This week's pictures

Why do all kids feel the need to try shoving something up their nose and see how that works out for them? Apparently Chloe hit that phase yesterday and she shoved this little berry up her nose. I managed to get it out without any tears, which is a minor miracle. At least it wasn't a lego. That's what at least two of my other children tried. I don't remember Spencer doing this, but Genevieve and Aaron most certainly did. 

Speaking of Chloe, this picture is a once in a lifetime shot. She maybe has never slept in a stroller. We just don't pull it out hardly ever. We put her on our shoulders or she walks. She's a trooper. But I had an appointment yesterday and she fell asleep in the van. As I picked her up and planned to carry her, it suddenly occurred to me that I have her jogging stroller in the back of the van. Score! She slept through my entire appointment. I felt like a first-time mom pushing a stroller through a building, which I also haven't done in years because I have so many kids and strollers are huge, this was like a little deja vu. Good times. And bless that stroller for being able to be opened one-handed because I thought of it after I picked up the sleeping princess.

 Bill 3D printed a wolf woggle for Spencer's Cub Scout uniform. Cool dad points right there! Spencer painted it Sunday and it looks pretty cool.

 Genevieve painted her tiny halloween pumpkin she got from a school field trip.

 Bill and I carved the other three's pumpkins. The boys drew their faces on and we carved them. Genevieve designed Chloe's. Yellow is her favorite color, so obviously that's a perfect Halloween carving idea, right? lol

 Aaron the ninja.

 I finally finished Chloe's afghan. She's pleased with it, therefore I am pleased with it.

 Cutie unicorn Chloe at the ward Fall festival party.

 I made these picture frames and immediately decided they are way darker than I want. Oh well though! Not going through the effort to change them anytime soon. That's the downside of building your own stuff. Sometimes it doesn't quite turn out as you expect. I like them better than the criss cross frames, but still not perfect yet.

Where is October going?

I moved this bookshelf 90 degrees this morning so that those pillows wouldn't be sitting right in front of the heater vent. I was going to put that blanket bin in the corner but Chloe claimed it. It's a great reading nook for a two-year-old!

 I've been working steadily on this afghan for Chloe and I'd be a lot further if I didn't keep having to backtrack for big mistakes. It's a monotonous pattern, albeit a very cute one, and yet it has seven different rows, so I have to keep track and I have missed an important part two different times and had to take out a bunch of rows. Lame! But one of these days I will finish it and I may swear of crocheting. I am not enjoying it. But I do like how the afghan is turning out, so there is that.

 I redid three frames over this last week. Here's one. Honestly, I think it's too dark. Love the color, but when I put the picture in I was like...meh. I'm not going to change it now though! Maybe when we move into a new place with new colors, if I don't like these there I'll think about changing the color, but for now it's going to stay just the way it is. One bright note, I save screws and nails and things from projects and have them stored in a box in my tools. I needed a hanger and a very tiny screw to hang this thing. I had one that was just a tad too long and it didn't work. I went and found my bag of screws and it was magic, as always. I found a set of two hangers and the exact size screws I needed in it. Perfect!

 I bought a bunch of 5x7 frames to put all our cute pictures in from our fall photo shoot. Eventually these will all go in my collage wall that I'll expand with these, but there isn't room there on the particular wall it's on now, so instead I used the top of my piano, a bunch of chapter books for the back row props, and it'll do for now. 😃

 Finished this project with my activity day girls this week. I love how it turned out. Also, I'm amused by Bill's antics. We got 12 5x7s in the mail and he hung them up sans pictures on every nail he could find, even moving the art that was in the dining room to do it. Lol.

 My mom sent me a shot of her, her sister, and my grandma. She and Grandma are on a mission in Phoenix and they've taken the opportunity to go to all five temples in Arizona. They look so good!

 Bill andAaron's soccer season ended and we had a little end of season party. It was fun and so cute to see Bill with these seven kids that absolutely adored him as a coach.

 We got Halloween costumes this week and I love them. Chloe is a unicorn.

 Aaron is the Flash or Green Lantern, depending on the day.

 Genevieve is a peacock.

 Spencer is Mace Windu. They can't wait for trick or treating this week and next. I remember as a kid I never had really awesome Halloween costumes. Well that's not completely true, but Halloween wasn't a huge holiday at my house. I don't think my parents loved it. Anyway, I've muddled my way through costumes for a couple of years and this year I finally decided, dang it, we're going to just get costumes and the kids will be so happy and I'll add a line in my budget for costumes every year and call it good! So that's what I did and they love them and my heart is happy. And I'm not stressed over last minute costume creation. Woot!

Social Media Fast

I'm a week into my social media fast and there are definite pros and cons. I feel more isolated from friends. But I also feel like I waste less time. I've gotten a lot done this week. I miss sharing pictures and funny stories. I don't miss the drama from the news, but then again, if something major happened, I wouldn't know about it. I like being less distracted at home when my family is here. I like carrying my phone less. I didn't realize how many times a day when I was having downtime that I turned to social media. My mind is quieter without it.

So in a few days when I check back in, hopefully I'll keep some of the good things from the fast, but also enjoy some of the things I like about social media.

