october ending

October ends this week. The boys have their costumes figured out and we are doing fall stuff.

Like...

Bodie playing baseball (coach pitch T-ball). He has a very powerful swing. Talk about a power house. But, now we just need him to hit the ball when it's pitched to him. :)  He has fun playing with his little buddy Canon.

Everywhere I look on social media people are showing pics of their cuteness at a pumpkin patch and all the fun that is offered. Not us, this is how we do a pumpkin patch! Smith's, close to home and the boys had a fun time finding their perfect pumpkin. And even helped a few other people reach for one in the back.

 Red Ribbon week is always a fun one at school. It was crazy hair day again, and the one year mark from when my dad passed away last year. I can't believe it's been a whole year. We reminisced of the funeral week from a year before. That evening we visited the cemetery with our ninja and 2 crazy hair boys. Rafe would have no part of his weird brothers.

Greg's cousin had a cousin's Halloween party. We borrowed our costumes from our neighbors and had a good time. Even if Greg removed his hot Hulk costume after 20 minutes. :) I am from the Avengers also, as Black Widow in case you are wondering. Too bad I couldn't find a red wig.

And on Sunday it was the Primary Program. For the first time I had all 4 of my boys up on the stand. Rafe with the little Sunbeams. Greg and I and his parents were childless while watching. I snapped a picture just before they were to go up to the stand. Rafe getting his playing done. Notice the other 3 boys messing around during the beginning. Always commotion on our bench. :)

Happenings

 Here is a picture overview of what we've been up to.

I had a sisters b-day lunch with my sis-in-laws from Greg's family. The short hair in front is not a sister, forgot her name (then there's Laura, Alisa, Anna, me, & Andrea). It was a fun afternoon. Then Bodie decides to lay on me while I was trying "close my eyes and rest" for a bit. If it's not him, it'll be Rafe. The next pic, eBay had a family food truck party. So we tried out a few different ones and enjoyed our evening in Draper in the pic is Rafe and Bo eating away. And we like going out to eat on the weekends, so there we are having Mexican at Lone Star Taqueria, yum.

I took this picture of a old picture of Bodie as a baby and put it on instagram and in a few hours we had 30 likes. It was a fast record for me. I told Bodie it's because he was so cute. It fell out of our bedtime story book, it was a nice surprise. And Greg was on business in San Jose and went to Santa Cruz one evening and sent me the beach picture of himself to make me jealous. The last picture was from when we were driving to the airport to pick up Greg and the sky was on fire!

I'm daring to put this on here, one day Jax will find out and might be mad. But I'm taking a chance with how cute it is and for a little journal for him, since he never uses his. He's had a crush on a girl all last year, and then it still continued this year. She is in our ward, they walk in the group to school together, are in the same class and have obviously liked each other and admitted it to each other recently. Then I saw this on his ipod. We jokingly called her his girl friend. But he immediately corrected us. She is not, just a friend who he "really crushes on". And she likes him too apparently. She started using the heart emoticons first. But they are too young anyway, it was just fun to see the childhood crushes talking or texting together. The blue is Jax. The whole feed is great entertainment to read though. :)

And Greg took Jax and our camper and joined the hunting posse for the annual Elk hunt in the Uinta's. They didn't get one. But they sure had fun while we watched Gen. Conference at home. And it was great, I was the lucky one to clean off all the mud from boots and clothes when they got home.

UEA Fall Break has started. So yesterday we went downtown with my mom to check out the newly redone Church History Museum. It was fun, crowded, and a lot of technology interaction at the museum. Made me wonder where all the artifacts are? A yummy lunch of Lion House Rolls and pie for dessert. Healthy, ay? And then we also did a tour of the Conference Center. My boys have never been. It was really neat. They seemed to like it too. A lot of wow! We were on our feet for hours and were tired and watched a movie at home while Greg worked late at the duplexes getting them winterized. Now we have no idea what on earth to do the rest of the fall break.

