Leaves are Falling All Around

Well, not so much in Arizona. It seems like some of the trees decide it's finally autumn somewhere in November, and the rest wonder if they might have missed it somewhere in February or March and drop a bunch of leaves... Anyway, we've had a very busy fall.

With Reilly turning 12 at the end of September, he was ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood, and also was able to start going to the temple to perform baptisms for the dead. Our Mesa temple (less than a mile from our house) has been closed since spring as they completely redo it and its grounds, AND the Gilbert temple was closed for like a month, so Jeremy took him up to the Phoenix temple for that.

Katy was due for a parent-child trip, and since she turned 8 this year, she got to attend General Conference with Jeremy in Salt Lake City. They made a trip of it, and were gone for like 4 days. They stayed with and visited with a bunch of friends, and saw some different interesting places. Katy really enjoyed having that time with Dad! We tried to have our own Conference fun at home, including making donuts in between sessions!

We started enjoying the weather more in October, and the kids really love to get out. Riverview is a popular destination, with its big awesome park. They weren't too excited about our plan to walk around the little lake that's there first, but it was really nice. :) After that we let them spend a while on all the playground and climbing equipment.

With the cooler weather Reilly's Scout camp outs also resumed, but his first experience as a 12-year-old scout wasn't so great. They had a ton of wind that ended ripping their tents up over and over, and he only slept like 2-3 hours that night! He came home and took his first nap in about 9 years, not counting illness. :)

Some Halloween highlights included having Grammy come down to do a bunch of crafts, the girls had a Halloween party in their dance class, and parties at school, Shawn helped made pumpkin Halloween muffins for his pre-school class, and their Halloween program, etc.

Of course we got some trick-or-treating in, after the traditional meal at Chipotle. It was weird not having Jaina there for dinner, because she was at her friend's little Halloween party before joining us for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. It was the year of reusing costumes, as I think most of them are ones we wore before or for another occasion (in the case of mine and Jaina's), Katy's was found at D.I., (She was NOT Elsa, she was a winter fairy...) and Bridget's adorable little candy corn witch was passed down from one of Jeremy's cousins. We struggle with Halloween since we avoid sugar so hard a lot of the time, but Jeremy traded the kids quarters for a bunch of their Halloween candy, so that made them happy.

November was a little calmer, and had even nicer weather. We actually went down to the Gila Valley for Thanksgiving, and spent time with Jeremy's family members.  It worked out really well, because David and Nicole are living in my parents' house while they're on their mission, but they were coming to Mesa for Thanksgiving, so we were able to stay at their house for the weekend. The two older kids and I did the Turkey Trot with Jeremy's dad, sister, and co, and we did a fun Thanksgiving breakfast with them. A couple hours later we went up to Thatcher and did Thanksgiving lunch/dinner with Jeremy's mom and sister, and then we took some family pictures afterwards at the golf course. They turned out pretty good for taking ourselves with a tripod and a timer!