October 2011

I took the kids to Lattin Farms for a ward activity. Kannon was teaching a welding class in Reno all month. That meant he was gone all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I wasn't thrilled to go on my own. The 3 kids are a handful by myself. Well, it's Joshua, actually. He requires constant supervision and then there isn't an adult left to keep on eye on the other two. But, it all worked out okay.

The dinner part was kind of a mess. I'm on a strict diet and it being a "harvest" dinner, I thought there'd be plenty to choose from. I didn't count on the potatoes being drowned in sauces. So, I ate very little. The kids nibbled and were anxious to run and play. We went first to the cow train. Joshua looked fine, until the train got going faster, then I could tell he was nervous. He didn't move. No sounds, no facial expressions. Just held on for dear life!

Yeah, this is the before shot.Then, Ben and Sarah were desperate to go through the corn maze. We went. But, we couldn't find our way out. I know we were close. Somebody finally put us out of our misery and led us out. I was so ready to go home. All in all, a good time.

The beginning of October always brings us General Conference. A time to listen to the Prophet and Apostles and be given some spiritual feasting. We chose to watch it from our computer, again, this year. So, for two days we hung out on mom and dad's bed enjoying conference.

Playing Bingo.
I'm loving Pinterest. I find all kinds of things to do or make. I put together a conference basket. Each time one of the 12 Apostles of the First Presidency spoke the kids got to get a bag from the basket. I printed out photos of the brethren and put one on each baggie. Inside the baggies were treats or things to do (like the bingo game).

Blowing bubbles with bubble gum.

We each got a pair of conference socks (I picked them up from the dollar bins at Target).

We made toilet paper roll puppets of the First Presidency.

Our internet connection is goofy. We have wireless internet and when we had it set up we were using our little laptop. The big computer wasn't working then. Now that the big computer is working it has a hard time detecting the wireless internet. We always have to do the "diagnose" deal when we turn it on and sometimes it just shuts down when we are already on. So, we had the laptop going sometimes, too.

Kannon brought in his special Ikea chair to lounge in. He kept falling asleep in it, so I ended up kicking him out of it!

When we opened up a baggie we would tape the picture up on the closet door. Then we put up sticky notes of what the talk was about. It kept us focused.

Most of October was really mild in the weather area. Joshua still spent a lot of every day outside. He loves the dirt and sometimes I would look out the window to see how he's doing and he'd be face down in the dirt. Sometimes licking the dirt, but lots of times just looking at it. Maybe smelling it?

The garden lasted through most of the month, too. We mostly got tomatoes this year. They went wild. We had a few watermelon, too. Kannon and I took one day toward the end of the month to clean up the space and pull out all the plants. We used 8 big garbage bags! We ended up getting a lot of salsa out of the garden and I still have a bag of tomatoes, that we picked green, that are now ready to be taken care of. I think I'll make pizza sauce.

For some reason Sarah likes to dress up in Mommy's shoes instead of her own play heels. So, of course, little brother has to do the same. You can see them both wearing my heels in this picture. I laugh because he's going to be so embarrassed by this picture someday!

Kannon turned 33 in October! We went and had family pictures taken that day. He got a new shirt and pants out of that deal. We gave him some money to spend. He added that to the money he got from his mom and my mom and bought himself a new exhaust and muffler for his car. (It's loud. I finally drove it and it gave me a headache!) Must be a guy thing!

Then comes Halloween. Here is Joshua in one of the pairs of jammies we have for him. (They come with capes, too!) He's doing the kachow thing that he does with his hands. Ready for a friendly fight.

At our ward party. We went as Alice in Wonderland and Crew again this year. Last year we were in Elko, so I figured it would be good to get more use out of these costumes that had a lot of effort put into. Joshua's costume was new, though. I didn't think it would be a good idea to make him be a pink cat again.

The kids had fun running around. Kannon made the chili. I didn't get to eat much, because chili isn't exactly on my meal plan. Neither is cornbread. I ate when we got home. They got lots of candy at the trunk-or-treat.

We spent one evening out at my mom and dad's. We wanted to use the firepit before the weather got too cold. So, we roasted hotdogs. Ben and Sarah also got to spend the night there.

I guess I got some goofy looking pictures here, because everyone was busy eating.

We also did Kannon's birthday cake out there, so that we could share it. Here's me doing my best pirate imitation and showing off the awesome Super-duper chocolate cake that I made (with help from pinterest, again.) Two layers of chocolate cake, a brownie layer and a layer of cheesecake. Once again, not something I can eat, but I snuck a few bites anyway and it was yummy and very rich. There's still more than half a cake frozen at my parents house. We'll have to pull it out and share it again soon.

Our town did trick-or-treating a few days early. It was a little weird but also okay. Sarah was a flapper, Joshua was Superman and Ben had decided he was going to be Harry Potter back in the summer when we read the book. This is with their friends Lily and Reed Mortensen.

Joshua loved running up to the doors and being given candy. At one house he was standing behind the man on his porch as he handed out the candy. He missed Joshua, and when he put the bowl down, Josh just helped himself!

He and Sarah both got tired before the rest of the kids so I headed back with them. I realized that I didn't have a key, Kannon did, so we stopped at the Mortensen's house to wait for the boys. It was nice to just hang out with my friend Donna.

The kids got to dress up for school on the 31st. I help out in the lunch room and at recess on Mondays so I got to see the kids in their costumes. It was fun to see all the different ideas out there. I saw twin mermaids, lots of witches, about 6 ninjas chasing an Incredible Hulk, and only about 3 kids that didn't dress up. I'm glad their school lets them dress up for Halloween. I'm glad that I got to dress up like that when I was a kid. Dressing up was a big part of my youth. We had costumes galore. We dressed up anytime the cousins came over and anytime we were at my grandma's house. It was great fun. I got to show some of those pictures to my kids last month, too.