Halloween

Happy Halloween from our pirate, Harry Potter, tiger, and BYU football player!

Fall Festival

We made it home from camping in time for the boys to play in their soccer game and then head to the Fall Festival at the Valley View Nature Preserve. It's a fun free event that we've enjoyed going to the last couple years. They have horse/pony rides, a petting zoo, pumpkin decorating, hay rides, and face painting. Fun stuff!

 I couldn't get Grace to look at me in any of the pictures because she was too interested in the animals. :)

Camping in Red River Gorge

We went camping in Red River Gorge again this year! Sadly, it wasn't quite as magical as it was last year, but we still had a good time. Last year the weather was much better (cooler), there was not a bug in sight, and we had an awesome secluded campsite. This year, it was too hot, there were bugs everywhere (that darn heat!), and we had noisy neighbors. :( Part of that was my fault since I wanted to be near the bathrooms (hello pregnant bladder), but oh well. We still had a fun time and went on a good hike and got our nature fix!

 Hello Mr. Snake! Yikes!

General Conference

"It's the most...wonderful tiiiiime....of the year!!!"

Okay so usually that's referring to Christmas time, but we love General Conference time! I was so looking forward to this weekend. I offered the kids a bonus on their commissions if they got all their chores done on Friday instead of the usual Saturday so we could feel relaxed and calm for Conference. I was so proud of how hard they worked. Jeremy was out of town Wednesday morning - late Friday night, so the kids and I worked hard until 8pm on Friday night getting the house all clean. I told them I knew it was so hard and they were tired after being at school all day, but I knew it would be worth it. We woke up feeling so grateful we had done that! The boys had a soccer game that morning, but we were home an hour before Conference started and were able to enjoy it!

 When we were first married I used to make a special breakfast for Conference - cinnamon rolls or the like, but since living back East we've moved to fun lunches instead since the first session starts at noon. The kids like to have these "snacky" lunches we call them, so that's what we did. We got Grace down for a nap right before it started and we were all able to really enjoy Conference right off the bat. We also talked about it in Family Night on Monday and for our activity we made "apostle garland", haha, which we hung and then each time one of them spoke we put a sticker on their picture. We also got some cups and labeled them with various topics the kids came up with - faith, Jesus Christ, family, scriptures, etc. and each time they heard that they got to put a little fuzzy in the cup. I'd seen similar ideas before, so I thought it would be fun to try. It seemed to help keep everyone listening a little better, and it was interesting to see which filled up fastest! Jesus Christ and Family were at the top after the first session! I can't think of better ones than that!

I also printed off some coloring pages and activities into a little packet for each of them. We've done this since Eli was little and they look forward to that each time as well. I think being so prepared this year made a huge difference. We felt like we got so much more out of it than we've been able to the last couple years. We always go back and re-listen/read, but it was nice to really get a lot from it right off the bat. It was a wonderful weekend!