This month has been...long. And exhausting. And just a tad bit too much. But the good news is -- it's almost over!! Haha. To sum up October, I leave you with The Good, The Bad, and The Funny.
The Good
Pumpkin patching, pumpkin carving, and pumpkin crafting. Lots and lots of pumpkin! We kicked off the month with a Family Home Evening outing to a "pumpkin patch." {It was really just a local nursery that happened to have a large selections of cool looking pumpkins to choose from.} Everyone picked out their favorite and when we got home, I let the kids go to work decorating the outside of our house. Setting up the fake spiderwebs is always a huge draw for some reason. Haha.
As for pumpkin carving, the only action we've seen this year was with the Youth's joint mutual activity at the beginning of the month. After forming several different groups, the young men and women came up with an original design and got to work carving in order to earn the title of best pumpkin of the night. I don't think either Grace or Ethan's groups won, but I thought their finished products were pretty cool nonetheless.
Grace's team's pumpkin is in the middle. (It says spooky.)
And then there's Ethan's group.
I'm not sure if I got any pictures of it, but we added SEVERAL more members to our tin can pumpkin army. I think we have now been crafting and adding to this collection for 10 years now! Kind of crazy to think that 5 year old Ethan, 3 year old Grace, and 1 year old Sophie started the tradition way back when. :)
This year's costume round up is going to be quite interesting. Isaac is the only one with a current, legit get-up and he is pleased as punch to be dressing up as Chase from Paw Patrol! For the past week or so, he's worn his costume day in and day out and has gone around on all fours pretending he is a puppy. It's hilarious to watch.
"It has a tail, actually!" was one of the first things he excitedly exclaimed when he tried it on for the first time.
(He insisted on wearing the costume to bed a few different nights.)
Sophie and Grace are currently working on Jane's costume for Wednesday -- a Tide Pod case -- but I'm not so sure what anyone else is going to be for the actual holiday. For the ward Trunk-or-Treat on Friday night, however, Sophie and Jane had a blast dressing up as space aliens like Gianna, complete with sparkly sequins on their faces and shimmery make up as well. Grace rocked her Winnie the Pooh pajama onesie thing she got at Walmart a couple of months ago, and Alex dressed up as himself, which was a bold move, but I think he was pretty pleased with the end result. Hahahaha.
Annie, Jane, Sophie, and Lauryn
Our "decorated" trunk for the party.
Jane was SUPER pleased with herself for capturing this perfect "golden hour" selfie. Hahahahaha.
Another fun Family Home Evening activity for the month was decorating some Halloween-y cupcakes with the kids. It made SUCH a mess, but they all had so much fun putting on those sprinkles that I just sucked it up and dealt with it. Mom of the year over here. ;)
The Bad
Like a lot. For almost every week of October, Scott has been traveling for work. To say it has been difficult managing a household and taking care of so many kids on my own is an understatement. I kind of want to take a week long vacation and just sleep in order to recuperate! Thankfully, Scott's last trip ended this past Thursday, and I don't think he'll have to go anywhere else for a long, long time. Whew!
- We brushed off our doctor visit punch pass.
At the start of the month -- October 5th to be exact -- Gianna fell on her head during an extension in cheer and suffered a concussion. And since she's an honorary family member at this point, a lot of the month has been spent making sure that she is okay and well on the way to recovery! I'm her mom's ministering sister, and since they don't have a car of their own, I've been more than happy to be able to help out with rides to and from doctor's appointments and hospital visits and school attempts over the last few weeks. Concussions are kind of scary, not gonna lie! She seems to be on the mend now, and we're hoping this will be her last week of half-day school attendance, so fingers crossed she doesn't have any relapses.
