I know, I know. It's been awhile. (sorry, Tarilynn, about the last post, when I came back from Thanksgiving, I just couldn't help myself. :))
I missed some pretty big things, so I'll abbreviate now:
SETH TURNED FOUR! My crazy angel boy had his birthday on October 5th. Farris was out of town at a National College Advisor convention (he actually taught one of the breakout sessions and did a fabulous job. "Fabulous" is my word, he said he "felt really good about how it turned out" and all the comments that were left said it was very good. So I say "fabulous". Anyway.) So we celebrated his birthday when Farris got back. But he'd been so excited about his birthday coming that he didn't care when it happened, as long as it did happen. For his cake, I cut a sheet cake in pieces and arranged them in the shape of a number four, then decorated it to look like a race track, complete with little hot wheels. As usual, it didn't look quite like I pictured it, but he loooved it. He's our car boy. My camera was still broke, so no pictures, sad day. He's been growing and changing so much lately--which I am very glad of! When Farris was called to the Bishopric, my main worry was how Seth would be during Sacrament meeting and boy did he live up to my worries! He's doing better now, last week wasn't awesome, but for the three weeks before that (a new record!) I didn't have to take him out of the chapel. And his primary teachers occasionally say, in a surprised tone, that he was good. So he is getting older. Luckily, he still has his super sweet times and is still the best hugger ever. He even hugged a stranger that came to our door. We did know the people she came with, so it's ok. His snuggle times are great, and his grin is adorable. We love our Sethy Boy!
HALLOWEEN! I did manage to get a new camera for Halloween, hurrah! I'm liking it.
Felicity has been asking to dress up as a horse for awhile, but I was pretty sure a decent horse costume was beyond my abilities. Ever resourceful, Felicity forced my hand by joining the 4-H theater group, which was doing Tangled, and she happily got the part of Maximus. She did have an old costume that was made to look like she was riding a unicorn. So I cut off the head (evil laugh) attached it to a white hoodie and then replaced the rainbow mane with off white yarn, and cut off the horn. Then I attached a saddle with a blanket and reins and more yarn for a tail to look like Maximus. The final piece was a Flynn Rider wanted poster. She was pretty excited.
Caleb really wanted to be...well, lots of things. Last year he just dressed up in his soccer uniform, so I felt like it was his turn to get a cool homemade costume. When he finally decided on being Luke Skywalker (we had spent the last several, several Friday movie nights watching the Star Wars movies) I thought that it shouldn't be too hard. Farris had a white button down shirt that had ripped at the elbow, so I figured I could turn it into the tunic Luke wears. Caleb has khaki pants and I thought I could wrap some brown felt around his calves to look like those bootie things. For his birthday Grandma Child gave him a light saber, so we'd be good. The problem was the tunic. My scissors got a little out of control and it ended up being too small. Do you ever have that problem when you make or get something for your kid, and then realize that they are not as small as you keep thinking? Yup. But it was still really long because I hadn't hemmed it. In fact when he tried it on it looked a little like a lab coat. Being the good sport that he is, we decided he could be Dr. Doofensmirch from Phineas and Ferb. We even made a "Halloweeninator" so he could carry out his evil plan to make it always Halloween in the Tri-State area. So my oopsy turned out ok.
Joseph wanted to wear the ghost costume I made him last year. Whew. He did let me paint black circles around his eyes but they bugged him, so he washed them off before the costume parade at school. He does make a cute little ghostie, though.
Seth wanted to wear his dinosaur costume. Which was great for me, but the problem was that he had grown since we bought it: it showed about three inches of his calves and...hmmm...how do I put this delicately...it looked a little too tight around his derriere to be comfortable. I managed to convince him to wear Caleb's old dinosaur costume and he was happy with it.
Last year after Halloween I went to Kmart to see what costumes they had on clearance. I found a cute flower costume for Abby, but the biggest size was 9 months. But it looked big so I got it and since Abigail's on the small side, it fit perfect. She was a cute little flower. In the picture, Farris is holding her, because most pictures of her end up looking like this:
(doesn't she look like Seth in this picture?) or this:
She likes the camera and runs for it whenever I pull it out.
It was the warmest Halloween I ever remember, trick or treating was pretty good. When we headed out we met our neighbor who was taking her daughter around, so we joined forces. Little Mckinley is Seth's age by the calendar but much older in personality, she makes me smile. And she has a little crush on Joseph, we laughed at how she would tail him and do whatever he did the whole time. The kids were pretty happy with their haul. Which means the Daddy Tax and the Mommy tax were pretty high this year (you know, higher tax rates for the rich), so we enjoyed it, too.
The warm weather continued and one Saturday Farris had the kids outside getting everything ready for snow by moving all the leaves into the garden to compost and picking up branches, organizing outside toys in the shed, etc. Some friends came over to play and had a blast in the pile of leaves our tree creates.
Once all the leaves were out of our big tree, the boys noticed two big balls of...something... up there. I zoomed the camera lens so we could see what it was. I was pretty sure they were wasp nests, but my scientific boy Caleb was all fired up with a million possibilities. This summer we noticed that there was hardly any new nests on our eves, which we were grateful for, but I don't like the idea of two large nests in our tree, either. Luckily they came down in the snow and hopefully there won't be any next year.
What snow did they come down in? Less than a week later we woke up to this:
It dumped about a foot on us in about 24 hours time, I have to admit, I was pretty excited! Look at how gorgeous the trees around us look! I did have to quickly find boots, gloves, mittens, hats, scarves for everyone which can be a challenge. Right now it's back to crazy warm weather for a December in Utah, weird year for weather.
Thanksgiving was wonderful, but I didn't get any pictures, too busy just enjoying family and food. And pies! At my family party we had 23 people and 21 pies. Very tasty.
I love this. Caleb was on another chair, reading, too. I love that the kids enjoy to read and it doesn't hurt that the noise level drops significantly when their noses are in books. Can you see the large knob and cut on Joseph's head? Him and his friend Hyrum were goofing off at 4H and somehow a bench met his head. He told me he doesn't think he'll play with the benches anymore. I think that's a good idea, he's got a good scar on his head from it. Oh, that boy.
And to finish off this post, a sad, sad face from Seth. He was caught with my eyeliner. He wasn't very happy at getting caught, but I'm not sure how he thought he was going to get away with it.
We have decorated our Christmas Tree and other things, but I'll have to put that off for another post. Thanks for re-motivating me Tarilynn!
