  She often gets very frustrated that her little brother can do all sorts of flips and tricks with very little effort.  She often complains that it is because she is too tall but I reassure her that she will be so thankful for that throughout her life.  She is skeptical:)

This little peanut was crawling and walking everywhere.  He loved pulling up on the furniture and scooting along from one thing to another.

Our Fourth was a great day.  We started the morning off with a bike parade and flag pancakes.  The kids decorated their bikes and rode in the parade and got lots of treats.  Then we had my cousin Sarah and her family and some friends, the Vandermydes come for a bbq and swimming.  That night we set off some small fireworks of our own and then we went to the golf course and watched the real ones.

Garrett always has to light off some kind of fireworks on the 4th.  He decided to attach a smoke bomb to these helium balloons and we all watched as they floated away trailing a cloud of colored smoke.  Rylynn is scared of fireworks since she got burned by a spark a few years ago so she didn't participate too much.  Our neighbors put on a great show in our cup-de-sac and Carter, being the mini Garrett and therefore pyro that he is, loved it!  Rylynn and Beckett went inside to escape the noise.  They take after me and are my little worriers.

One of my favorite summer memories was doing cooking lessons with Rylynn.  She loves helping me in the kitchen so we had lots of lessons.  This one was our breading stations lesson.  We made chicken parmesan and she loved doing all the steps.  She is quite the chopper too!

After a year of protesting, Rylynn finally let me give her a little trim for the summer.  This is her summer haircut!

We had some wonderful friends come and visit us this summer.  Our old neighbors on Wolf Penn Ct, the Fuhrimans came for a day.  Beckett couldn't stop talking about his friend Tan man.  They had so much fun swimming and playing together.

Here is Rylynn with Kylynn.  These two girls had the best time together!  It made me sad that Rylynn has so many great friends from Liberty Lake that she still misses.  They spent 7 hours in the pool and came out only to eat.  They just played and talked the whole day.  They hugged and were so sad to leave each other that night.

I had a great time catching up with Brenda.  We miss so many great people from Liberty Lake!

There were lots of summer baths too!  As you can tell, the kids got plenty of sun this summer.

Dallas discovered the musical instrument bin and loved banging the maracas together pretty much every day!  As you can see in the background, there were also A LOT of lego/block creations going on in our house this summer.

Summer is my favorite because I just get to snuggle and hang out with these cuties all day long.  Granted, I don't love taking all four of them to costco with me, but I love the flexibility of summer schedules.  We would always get up late, stay in our pjs and eat a big breakfast, and then get on with our summer charts and the rest of the day.  I hate being rushed in the morning and so do my kids.  We are just summer bums and we love it!

We also let them stay up a bit later in the summer and one night Rylynn and I were just chatting in my bed and she fell asleep.  I couldn't resist snapping a pic of her peaceful face.  What a little beauty she is!

The kids all had to read everyday as part of our summer chore charts but Rylynn and Carter were also working toward the 1000 minutes of summer reading for their school.  Rylynn logged over 2000 and Carter did just over 1000.  I loved seeing Rylynn get so into a book that she couldn't put it down.  There were many days that she read the day away.  We took a lot of trips to the library too!

Beckett and I became milkshake buddies this summer.  We both love my banana, greek yogurt, and nutmeg shakes.  Every afternoon he would come up to me and say, "Mama, I think it's time for an afternoon shake!"  I love that boy!!!

This little one spent a lot of time on my hip this summer.  He was teething for a lot of the summer which means he wanted me to hold him all the time.  Luckily I love squeezing and holding my teeny tinys (as I like to call them).

Rylynn loved drawing with chalk this summer and when it would cool down in the evenings she would come out to the back porch and draw while I read or talked on the phone on the back swing.  We loved being outside in the evenings!!

Beckett was always a big fan of Sissy's work!

Garrett introduced the kids to Uno this summer so we had many uno parties on the back porch too.  They always involved snacks and were a lot of fun.  The funniest part about our uno games was that Beckett would lay all his cards down face up so that we could help him play.  We would always let him pick which card to play but we would tell him which color or number to look for or when to pick a card from the stack.  Even with all his cards face up, the kid beat us so many times!!  It was hilarious.  The draw 2 or 4 cards were lovingly named "booyah cards" or "how dare you cards" by Carter. 

More night swimming.  Beckett liked fishing in the pool with his stick pole after we came home from the cabin.

Our hot summer days often wore out this little one and there were a lot of afternoon naps on the couch.

We loved riding the carousel by the library after our weekly trip to get books.

These crazy kids love playing together.  Here we have 2 lovely little girls and a big brother:)

These are the delicious peaches from the back trees.  I couldn't believe how many we got!  I canned 11 bottles and froze 2 gallon bags plus I made a peach pie and two crisps just from the two little trees.  It wouldn't be summer without canning!

We also had our good friends the Atwoods come for a visit.  Lily and Rylynn were friends when they were infants at BYU.  We had such a great day catching up with them and Rylynn and Lily were so sad to part at the end of the day.  

One of the kids favorite activities when Daddy would get home was to wash cars. We were outside washing one afternoon when we saw this beautiful rainbow!  

At the end of August, Daddy had a mission reunion with some friends.  We got to spend the day with them and then We went to their cabin in Pine Valley for a couple of days.  We had a bonfire, rode 4 wheelers and played.

There were tons of kids and there was never a dull moment!

Rylynn found this tiny lizard on one of the nature walks.

Here's the whole gang

All the kiddos!

It was so fun to hear Daddy and his old companions reminisce about their mission and all the people they knew.  It was a great way to end our wonderful summer!