Halloween Fun

We started off our Halloween activities this year with the First Ward Fall Festival. Chili and cornbread and hot dogs for dinner, then carnival type games, followed up by trunk or treating. It was a fun event that turned out well.

Anwyn was Hermione Granger from Hogwarts. Jared spent a few hours crafting her a wand from a piece of wood, and it turned out pretty neat.

The wand in stages from beginning to end.

Lily was a jellyfish. This was a fun and pretty easy costume to make, but Lily did get tired of holding the heavy umbrella. We attached glowstick bracelets to the bottom edges to make it glow, which was a neat effect in the dark.

And Zach picked superman this year (he has quite the assortment of superhero costumes now). He is definitely the cutest superman I've seen!

Zach wasn't the only superman at the fall festival that night. He posed with all the super missionaries currently serving in our ward.

The week of Halloween we had our traditional FHE activity at the pumpkin patch in Alachua.

We carved our pumpkins on Halloween Eve. This year we did three!

Halloween afternoon the children and Kristi went to Boo at the Zoo. This is an annual favorite event--trick or treating among the animals. The zoo staff and volunteers always do a fantastic job decorating with a lot of themes (this year they had Frozen, western, Legos, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, etc).

Lily opted to go as Little Red Riding Hood for this round, since neither she nor I wanted to carry the heavy jellyfish umbrella.

Lily made some scary signs to make sure our doorway was scary for any potential trick or treaters.

After a dinner of mummy dogs (pigs in a blanket) and veggies and dip, the kids headed out with Jared for some trick or treating in the neighborhood. 

After all of these fun events, our candy stash is well stocked for the next year!

We're having a baby!

We are excited to announce that baby #4 will be joining our family sometime in the middle of April 2015!

The children were very thrilled when we told them.

We are almost 15 weeks along in the pregnancy now. We ended up having an early ultrasound this week, and we were excited to find out the baby is BOY! Two girls and two boys sounds pretty perfect to me. We are looking forward to meeting him!

Fall Fun in Florida

October in Florida is a lot of fun. Temperatures are almost cooler (some of the time), and there are plenty of carnivals and festivals and parties to attend. Our calendar has been pretty busy!

The first weekend in October was the annual Butterfly Fest at the FLMNH. We go every year, and this year we enjoyed seeing (and even touching a few!) the live snakes and baby alligator, the fruit bats, a tarantula, and others. We went first thing in the morning so that we could be home in time for the start of General Conference (since it starts at noon for us on the east coast).

The children did pretty well during the conference speakers, mostly staying busy with coloring and activity sheets and iPad apps. We enjoyed our traditional conference food: crepes for breakfast on Saturday, and cinnamon rolls for brunch on Sunday. This year I also tried a breakfast casserole (recipe from Our Best Bites) that turned out yummy. The theme that I noticed from a lot from the speakers was an exhortation to live the gospel, focus on our spirituality, take responsibility for ourselves and for the poor.

Painting during conference sessions

Diligently working on conference packets

Cinnamon roll baking helpers

Jared made these delicious cinnamon rolls for us to enjoy on Sunday conference day.

The elementary school carnival was Oct. 16th. The PTA puts on quite an event, and we all enjoyed ourselves. The girls got some glittery dolphin skin stickers (that are still going strong after a few weeks). The children had fun with the bounce houses, hay ride, and games. I was able to volunteer one shift to run one of the bounce houses.

Posing with the police horse

Zach on the bouncey obstacle course

Anwyn's turn

Lily in the bounce house

Dolphins on the skin

Anwyn picked dolphins too!

Ready for the hay ride

Silly teeth for a prize.

Anwyn and Lily both had friend birthday parties to attend this month, and we celebrated Lily's 7th birthday (more to come on that).

Zach had a sunbeam lesson this month about honesty, with a tie in to the armor of the Lord. All the sunbeams were pretty cute in their armor!

Anwyn has become our Sunday night cookie baker!

Another favorite fall activity we like to attend is the annual Bat Fest. We went later in the afternoon since Jared had stake conference meetings in the morning, and it was pretty sunny and hot. But the fruit bats were neat to see, and the snakes and baby alligator. 

Celebrating Lily's 7th Birthday

 Lily turned 7 this month! She is growing up a lot (first grade), but is still our sweet, silly Lily.

Jared took her out for a private photo shoot on the afternoon of her birthday.

She decided that she wanted to have a horse theme party this year. The planning was pretty easy, once we realized we could just take a field trip to the Mill Creek Retirement Home for Horses. She invited three new friends from school, and the Olsen girls from down the street (unfortunately one friend got sick and couldn't come).

 The party started on Saturday at 10:30, painting little horse sun catchers. We had an easy lunch of sandwiches and chips, then loaded up cars to drive to the horse farm. We have been there many times and the kids enjoy feeding carrots to the horses. The weather was great!

Unfortunately, Zach had a run in with one of the horses. He had a carrot in his hand and was standing too close to one of the pushier horses, and it bit his arm. Ouch! It didn't break the skin, but it turned quite reddish/purplish. It wasn't until bath time that night that we discovered his back and side had been bitten also. Poor kid...he was pretty traumatized but is just fine now.

After the horse farm we came back home for Texas Sheet Cake and presents. Rather than try to attempt a fancy horse cake, we just stuck some lego horses on top of the cake and called it good. Then the kids just had fun free play time for an hour or so.

Anwyn's first cross country race

We were excited to find out this year that the elementary school that the girls attend has a cross country running team. After the great experience Anwyn had with Girls on the Run (and knowing how much that girl loves to run!) we thought being part of the team would be a great opportunity for her. The team is small, but the other kids and parents are all friendly and nice.

On September 27th, Anwyn attended her first middle school cross county meet up in Lake City (about 45 minutes north of us). Anwyn decided to run the 3000 meter and 1500 meter races. The 3000 meter was primarily for the middle schoolers (grades 6-8) but elementary kids could run too. The 1500 meter was a “fun run” for the elementary kids (personally, Jared doesn’t see what’s so fun about running almost a mile).

Anwyn tried hard in both races (running through her stomach ache from eating a little too much {1/2 a peanut butter sandwich} before the 1.5K), finishing well. Her only complaint about the 3K was that she almost got “trampled" at the start (she was the smallest one there since most were 6,7,8 grade) but made it through the start okay.

Her 3000 m time was 15:08, and her 1500 m time was 6: 58.

We had fun at Anwyn’s first meet and were happy that she tried hard.

Thankfully, there was a fun playground where the races were being held, so Zach and Lily stayed entertained. 

Finding bugs and other creatures are always exciting.

Blue Springs

Our ward hosted a fun activity at nearby Blue Springs. I think this was one of the best springs we have visited yet. The water is a constant temperature of 72 degrees year round. It felt quite chilly at first, but we got used to it. It has been very hot and humid the last two weeks (between 90 and 100 degrees), so the water was a welcome break.

There was a nice shallow sandy beach area for the kids to play. The funnest part was a high dock to jump from into the springs. Jared and I both jumped in, and Anwyn was brave and jumped too. Then she spent most of the time jumping in repeatedly with a group of girls from our ward. Jared and I jumped a number of times. It was funny to watch some of the people doing somersaults and tricks off the dock (like our Bishop). We had a nice lunch with ward members. We explored the spring run off a ways (eventually it empties into the Santa Fe river, but we didn't make it that far). The children collected a few shells, and it was a really nice day.

Here is a short video of Anwyn jumping off the dock.