October little things

Boy I keep getting further and further behind!

Here’s what happened back in good old October:

We brought in October with a bang by celebrating Lu’s seventh birthday with doctors in Wisconsin (back HERE).

…and had a fun adventure with this while we were there 🙂

 (back HERE)

Dave’s Mom and Dad hung with our kids while we were gone.  They are the greatest.  When we leave I always leave big lists hung all around the kitchen.  Here are the ones from this time just for memory’s sake:

We planned to come home from that little trip one night, unpack, re-pack and head here:

But because the government took a little hiatus and closed down Lake Powell, our best laid plans were foiled.

So we ended up here:

 Which we sure didn’t complain about 🙂

Lots more pictures coming about that because man alive it is beautiful there.

We listened to beautiful conference:

It took about all month for Lucy to write her thank you notes from all the nice presents she got from her birthday party (back here).

I know I’m a little nerdy but I sure wanted to get out my own stack of thank you notes and write each of their mothers thank you notes as well.  “Thank you for teaching your child to be so kind,” they would say.  But I held back and just let my heart swell up with gratitude for that day and that it was kind of a turning point in the sea of worry filling up my mind for this girl socially.  She’s going to be ok.

Here’s one of the notes she wrote to my mom and dad.

Too cute to leave out…just my opinion…

Dave and Max worked their tails off doing the annual ritual that is so darn crazy here in the desert:

Scalping away all the summer grass (takes FOREVER), and planting new winter grass.

 Grace and I took our little date to Utah for my Grandma’s funeral (back HERE).

I had a lunch date with some pretty cute first-graders:

Just thought I should capture Claire’s night time apparel.

 …accompanied by a good book.

Max got “answered” to Homecoming…did I already post this pic?

 (Homecoming pics. are back HERE if you missed them.)

Lots of soccer:

Some very kind mom decided to start a carpool tradition to stop to get these on the way home from choir.

I gave in to peer pressure.

Claire and her friend washed my car for me.

I loved the sparkling view from my windows after that:

 🙂

Dave’s brother and his wife came to town.

I celebrated by taking some awesome quality iPhone pictures of the whole crew we had for dinner.

 We had so many family members there that we decided to split up boys and girls.

Even though this is for some reason a serious shot, we laughed our guts out that night.

 Love those guys so much.

Elle started one of her many Christmas photo shoots.  I had to capture her little crew helping get the baby to laugh at the camera:

…and here we go from the other angle:

I will share some of these pictures soon because I loved how they turned out.

Dave and I got to go on a little date to watch his college friend “Kaskade” perform.

Wow.

Yeah, to put it lightly, he’s able to draw quite a crowd.

I have a lot more to say about that night, but for now I’ll just leave you with this pic taken at about 4:30 am.

 Have I mentioned Elle doesn’t believe in shoes?

…and a lot of that cute team manager cheering on the sidelines.

Lucy was the best cheerer in the land.

I’m sorry, I cannot stop posting these pictures of these two.

Just this little moment in time with just the two of them.

 Heart-melt city.

We celebrated the birthdays of some of our favorite people.

The kids made a giant straw which I thought kind of rocked.

If Lucy didn’t idolize Dave enough already, these notes he’s been putting in her lunch every so often put her over the edge.

She has them all memorized…it’s kind of cute…they way she memorized this one was “keep swimming,” which cracked me up a little bit.

It’s like she finds a hundred dollar bill in her lunch when he writes them.

We had our “Evening in Excellence” for both our older girls which was a hit.

…makes me so grateful I’m not in charge of those things anymore.  So wonderful to sit there and bask in the beautiful spirit those great leaders bring in.

I got to go with Lucy’s class on a field trip the the pumpkin patch.

Pumpkin patches here arent quite the same as they are back east.  We were all dying of the heat pedaling this thing around but sure had fun.

Loved being with my girl.

More carpools.

For reals.  But I can’t find the “fixed” picture…

It was mis-match day at school:

And on to Halloween 2013.

And that’s a wrap.

October was good to us.