Hospital visit #2
Along with THAT medical issue, Ethan came down with a random fever a couple of Mondays ago which ended up turning into pneumonia. Fun times! And all while Scott was out of town! After three days of a pretty high fever and a cough, I took Ethan in to the doctor and after testing negative for strep and the flu, she ordered a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia as well. Unfortunately, pneumonia was indeed the culprit, and to add to the excitement of the outing, Ethan almost passed out while doing the X-ray! I think it was a combination of having a high fever, not having eaten any breakfast before leaving for the doctor, and not really having eaten much of anything the day before because he was feeling too miserable, but whatever the reason it was another kind of scary incident. After sending him in to have the X-ray taken, the nurse ran out almost immediately telling me to come in right away because Ethan couldn't see and he was white as a sheet. I guess his vision had started to black out and he was feeling pretty light-headed, so they had him lay down to monitor his vitals. Thankfully, his color returned after a few minutes, and once they gave him some peanut butter crackers and a bottle of orange juice, he was able to get back up to have the X-ray finally finished and done with.
(Poor little lamb.)
The hits kept coming, however, because a couple days later (after being on Amoxicillin for 48+ hours) he spiked a fever of 103.6 and we ended up in the urgent care on that Saturday night having him checked out once again. The doctor switched up his antibiotics and prescribed an albuterol inhaler to help with his wheezing and cough, and that was enough to FINALLY do the trick! Of course, it ended his cross country season a week early and he didn't get to run in the conference meet, but we're hoping that this is his last cursed year of running. ;)
SUPER stoked to be at an Urgent Care at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night.
Our final doctor's visit of the month came about after Isaac was running around barefoot on the backyard deck and got a huge splinter in his foot that was far too deep for me to dig out myself. It was bad. And it was even worse hearing him in distress and pain as it took 3 of us to hold him down for the doctor to get it out. Once it was all over though, the crazy little nut job was mollified enough by the prize bucket on the way out, that he left happily exclaiming, "That was fun!" Hahahaha.
The Funny
- Parent Teacher Conferences
I don't know why it tickles my funny bone so, but I got the biggest kick out of Jane and Alex's conferences this quarter! Jane's actually made me laugh out loud as she guided me through her slideshow presentation for the "student led conference," because her comments on the side were so hilarious, and some of her facts were so adorably and randomly presented. I get the feeling that her teacher gets a kick out of her as well. :)
I want you to know that my grades might be good and might be bad. You've been helping with that too by encouraging me.
Some of my favorite "facts" about Hercules that Jane included as a sample for one of her projects this quarter:
* Hercules killed his wife and children while he was going through a insane faze.
* Athena is Hercules half-sister not his entire sister.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
In case you didn't know... "The first time [Mount Vesuvius] erupted was way back in the year A.D. 70. Which was about 17,000 years ago." Hahahahahaha. Math is hard, y'all.
Meanwhile, Alex's teacher thinks he's just the best kid ever! I believe her exact words were that he's "such an awesome young man." Hahahaha. Oh Alex. I'm so glad he's reserved his grumpy old man persona for us at home and saved his happy-go-lucky, delightful little persona for his teacher. I had to laugh at the perfect illustration of this, when he got home from school today and I told him that I'd met with his teacher and that she thinks he's so great. "I know! She told me," he cried, "and she says you're so nice, but you're NOT! You're so mean. You make me go to bed at like 6:30 or 7 every night and you won't buy me Pokemon cards!" Hahahahaha. {For the record, his bedtime is supposed to be at 7, but he's rarely in bed on time.} In contrast with his home behavior, he really seems to be thriving this year and has made a lot of progress with his worries and anxieties and his extreme aversion to having to go to school and for that I'm super thankful.
A sample of Alex's writing:
"My Best Birthday Ever"
When I went on a hunt it was super fun! We were hunting for Yoshi eggs. There was coins inside of the eggs. I got the most eggs. We had the hunt outside. I was surprised I got the most eggs. Also I was cunfused everybody was happy for me. I had the best birthday ever.
(This kid is always funny.)
And that is that! Somehow, seeing it all written out makes it seem as though things weren't all THAT bad this month, but you're just going to have to trust me -- October has been a doozy. Here's to hoping November is a piece of cake!
