Just Now

Abbey and I just sorted through the basket of a million unmatched socks.  She did just enough time (35 minutes) to earn the last seven checks she needed to earn the art project book she's been working towards for three weeks.

The girls are busily working at the table with their new treasures.  Bennett is happily making the now-empty laundry basket his boat.  I'm finishing up the rest of the laundry, listening to Frances England, and all is right in the world....

October--in about a thousand pictures

Fall Time = Redeemed!  Autumn has not been kind to me in years past.  It's been almost six consecutive years of morning sickness or exhaustion from a new baby that just happened to land in the fall.  And for some reason I put all the blame on the season :)  I fell back in love--just in time to move away from a good autumn from now on.  (J signed a contract this month for a job in a notably warmer climate!)

We started out the month with a minor eye surgery for Hayden.  We've been battling infections in her eyelids all summer and recently, staff marginal disease (yeah...I don't really know...)  It ended up being a bit of a bigger deal once they got in there, but everything went great.  What I was NOT prepared for was how swollen she would look and angry she would be coming out of anesthesia.  Justin told me (after the fact) that a small percentage of kids can have a violent reaction to the anesthesia.  And boy.  I was not ready for that.  I couldn't tell if she was in pain but was completely helpless to comfort her--she wanted nothing to do with me.  She only had on panties, but we eventually decided to just wrap her in hospital blankets and get her out of there, which is what finally worked to calm her.  It was disturbing to see her acting like that and my body was shaking when I sat down in the car, but I'll be better prepared for it next time! 

We spend a lot of nights at the botanical gardens by our house.  They have a children's garden that is just perfect.  I love seeing it change through each season and every corner is so thoughtfully planned out.  They grow a lot produce for visitors to pick--the girls love to make a salad every time we go.  A salad that they make Dad eat :)

Bennett is my wilderness man--he loves to be outside.  He spent a long time picking up and rearranging these blocks of wood.  Then he went straight over to a bunch of stools and did the exact same thing!  So productive :)

Abbey and Hayden's imaginations go WILD in this place.  They had some elaborate story going on about this decorative rock thing--something about needing to find all the pieces and put it at the top of the tower to save the kingdom....they wouldn't stick around long enough to explain it to me :)

  

 

  Justin's mom came into town for a weekend.  She and J have a special relationship and it's nice to see them enjoy each other's company so much.  He had a morning off work and wanted to show her his favorite park.  He takes Abbey and Hayden here a lot but I had never been.  I thought I'd come along and run along the trails, but ended up taking pictures the whole time.  It was just so gorgeous, I couldn't run past it.

The two of them LOVED this tree.  I walked past it twice without noticing it.  It is pretty stinking cool.  Justin says he just wanted to see if they could stretch their arms around the trunk but Kathy fully admitted she just wanted to hug this tree!

;

The next event was the Notre Dame vs BYU game in South Bend.  A few months ago, my good friend, Kara, offered to take my kids overnight anytime we wanted to go out.  I do love college football, especially live games, but this was not what I intended to use Kara's day for.  But it was really important to Justin--I'll cash in those points with him another time!  We had a hookup through some Notre Dame faculty so sat in a sea of Fighting Irish fans.  I was uncomfortable when we got there and looked up longingly to the section of BYU fans at the top.  But the Irish surprised us, they were awesome!  They easily complimented BYU and would turn and objectively discuss plays with Justin, I loved it.  Always a fan of good sportsmanship.  And it's always fun to listen to J talk about the game--he knows it inside and out and it amazes me what he catches and sees in each play.  I wish I would have posted something about it on facebook beforehand.  We ran into people from all different phases of our lives, but there were over a dozen more people I would have LOVED to see and hang out with if I'd known they were there.

I ended up doing a lot of photo shoots this fall and didn't think until the last week of good fall colors that I wanted a picture of MY family.  So late one afternoon I called up my friend, Sara, on a whim.  She amazingly got her whole family picture ready and met us at a berry farm an hour later.

We've been meaning to get some 1-year pictures of Ms Kate, and she was adorable, as usual.  I love that little face.

I love the next two pictures of Abbey, Hayden, and Jake.  Those three are thick as thieves.

Now finishing up with Halloween! I told the girls I'd only buy non-princess costumes.  They got around it by being a 'Spanish Princess' (flamenco dancer) and a 'Hula Princess'.  I'm not sure where Bennett's costume came from, I think it was from a pile of dress-ups I inherited from Mom's house.  He was perfectly adorable in it, though, and roared whenever we said, 'bennett the lion'.

Hayden's preschool class went trick-or-treating at the Big House earlier in the day.  I lost my locker key at the gym that morning (spoiler alert, it was in my pocket the whole time!) so pretty much missed the outing.  But the two of them gave me ten seconds to grab a picture :)  Abbey was at school--she asked that we not come to the Halloween parade.  Why?  Because she wanted to ride the bus home.  I could tell she felt bad saying it, but it would have been hard to skip Bennett's nap and expect much out of him that night, so I assured her it was fine.  Then I felt bad for feeling so relieved...sigh.  We were both happy yet full of guilt.

We had some friends over for dinner before trick-or-treating.  To round out my scattered brain day, I forgot to put the chicken in the chicken noodle soup and forgot to put the salt in the wheat bread. Then we headed out with this crew (Jake, Kate, Abbey, Hayden and Bennett; just missing Desmond the Raccoon, who figured out this night and was off to the next house).  Hayden opted out of the hula girl costume and went with 80's prom queen awesomeness.

While we were trick-or-treating, Abbey said, "Mom, you can't vote for Mitt Romney.  He stabbed someone in the back."  (She's been going back and forth this month--Obama, Romney, Obama, Romney.)  I asked what she meant by that and she motioned a stabbing gesture with her hand and said, "He killed someone!"  Oh my...the knowledge gained on the school bus.  She and I had a disjointed conversation about it in between stopping at the next few houses.  Funny girl.  Then she told Justin about the sexy girl in her gymnastics class.  He obviously questioned her to figure out what she was talking about {and why she knew that word!}  Turns out she was describing 'snotty' or 'snobby' and he told her to use that word instead (or Mom thinks NONE at all)!  She said, "Oh, I'll just use sexy to describe that."  Yikes.  So today she was asked to give a short talk in her primary at church.  Justin wrote something up for her, but last night, she said she wanted to just write it herself.  I said, "Sounds good, what do you want to say?"  She said, "You'll just have to hear it tomorrow in primary."  Yeah right!  Not after all the quirky conversations we've been having this week.  Love her; her talk was hilarious but also sweet, sincere, and appropriate.