Chloe fell asleep using Genevieve's hip as a pillow. Doesn't look comfortable to me, but it was so heartwarming to walk in on this.

 Oy, Chloe is so cute. Every time Bill moved his head, she pulled him back in.

 I am halfway done with this afghan my friend gave me a huge ball of yarn to make. Unfortunately it's only half as big as it needs to be. So i went shopping for a matching yarn and thought I found the best one I could find, but when I started adding to the first half, it isn't really the same. But Chloe really loves it already, so I guess we'll have two different colors for the two halves. The first half is lemon yellow. The second half is egg yolk yellow. Oh well. Such is life. I still love the diamond design. It's a bit boring to crochet, but the result is great.

 The kids have been experimenting with making whirlpools using my milk frother. I don't have a picture of Spencer doing it, but he's actually the ringleader. It's fun to watch them get all scientific.

 I took the two bigs to a young women's activity where they were practicing face painting for the ward activity in a couple weeks. These were a couple of 15 year-olds doing the painting and they did such a great job on Spencer and Genevieve.

I don't remember why I took this picture but you can't go wrong with a sleeping baby shot.

General Conference

Not a picture of Aaron to be found this week. I promise he was here. This weekend was General Conference, which I always super look forward to. It also happened to be Cub Parent Weekend for Spencer's pack and I didn't notice the overlap until after I had signed myself, Spencer, and Genevieve up to go to it. So we missed conference on Saturday, but got back in time Sunday morning to watch all of Sunday and I watched the women's session Sunday night. So many great things from this edition of General Conference. I'm still processing. But first, here's some pictures from the overnight. 

 Spencer was super excited to learn how to use a flint and steel. I'm going to order him his own here soon because he loves it so much.

 He was a big fan of all the activities. Here is archery.

 We started out the day making pool noodle horses and doing races. Genevieve spent far more time coloring her horse than actually racing, and she had no problem with that.

 The camp was super nice. Lots of grass, nice trails, trees. The campsite was great.

 We stayed in these bunk bed lean to things. I was shocked how clean they were. Shocked in a pleasant way.

 We had a great weekend. BB guns, archery, slingshots, fire building, campfire, s'mores, sleeping out. It was perfection for my two bigs.

 Chloe still doesn't have a lot of hair, but the longer it gets the more it curls. She's my only one of the four that looks to have curls all over her head. You can see Genevieve in the background of this shot. She has big waves in the bottom half of her hair too. We'll see how Chloe's turns out if it ever decides to grow.

 Chloe has been huge into reading lately. She reads in her chair, in bed, on the couch. Pretty much anywhere is good.

 She lost her blankie, lovingly known as Whita, for three days. We found it in our freezer bag in the back of the van. That is an excellent hiding place. She was so happy to have it back.

Okay, so back to General Conference. I had a number of takeaways. 

First, it's time to be more proactive and intentional in living life and the gospel. We've been in a holding pattern in life in general for 18 months as we try to finish this PhD of Bill's, and it's time to shake off the funk per se and move onto being more decisive about how we're living our life. 

Second, two-hour church is just crazy! There have been wishful rumors for years and I was completely blown away when Bill texted me that news. 

Third, I'm doing a 10-day media fast like President Nelson challenged us. So good luck even finding this blog post because I'm off Facebook and Instagram for now. Makes for lots more productive time in my day. I already get less distracted while I work in the morning and at night. That's a huge bonus.

Fourth, I'm also taking the challenge to read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year. I like to listen to my scriptures on the LDS app, and I've spent the morning breezing through seven chapters. I like so far that I'm getting the cohesive story better than just my typical one chapter a day pace. 

Fifth, I'm taking the challenge to refer to the Church by its full name. I feel like it falls under the category of I can do hard things. It's not that hard, but saying I'm Mormon is kind of the lazy method and doesn't lead to any conversation, so I'm going to push myself to be a little more forward in that. 

It was an excellent weekend. I still need to catch up on the Saturday sessions, but what I heard already was wonderful. 

How is it October already?

September was gone in the blink of an eye. Seriously, I can't believe it's over already. It was a great month. Lots of soccer, gymnastics, scouts, swimming at the lake just a bit more.

Genevieve got her ears pierced this weekend. It was quite a lot more dramatic than I expected. I took her to a piercing/tattoo parlor, and they were absolutely fabulous, but the first ear hurt more than she expected and she was really scared to do the second. It was a very long evening but in the end she was so courageous. She knew it would hurt and she sat still and let her second ear be done. I was really proud of her, albeit completely worn out myself from working through it with her. She's SO happy to have them done now and is dreaming of all the earrings she will wear.

She was my shopping partner buying some new shoes too. Turns out she has quite the wild taste in shoes, lol. These cute heels were pretty tame in the list of recommendations of shoes she thought I should buy.

Chloe swiped Aaron's shirt the other day. She's been doing that lately with Genevieve's clothes and now it looks like Aaron's shirts are on the table too. Lucky girl.

This is going to be a hugely exciting month for us. Dissertation is getting finished, hopefully dissertation defense will happen, and the job hunt is on. Wish us luck and send any prayers our way if you're so inclined.