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!

Nobody actually reads blogs anymore, right?

I like Facebook. But I spend way too much time there accomplishing almost nothing, and use a lot of emotional energy empathizing with people that are having a hard time, or reading random facts about other people I barely know in real life (or don't know at all, really). I miss blogging. I miss lots of people having blogs. I enjoyed reading what people were up to, seeing their cute pictures, and getting a glimpse into their life. I don't know many people that still blog regularly, and I don't think I'll become one of them. Five kids has kind of done me in. So many things I used to enjoy, or at least used to get done at a decen pace, have fallen by the wayside... Katy pulled out her first year scrapbook the other day and I realized it wasn't done. It's like 1/3 done. And she just turned 7. Sigh.
I don't know why five has been so much harder (it seems) than four. Maybe because Katy was a year older than Shawn when she was born. Maybe because there was just a touch bit more space for four little people in our 3-bedroom rental than there is for five. I really don't know.

Nursing went better with Bridget than with Shawn, (not having a c-section or tongue tie helped a TON) but there was still lots of worrying and donor milk and supplementing and pumping. She was getting a few extra oz a day of donor milk until about 2-3 months until she decided bottles were not for her and she refused to take them anymore. And then I worried about her very slow weight gain and nursed and nursed and nursed and had to eat a ton of food to keep my milk supply even adequate for the next 4 months until she finally decided to take a bottle again at 7 months. By 9.5 months she was completely on formula (Nutramigen) since my supply declined rapidly once we started supplementing again, and I have been mostly just relieved. I am so grateful I was able to nurse her so much and give all of them a good start, but I sincerely hope I never have to try to nurse another baby. And I pray my girls won't have the same trouble I did when they have babies of their own someday!

We sent my little brother, Spencer, off on a mission to Tampico, Mexico in November. It was really awesome to be together with all my siblings in the temple the month before that, and it has been cool to see how much he has grown and matured in the last year or two as he has prepared for this. I still can't believe he's all grown and off saving China, since I was almost 16 when he was born, and helped raise him quite a bit for the first 4 years of his life before I transferred to BYU. It was especially fun to have David surprise most of us and fly home from Kentucky (where he's been going to medical school) when we were all there for Spencer's farewell. Spencer has been out like 8-ish months now, and he's doing awesome.

One of our biggest adventures of the last year was our family trip to Disneyland. It had been almost 4 years since we had taken the kids, and they have been asking to go back ever since. For some reason I thought going with a 4-month old wouldn't be too bad, since they're still pretty portable at that age, and Shawn was still free until last mid-December, so we decided to do it the week after Thanksgiving. We got an AirBnb with two bedrooms/2 bathrooms and a living area so we'd have plenty of space, sprung for 4-day tickets, so we could take our time, and loaded up an amazing amount of stuff into our Honda Odyssey (which I love) and headed to California. (A good friend lent us her double jogging stroller, so we didn't have to try to pack ours) Our kids had a blast, mostly, and have great memories from our trip, and ask when we're going back. But Jeremy and I are a bit traumatized. The first day, instead of being the Best. Day. Ever. (like our first trip) was pretty rough, starting when Shawn woke at 3:30 AM local time and the other 3 olders woke at 4:30. And nobody went back to sleep or napped. Ever. And Jeremy was sick with a bad cold the whole time, and just tried to soldier through as much as he could. I think the latest we managed to stay one night was about 7:30 PM maybe. We barely made rope drop (and it was at like 10 am most days), never saw any fireworks, Bridget was too stimulated to nurse well half the time, but wouldn't sleep out and about unless Jeremy was wearing her (not me) and were an exhausted mess (the parents) by the time we were done. And my, was it expensive. But we rode everything we wanted to (usually several times), including the misses from the first trip. Reilly and Jaina were both tall enough for Screamin' (one loved it, one hated it). All three older kids got to do the Jedi Training Academy, and they -loved- Hyperspace Mountain. Shawn loved all of it, and had a blast, and only got lost once. We enjoyed all the holiday decor, and got to experience the holiday versions of Small World, Jungle Cruise, and Haunted Mansion. Bridget did pretty awesome, other than not nursing well, and I got to check out both baby care areas. We managed to see the parade, though getting a seat was a little iffy. We got a ton of cute pictures, and made some more memories for the kids. Jeremy said we need to go back, just the two of us, so he can remember that he likes Disneyland again though.

As soon as we got back from Disney, we jumped back in the car and headed to Flagstaff for a fun Polar Express experience that Abbie had planned for the kids for part of their Christmas. They had a great time, and we enjoyed it. We probably would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't been so exhausted, but it was fun to go up in the cold and see some snow and be together with Jeremy's family.

Our other big adventure in the last few months has been Jeremy moving his chiropractic business into his own office. It has been quite the endeavor, and has been very exciting and fairly nerve-wracking. It's hard to take on all the debt and responsibility of being in charge of your own office, and hope that things continue to go well and you can pay all the bills and still have enough left over to take care of all your family's needs. It has been fun, but I also look forward to being a year or two forward in this process and having all the dust (literally) settled.

This summer has been a little overwhelming for me so far. Okay, a lot overwhelming. There are lots of wants and needs and questions and arguments and kids wanting to go-and-do all the time. And with 5 kids (including a baby), in this heat, I don't feel much up to going-and-doing. Things kind of came to a head a week or two ago when we had Cub Scout day camp (I was called to be a wolf leader earlier this year) and I ended up doing a lot of the coordinating. I think my coping skills just got maxed out, and it was harder for me to not yell at the kids and spend a lot of time wishing everyone would just leave me alone and stop talking to me. I'm working on my self a lot, and taking time for quiet, and creating, and the scriptures, and writing out my feelings (on paper!?) so they can get released little by little and not explode in frustrated little thunderclouds. Hopefully it will help, because there are only 5 weeks of summer left, and I want us to have some more good times.