Halloween Town

Guys.  There is SOOOOOO much Fall festive-ness to catch up on!  Between our first family trip to a pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago and a quick trip out to Utah for me and Scott (and the sugar baby) this past weekend, I've probably got a million pictures and stories to unload.  For tonight, however, I have to get our Halloween pictures up and running!

First off, there was a whole lot of last minute scrambling for costumes, but in the end, I'd say the kids all pulled through in the clutch.  Hahaha.  Because Scott and I were gone Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday -- and the rest of the kids were with the cousins until Sunday afternoon -- we didn't use our time wisely enough before the weekend to make sure we had everything in order for the big holiday.  And since we also ended up missing the ward Halloween party on Friday night because we were all out of town, we didn't have our usual trial run occasion for testing out ideas and getting things in order ahead of time.  Couple that with the fact that our van was in the shop all day yesterday, and what I had left to work with was Isaac's preschool time this morning from 9-1 to get everything done!

 

 (So random, but really cool!  There was an upside down rainbow right over our house while we were taking pictures outside.)

Our costumes for the year were as follows:

Ethan -- opted not to really dress up again this year, but humored me for a group shot with all the kids by throwing on a graduation robe and calling himself "man with a cloak."

Grace -- picked out a gorilla suit at Target last week when we were there shopping for warmer clothes for Sophie.  She spent the evening trick-or-treating with friends just like last year.

Sophie --  after searching online for a LONG time to find different ideas for "creative" costumes, settled on a box of tissues.  Apparently she is a tissue snob and vetoed the "Kleenex" online and went with "Puffs" instead.  Grace {excitedly} helped put this ensemble together.

 "Blowing her nose."

 "Blowing her nose" again.  ;)

Jane -- went with a last minute switcheroo, and told me this morning that instead of a candy corn she wanted to be a witch.  Bam.  Easy peasy lemon sneasy.  And super cute to boot.  ;)

 (It got a little cold.)

Alex --  really surprised me by choosing the astronaut costume I found in the dress up bin in the basement when I thought for sure he'd feel too self-conscious about wearing such a conspicuous get-up.  I guess my baby is really growing up.  Hahaha.

 (He was so excited to finally put up those "spider webs.")

Isaac -- may have eschewed a costume for preschool this morning, but once all the kids were dressed this afternoon, allowed himself to be coerced into wearing the {slightly too small} frog costume that Ethan wore when he was a toddler.  I'll have to dig up that picture for comparison's sake, because it's too cute not to.  :)

 He LOVED carrying around that bucket.

 

It was a little weird this year only having THREE little ones with us going to door-to-door, but I guess that's just the stage of life we're at.  :(  Ethan stayed home to hand out candy again this year (and did a bang-up job setting up the Halloween-y decor on the front step) and Grace and Sophie both opted for friends rather than family to make all their trick-or-treating dreams come true.  The good news is that we still have several more years ahead of us where we'll have little ones at home who will want to go with mom and dad.  Hahaha.  ;)

 Just a few minutes before Sophie's costume knocked the bowl to the ground and it shattered into a million pieces. 

 "Trick or Treat!"

And that was our night!  No one really ate anything substantial for dinner, and everyone gorged on quite a bit of candy this evening, so tomorrow should be interesting to say the least.  Especially since the party will continue on throughout the week as Grace's 13th birthday is tomorrow, and we'll be celebrating as a family on Saturday! 

H A P P Y   H A L L O W E E N ! ! !

