Halloween and Fall Activities

October is always a fun month, with pumpkin activities and church parties and Halloween.

The children put up a few spiderweb decorations around the house to make things a little spooky.

We visited a local pumpkin patch.

Cleaning out the pumpkin to prepare for carving is always a fun job.

The finished pumpkin on display.

We had a fun time at the ward Fall Festival: dinner, carnival games, and trunk-or-treat. This year we kept it simple and reused costumes that we already had. Anwyn was Hermione (from Harry Potter), Lily was Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz), Zach was Superman, and Adam was a frog.

Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, so we were happy that Jared could participate in our annual excursion to Boo at the Zoo. The college always does a great job decorating (mostly movie themes like Minions, Harry Potter, Inside Out, etc). We stopped to pose in the Star Wars scene with Yoda. 

It was fun for our Lily/Dorothy to find the house that landed on the Wicked Witch. 

In the evening we walked around the neighborhood for trick-or-treating. We met up with some friends and had a good time. 

Baptism Day for Lily

Lily was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on October 22.

We were happy to have our good Florida-friend-families in attendance. Anwyn played the piano, and I gave the talk on Baptism, while Sister Beck gave the Holy Ghost talk. Jared performed the baptism and confirmation, of course. It was a very nice meeting, and exciting to see Lily take that important step.

An eight-year-old Birthday for Lily

Lily turned eight years old this month! We sure love our spunky silly Lily!

Here are 8 Things We Love About Lily

1. She is funny.

2. She makes me not bored (from Anwyn).

3. She runs outside with me (from Zach).

4. She is a kind sister.

5. She is teachable.

6. She plays Legos with me.

7. She is a good example to others.

8. She has a spunky personality.

Lily's birthday was on a Monday. She woke up to balloons and "8 Things We Love About Lily" on her door. When everyone was ready for school a few minutes early, she got to open her gifts from Anwyn and Zach. Then it was off to Morning Mile and school. I made some owl cupcakes to take to school to share with her classmates. They were cute, although some of the Oreo eyes slid off the cupcakes. That evening we had hamburgers for dinner, and Lily opened the rest of her presents (a quad set of scriptures with a case, and a lego set). After FHE she picked root beer floats for her birthday treat.

A General Conference Weekend

We love General Conference and plan to make it a weekend of celebration and inspiration. You can read more about our plans and the resources we use here.

Our "General Conference Wall"

 

Activity folders for the children.

Adam loves to be outside, so we took a few walks in between sessions. 

For some added excitement, we had a pet for the weekend! We got to "pet-sit" Lily's class guinea pig named S'mores. He was cute and a little bit snuggly.

A snapshot of how we do Conference.

A General Conference scene of Legos: The First Presidency and the podium, with a choir of Lego Friends and an audience of various characters (many star wars). Everyone is welcome to Conference!

Marking off the speakers with stickers.

Keeping track of the topics that were addressed. There were a lot who mentioned Sabbath Day!

Our apostle wall, marked with keywords from their talks.

Adam at five months

Adam is five months old today. He keeps growing well and is wearing some 9-12 month size clothes. We discovered on Friday that his first bottom tooth had broken through (which explains some of his erratic schedule this week). I keep hoping for a consistent schedule, but alas, it isn't to be. Some nights he sleeps 8-9 hours (hurray!), but other nights he is up every 3 hrs (boo!). He gets up every morning by 6:30 to come along for the morning mile with the kids--I wear him in the baby bjorn while we walk a mile. He and I spend our time while the kids are at school in the following ways: eating, napping, shopping, reading Sandra Boynton board books, in the kitchen (him in the Bumbo seat while I clean or make food), listening to music, and outside (him in the stroller while I walk/run and listen to general conference talks). Sometimes he only takes a short nap in his bed, so I will hold him while he sleeps longer (and I read or do other work on my iPad). He is still suffering from bad eczema, and we are trying all sorts of remedies. We gave in and tried rubbing him down with Crisco for the past week, with some mixed results.