Fall photo shoot

The leaves were beautiful and I was in the mood to take pictures and capture these cute babies of ours in this stage of their lives.  Enjoy!

A picture of Noah doing the same thing.

Fall Break Family Bike Ride

I wanted to do ONE family activity over fall break.  I wanted it to be something that everyone could participate in, I wanted it to be outdoors, maybe fall-ee, maybe active, maybe cheap, and maybe kind-pf hard.  Is that too much to ask?  Well, we did it.  We decided to take a bike ride along that Platte River Trail to a pumpkin festival.  It was only 3 miles, and it was a beautiful day. 

The pictures do NOT capture the beauty.  The leaves look brown, they were yellow and bright and spectacular.

Phew, this is a picture when we got there.  Jason didn't ride with us, he lovingly drove the car there, so that they babies didn't have to ride back and I could rush them home for their naps.  Jason is the perfect "behind the scenes manager" that helps pull off my ideas and makes sure things run smoothly.  

Once we got to Hudsen Gardens we walked around and looked at the pumpkins.

Then we ate some lunch and called it a day!

 

Fall Break

I had a vision for fall break.  For the last few months I have been taking the babies to story/singing time at the library.  As I sat there I saw how fun it was, how much joy it brought (to the babies and me), and I also saw so many moms learning how to interact with their babies.  I thought "I want the "big kids" to come experience this with the babies".  So over fall break I dropped them off at the library and I had them take them to story time.  All 4 of them were nervous and didn't want to do it, but they all enjoyed it and said they would do it again.  

 

Eve was nervous but Noah was GREAT with her and took care of her and even got her to be involved a little.

I usually have big goals and plans for school breaks.  This break I didn't.  I even didn't make them deep clean their rooms... gasp! I made them do the library thing and I made us do one family activity (bike ride post coming next).  Other than that they did what they wanted.  (Except for Brock - he had a lot of missing assignments to work on and a lot of football)

Other happenings:

Madison took Zoe swimming in the swimsuit that her grandma got her for her birthday.  The girls also had a sleep over one night. 

We played wallball for the majority of fall break because Madison kept wanting to. It was fun because as you can see  Eve thinks that when you get a tennis ball you throw it at the garage. 

I took some young men to the temple.  They did baptisms while I did invitatories.  

Brock had a stake Halloween dance.  The dance was kind of far away (in a barn) and all his guy friends were out of town so he went with 2 young women, haha.  And not pictured was Noah going with David and Riley to his first "haunted house" (really a haunted forest).

We supported our niece, Alaana in her marching band competition. 

I did my usual outings with the babies and had random girls with me random times.  Madison almost always came with me.  Usually she roller bladed around while the babies played at the park.  On this day she read.

And that's about it.  A pretty chill fall break.

Potty Training and other grown up things

I really don't have pictures to accompany this post, you would think I would take pictures about milestones like this, but it turns out I didn't for my older kids either.  I tried to find a record for when I potty trained, moved out of high chair, moved to toddler bed, etc my toddlers and for all the record keeping I do - those things seem to elude me.  Regardless or record though these things need to happen and happen they have... sort of.

Dane is a different kids than my others.  There are so many factors that it is hard to know if he really is different, if I am different, or if it is just circumstance/situational.  While I do spend quite a bit of time contemplating these factors I recognize that it doesn't really matter which one it is, I have to figure out how to HELP HIM.

We started with potty training and that went pretty standard and a week in he was great.  But then he started wetting the bed at night and naps.  I knew consistency was king so we just kept going.  I tried every trick in the box.  Nothing worked.  One of the things we tried was moving to a toddler bed.  That didn't help at all, but only created another host of problems.  Eventually I surrendered and put him in diapers for bed time and naps.  He didn't regress during the day, which was great.  Noah went back in diapers for sleeping too, so I know it isn't a big deal.

Then the toddler bed.  It also worked great at first, but after a week it went down hill quick.  He was up and out of his bed constantly.  When I put him down, in the middle of the night, early in the morning and all morning long.  His whole personality changed.  Our relationship changed.  Some days I was over ly emotional about it - that didn't help.  But I really went a few weeks being calm as a cucumber, embracing this stage of my/his life and stayed consistent and loving.  That, also, didn't help anything.  After trying ALL the tricks, I, again, surrendered and we put him back in his crib.  He was happy.  But within about 2 weeks he discovered he could climb out.  It started all over again.  Currently I have him in a sleep sack.  He can climb out if her REALLY wants too.  But he doesn't.  So for now we have a happy toddler and a happy mom.  But I recognize a pattern and I am going to have to learn to be flexible with him.  He may be a two steps forward, one step backwards kind of person.  We will see.