We Can DO It

A few days ago, I realized that I had never blogged about our family theme for the school year.  I had this whole idea formed to tie it into the symbolism of running another race this fall, but then life intervened and provided a much stronger framework for highlighting this concept than I could have come up with on my own.  And really -- I'm sure that no one is anxiously awaiting ANOTHER race recap from yours truly.  Hahahaha.  {But rest assured that I'm still gonna put up some race pictures and attempt to draw some parallels between the metaphorical and the practical of applying the principle of "We Can Do It" in our everyday lives.}  ;)

When last we left off, we were optimistically hopeful that Jane's breathing was all better and that she'd be back at school the next day.  What happened instead was that Scott left early last Wednesday morning to head out to BYU for recruiting purposes and didn't return until Saturday afternoon.  In the course of that time, I ended up taking Jane BACK to the doctor's office two more times, as she started running a fever shortly after Scott left, and it kept spiking back up at least once a day for the rest of the school week.  With her cough sounding junkier and her breathing sounding a bit more asthma-y on Friday night at bedtime, I decided that we would probably end up needing that chest x-ray after all, and took her in on Saturday morning.  Third time's the charm?  I guess?  Because it wasn't until this third visit of the week, that Jane's sickness finally caught up with her enough to make her ACT like she was actually sick while we were there.  Hahaha.  I think that's what concerned our doctor the most when she came into the room on Saturday morning -- seeing Jane laying on the examining table and looking droopy and dragging as she checked her out, when the previous two times we were there, Jane was still partially bouncing off the walls.

 (Coloring in the waiting room during visit number 2 of 3)

She sent us over to the children's hospital outpatient lab to get a chest x-ray to determine if pneumonia was the culprit behind the slump.  And lo and behold it was.  Apparently she had a bit of pneumonia forming in the lower right lobe of her lung, and after picking up a prescription for Amoxicillin and receiving orders to have her rest as much as possible we were on our way. 

 She kind of looked so adorable doing the chest x-ray.

So yeah.  This last week was hard.  Having Scott gone while taking care of 6 kids is challenging enough, but adding sickness to the mix just gave it an extra kick.  ;)  Not to mention with the family room being turned into a sick bay/movie theater -- and Jane out of commission for chores because of her illness and Ethan excusing himself from chores because of his stress fracture -- the house has been slowly but surely turning into a disaster zone.  {Not that it needed much help in that department.}

So there you have it.  Life can be hard.  Parenting is hard.  Sticking to your guns while parenting is even harder.  It's stressful and a WHOLE lot of work a lot of the time.  Yes, it has it's rewards -- everything worthwhile does -- but it's easy to get discouraged when the going gets tough.  Especially when it's easier to just give up.  {And in full disclosure, I did give up on trying to get anyone to help with basic life responsibilities this past week.}  But that's what we're trying to burn into the fleshy tables of ALL of our hearts this year -- WE CAN DO IT.  We can do hard things.  Especially when it's the Lord asking us to do it. 

As Scott and I were talking over what direction we wanted to go with for our theme this year we both kept coming back to this idea.  For whatever reason (and part of me is nervous to know what that is), I feel really strongly that THIS is what we need to learn this year.  We can do it.  Our scripture for last month was an old standby in 1 Nephi 3:7 of The Book of Mormon:  "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them."

For this month, our scripture is the following quote from President Monson, "May we ever choose the harder right, instead of the easier wrong."  And for next month I'm already thinking ahead.  As I was studying my scriptures yesterday, I was reminded of a favorite hymn of mine (How Firm a Foundation) -- particularly the 3rd verse.  The scripture reference for this song is from Isaiah 41:10.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

 Doing hard things makes us stronger.  Particularly when we're doing the things Heavenly Father is asking us to do.  But even for far more trivial things -- such as running a race -- I believe there is value in practicing and increasing the grit that will serve us well when the hard things that DO matter come our way.  And I might just stitch that and put it on a pillowcase.  ;)

4 Miler complete.  And it was HARD.  Haha.  The first half was basically uphill the whole time, but at least that meant that the back half was down.  My foot wasn't bothering me too much for the race, which was awesome, but I didn't quite make the goal pace I was aiming for.  Oh well!  Something to improve for next time.  ;)

 Official Time -- 41:35 (I was hoping to be able to come in under 40).