 

Rock Climbed

We have been meaning to take our boys rock climbing for a long time, it's been a few years. So we had a free Saturday, the weather was like summer in October so we did it. And it was only 2 minutes from our house. We went past the Iron Curtain rock wall at the mouth of Parley's Canyon and were at a place called the Balcony. It was a cliff hanging hike to get there. We think we found a safer route for next time. And then we did our climbing.

Jax loved it, and did it a couple times. Wanting to time himself. And I can't believe both my older boys were able to fit into my climbing shoes. How are they that big?

 \

It was so so nice to be the in shade the whole time.

In the 3 lower pictures in the collage is our adventure when we were done climbing.

We were headed back to the car, we thought we'd go down instead of up. But as we moved west and had to head up a steep hill and it was causing a rock slide, Greg went up with Jax to the car while the rest of us slid down. Literally slid down on our bums. And while we slid, I slid with Rafe on my lap and a motion of rock slide moving with me. Kinda scary and freaky. It was steep so I was really worried about the safety of my children of course. Cars were driving by pointing at us. I'm sure wondering what on earth we were doing. Ha! I said a few silent prayers and we made it one by one. Greg came along the highway in the car and we all jumped in. The boys thought it was an adventure. Greg and I were glad to get out of a sticky situation. 

No fear, we will do it again. We'll just make sure we plan a little safer. :)

Rafe's school

 Take two! Rafe's second first day of preschool. So this was taken the beginning of October at the first day of starting his new preschool. Good grief what a month of September preschool we had! 

Happy Day!

Here's our story...

We put him in Granite School District - Upland Terrace Preschool, just like his brothers have all done. I have loved it when they are 4 years old. 4 days a week, 3 hrs. a day. And the teachers and classroom have been a great learning environment and helped my children socially and to learn and grow. But this time, with my shy sweet baby of the family. It was a little different. We even had neighborhood friends we signed him up with. Then after 2 weeks in, one of them, his favorite up and left back to our old preschool (felt it wasn't right for them). I was so sad, our carpool was gone, his favorite friend Lucy was gone. She was the only way he would go to school. In fact everyday was a HUGE battle to get Rafe to please get dressed, please get shoes on, lets get in the car... Sometimes I would call Greg and have him tell Rafe he has to because he wouldn't do what I asked and I would get mad. I seriously was late EVERY time I had to drive car pool. It was killing me. Talk about a long month. I was dreading the whole year. I was thinking it was a phase and would change. He just hated it and didn't want to go to school.
 I volunteered a couple times in September and his teacher wanted to talk to me about him. He wouldn't ever play with the other kids, and he wouldn't do what he was asked. What?! My child. That was weird behavior and concerned me. And then we discover a bully in class. This bully was violent, scratched our other friend a blood scratch across her forehead and eye/eye lid. Yikes, then while I was there he full on bit another boy. And the stories of stuff he had done was a list that was growing. We talked with the teacher and district, they were trying to find a solution. In the mean time I was blessed with an opportunity to go back to our old preschool with Miss Jenn from last year. That, Rafe loved and kept talking about. And she even let the other little neighbor girls in also.  I felt like crying when we all got in. So beginning of October we switched schools and now we are back to our 3 kid neighborhood carpool. Rafe likes school and is glad when he goes again.  It has been wonderful.  For whatever reasons, Upland Terrace wasn't a good fit for Rafe and we had an opportunity and switched him.  And I'm not looking back.  Yeah!  Wonderful for him, and for us.  It is a relief.

Rafe is a little turkey. He is always asking for me to take his picture. The scratch on is forehead was from fighting with his brother. Always wanting to play Clumsy Ninja on my phone, I find pictures of Rafe's self portraits all too often, we are still trying to master him putting on his shoes. I know, we are bad and always just do it for him so we need to get the baby of the family to be a little more independent. And then a silly Rafe who likes to hide under a blanket after his cold bowl of cereal in the mornings. And he was walking around with it on his head. Just being silly the way Rafe is silly.