The Rest of September

September was a super busy month. Shawn was super busy. He started getting into everything! He's getting the army crawling thing down, sitting up well finally, and starting to pull up to things and see the world in more of a three-dimensional place (instead of just the floor space). I put batteries in our Fisher Price chair (that was a 1st birthday present for Reilly, and is one of the few big toys we've moved all over the country with us. It's always a favorite!) and he is loving it. His other favorites are getting into the bottom drawers in the kitchen and swinging doors open and closed. The weather has been really pleasant for September, at least in the mornings, and Shawn and I have been getting out for some early morning walks.

In the first week of the month we got a ton of rain. Like record-breaking rain, that caused some major flooding. Our part in the excitement was limited (thankfully) to our store room getting kind of soggy on the bottom and to some of our windows leaking. Also, one or two ceiling leaks, but nothing very damaging. It took a while to get the roofing fixed though, because our HOA's roofing company was pretty busy with roofs that had caved in and such during the crazy storms. (It seems like there were two really big ones, just a week or two apart, so they were having a hard time catching up)

Oh! Another exciting thing that happened while we were in California was that Phil & Sophie's baby was born! Hudson Parker is a real cutie, and we were excited to meet him! Kinzi and Baiden came and played with us a couple times in the first week or two, and it was a little crazy having 4 kids 4-and-under, (we even made it to the mall...) but fun.

We've been getting much more regular about having our Family Home Evenings, and though sometimes they go more smoothly than others, it's nice that we're at least having them. It really helps that the kids are old enough that they know when it's Monday, and they ask all day what we're doing. Here are some pictures from a FHE in September. Shawn isn't as interested in what is going on and sometimes needs extra entertaining, especially since it's right before his bedtime and he's getting grumpy.

(leading the music)

Jeremy's MTC companion (who he's stayed in contact with pretty regularly over the last 10 years) finally got married this month! We were so excited for him (them) and I would have loved to have been there. If we hadn't just left the older kids for 4-5 days already (and recently done a long drive with Shawn that didn't go well) I would have tried to go too, but it's wasn't meant to happen. Jeremy had a great visit staying with our friends, the Frandsens (our neighbors at Palmer), and even got to see one of his mission presidents at the wedding. He had an awesome weekend, and a nice little vacation away from everything that he really needed.

Also, Reilly turned 8! Our stake does stake baptisms, which wouldn't be happening until October, which was a little weird, to have him 8, and not baptized yet, but he still had a good birthday. This was not a year for "friend" parties, so we celebrated by having dinner at Chili's, he went to a Diamondbacks game with Daddy and Grandpa, and then we made him a Ninjago cake. He also got this really cool Lego Chima set that Jeremy had found on clearance a month or two before. They were all excited about that one!
(Oh, and one of his favorite presents was also that we signed him up for a 6-week karate course, taught at the school once a week after school. He was very excited about that!)