Park

We took advantage of one of our free afternoons to go to the park with my cousin Tiff and her kids. That's always nice to see her. And it's good to see that she's recovering from her back surgery well.

New couch

Jeremy and I have never bought a couch. We've had three couches one was a yard sale and the other two were hand-me-downs from family. Our nicest couch is actually pretty beat up and torn on all the edges. Just to get an idea how much couch cost I've been going to furniture stores. We found this one and Sam thinks it would be the best reading couch ever. I don't think it would fit in our house very well though.

Evelyn

I found this with Evelyn's homework. I'm not sure whether to say oh cute or oh sad.

Little genes

Sam got the small genes. I laughed but he is 9 and yet he's the shortest one in the Fencing Club besides the little girl that's five.

Ada

Ada likes Art & Dragons. She's been doing an after school art program and she loves it. She's been practicing with watercolor pencils. She's come home with some very pretty things but I think this one's my favorite so far.

Leaves

Thursday the kids helped me bag some of the leaves. Friday morning a lot of leaves started falling it looked like rain. I kept thinking of the primary song about rain falling all around. I kept thinking leaves are falling all around from the Treetops to the ground. By Friday afternoon it didn't look like we bagged any leaves at all. Saturday it took a whole family a couple hours to get the rest. Our dog was pretty funny though. She kept sticking her ball into one of the kids hands for them to hide into a leaf pile. Then she'd go find it.

Fall leaves

Because it's one of the last warm Saturdays before winter we've been trying to get a lot of chores done. One of my favorite family chores is raking leaves together. The kids are mostly happy and like to play. Today I went with young women to do baptisms for the Dead and Jeremy took the kids to help clean the church. When we got back we raked the leaves and cleaned the house. Tonight is a Elders Quorum activity. Ada has been asked to help with babysitting in the nursery during the activity. It should be fun. We weren't going to go to the activity but if Ada is going I guess we should go to.

Halloween

This Halloween was a little different.  We carved pumpkins on Monday for family night, I picked up all of Robyn's furniture (she's moving out of state and has kindly donated all her furniture to whoever needs it.  Part has gone to Cristina's family and the rest is going to Emma and Stephen in their new apartment.).  We fit 2 couches, 4 chairs, 3 room dividers, a tote of potted plants, a mirror and a table in and on the van.  On Halloween, the kids had their annual costume parade at school.  Seth was a lot more fun about that this year.  He kept saying, "Look! There's Superman!  Look it's Bulbasaur!  Look it's a dinosaur like Uncle Seth!"  I picked up kids, they did chores and played on the computer until the Komens came to pick us up.  It was so cute... Sam and Sarah decided to dress up from their favorite video game 'The Legends of Zelda'. Then they had to go trick or treating together.  I love it.

Sam was Link, Evelyn was Professor McGonagall, Seth was Mario and Ada was Bellatrix LeStrange.

We took some pictures and Evelyn immediately broke down crying.  Everything was wrong... she was cold, her feet hurt, her bum hurt, she didn't want to go trick or treating.  We got around the cul-de-sac and Dad took her home.  She then peed her pants and Dad took her to the Instacare and she has a UTI.  Sad day.  She's much better today after being on antibiotics for 24 hours. 

It was fun to chat with the Komens and Janelle came and joined us for a while.  Sam was charging around with his sword and a neighbor asked if he was going to save Princess Zelda.  Sarah immediately started blushing.  I don't know if they'll get married someday, but I sure wouldn't mind.  Sarah is smart, pretty, hard working and I love her parents.  If not, at least he has a good friend growing up.  That makes me happy too.

This is our neighbor's house.  They go all out every year decorating.  Usually it's a Harry Potter theme.  This is Aragog...

Here's Nellie.

These guys insisted on a picture together in front of the spooky tree.

Fall Break Zoo pictures

I love this family so much.  No words....

They had the Halloween stuff out.  This is Evelyn's best dragon face.

They had a lot of new babies.  Baby giraffe, elephant, zebra, leopards, and wild cats, etc.... so cute.

The elephant had it's ears tight against itself to stay warm.  It looked just like a puppy dog.

My monkeys.

This gorilla was fun to watch.  He was very studious and the kids kept saying that we should send the gorilla pictures to Grandpa Wilcox to show him how thoughtful and studious he is.

 This is one of the baby wild cats.

The kids thought this was funny.  The peacock baiting the hungry wolf. 

We even had a science lesson... How light bends in water.

Baby leopard

It started raining like crazy, so we took refuge in the sea lion observation to see if the rain would die down.  The sea lions loved it... they jumped in the water and play fought forever.  They kept trying to look at the kids and see what they were doing too.  They weren't the only animals that liked the rain though.  The rhinos loved it too.

Haha Haha!

Seth is currently standing in the middle of the hall saying, "It's awake time cockadoodledoo!"