September and October

Catch up. Haha. Like that's even possible. I enjoy each of our children, and my life is good, but I get frustrated at how I can't live this life and also keep up on documenting it. But I can't just stop trying. It's too important to me! So I do what I can here and there, and when I catch up on some family videos, or family scrapbook, or individual scrapbooks, or my blog/journaling, it does bring me joy. So here goes.

Other Exciting Things That Happened in September:
* We went to a 9/11 thing in downtown Mesa with Jeremy's dad. The kids enjoyed seeing the firetrucks and climbing around on them. It was really still too hot too bit out even at 7 PM, but it was nice to do something different.
*A lot of our Weech family was in town at the same time (even Nicole and Carlee) and we got to celebrate my nephew Hudson's first birthday. Always fun!
*Jaina decided to try tumbling this year instead of dance, and her classes (Monday afternoons) started.
*Shawn starting learning how much trouble he could get into if employing our tall stool to climb up to reach things.
*Shawn and I went to Makutu's Island with Carlee and Nicole for their toddler time. It was crazy, but fun.
*I finally took the box of t-shirts I have been hauling around for 10-15 years and cut them up and turned them into a blanket. One side is mostly high school, and the other side is BYU and some stuff we've done since we got married.
*We got a new vacuum! This was very exciting, since our previous one is one we got for $50 (highly recommended though) when we first moved to Iowa. It just was NOT picking stuff up anymore. We got a Shark from Sam's Club, and it was amazing what it managed to pull out of the carpet in it's first day or two on duty.
*Reilly and I got a chance to go to one of Spencer's football games down here at Phoenix Christian. They hadn't had any really close games yet that season, but it was a really tense, fun game (that we thankfully won). Reilly usually goes to bed by 8:30 though, and he was dragging by the time it was over around 9:30.
*Reilly turned 9 and had a fun friend party at Mesquite Groves Aquatic Center. They had a blast, and there was very little planning/clean up for us. Win-win!
*We got to spend an evening checking out the Supermoon Lunar Eclipse, and went to our friend's house, the Shoemakers, to check it out through their fancy telescope.

October: 

Great, awesome month. 

Early in the month we used our POGO passes to take the kids to a Diamondbacks game with Jeremy's dad and sister. Fun, but they usually go a little late when our kids are used to being in bed by 7 and 8. Riding the Light rail is always fun though, and they loved exploring Chase Field.

We took advantage of October break and of the (very large) nest egg I'd been saving up, apart from our budget (by selling things we didn't really need and by doing a painting for my dad) and went on our first real family vacation since we went to Disneyland in early 2013. One of my best friends helped make it possible by offering to let us stay in her family's beach house near Carlsbad. It was a great trip! My friends and their families joined us for the first two days, and it was so fun to be all together and to enjoy the beach! In October many of the places around San Diego do kids free deals. We took advantage of that to visit Legoland (the kids had been dying to go - we had fun, but I don't see repeat trips in our future) and the San Diego Zoo, which was awesome. We also went to the Mornin Battalion visitors' center and stopped to see the San Diego Zoo. Our AZ Science Center membership hot us into two big museums in San Diego, and we checked out Balboa Park the same  evening. It was a busy trip, and we wore ourselves out a bit, but it was fun.

In true feast or famine style, we got some nice pictures of our whole family together on our vacation, then also finally got some official family pictures taken by Debe Jorgensen. We did them at the Mesa Arts Center, and they turned out amazing! It was a good choice to do them outside instead of in a studio, which I think would have been a disaster with our busy group.

We finished up the month of October by celebrating fall and Halloween several different ways. We had dinner and did a fun pumpkin patch with Jeremy's mom, Ashley, and Chloe, and the kids got to pick out pumpkins and do a Halloween craft at home. We carved/painted pumpkins for a family night activity. Then the day before Halloween the two little kids and I did trick-or-treating on Main Street, and we did some regular trick or treating Halloween night, as well as dinner at Chipotle. But I'm glad we did the other stuff earlier, because Halloween night was one of those "expectations vs. reality" nights, and it was a little rough here and there. Especially when Reilly ended up home throwing up instead of going around the neighborhood, and Jeremy was wiped out after several days out of town and didn't feel up to much gallivanting and celebrating.

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!)