Kristen the gypsy.
Kendall as Napoleon Dynamite.
Jenna the dog---her most favorite animal in the world! She's the mama dog and her stuffed animal is her baby dog.
Jarren as a "green" soldier from his Indiana Jones Lego (Wii) game.Every year, our elementary school has a Halloween parade first thing in the morning. We couldn't find Kendall's wig and teeth. Kristen wore her costume to dance yesterday and stepped on the bottom ruffle and tore it---I had to do a quick job repairing it. I spent hours sewing Kendall this cool Black Rider (Lord of the Rings) costume, but he decided to be Napoleon Dynamite for school, since they weren't supposed to wear masks, have weapons, etc. So...he'll wear that for trick-or-treating tomorrow and I'll get pictures up then of that one. They set tables up in the gym at the school and have each grade, youngest to oldest, wind their way around the tables so that all the parents can see. Jenna had a lot of fun watching all of the kids and seeing everyone's costumes.
Jarren, Noah, and some other first graders.
Kristen and a couple of classmates (4th grade).
Kendall and a friend---6th grade.
We finally got around to carving our pumpkins last night. I don't like to do it too early, because the pumpkins go mushy. We had things going on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so last night it was. The kids had fun picking out what faces they wanted carved and scooping out the gooey guts. We ended up with a mix of scary and funny, simple and complicated. But we all had fun!!
My friend, Monica, took her daughter, Hannah, and Kristen to the temple to get their pictures taken in the fall leaves last week. Kristen and Hannah have been friends since we moved here--Hannah was about 7 months old and Kristen was 16 months old. They think alike, love the same things, and are so much fun! They're a year apart in school, but they play together, laugh together, dance together, sing together, fight together, and have fun together--just like best friends do. Anyway....thanks to Monica and Allie for taking these great pictures!!!
Last weekend, we went to Cornbelly's. The kids brought home a coupon from school and I thought it was just another corn maze. But we talked to some cousins who had gone and said it was sooo much more, so we went. We went after dark and thought it would be too dark for pictures, but they had so many lights set up, it would've been fine. So...no pictures. There were jumping pillows (kind of like huge trampolines), a slide complex, a corn box (like a sand box, but filled with corn kernels instead of sand), a carved pumpkin tower with famous faces/pirates/animals/kids favorites/etc, a princess area--castles, coaches, dress ups, etc. We did the spooky upgrade and had access to a huge corn maze, plus a 3-D spook alley, a creature spook alley, and a haunted corn maze. They had many other things too. We spent 3 1/2 hours there and could have stayed longer, but it was 10:30 pm--they close at 11--and the kids were EXHAUSTED!!! Jenna didn't want to leave--she wants Jon to build her a princess castle at her house. :) Anyway...we'll know for next time to bring the camera.
Last year as we were carving pumpkins for Halloween, Jon threw some of the "guts" out into the garden for compost. After realizing that they're full of seeds, we threw them in the garbage can, but apparently some of them got down into the soil, because we grew a volunteer pumpkin patch this year. I was sooo excited--and so were the kids--until we realized that we had just eliminated our pumpkin patch trip. We ended up growing 13 pumpkins--how's that for a Halloween number? So...here are the kids harvesting our own patch (but please try to ignore the weeds):
(Not pictured: two pumpkins are still kind of green and I don't think they'll orange up in time.)
I was just running out the door to do errands yesterday afternoon, when the doorbell rang. Jon had dropped off a package to be mailed and they brought it back because it needed some paperwork filled out. Good thing, because I was HOME filling that out so it could be put back in the mail when the phone rang. It was the school. My first thought was one of the kids forgot something and needed me to bring it, but when I answered and it was an adult, I thought one of the kids was in trouble. Then I heard, "Kendall had an accident on the playground." My heart started pounding. He was playing football at recess and caught the ball. Another boy went to tag him (touch football) and tripped or something and slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. He went to the office and had it iced and then he went back to class, but he ended up back in the office, which is when they called me. I went over to the school and looked him over. He could hardly lift his right arm and when I touched his collar bone, the right side felt different--and he was almost crying with pain. I checked him out and called the dr. They were at lunch and couldn't get him in for 30 minutes, so we went in then. They couldn't see a bump (obvious break), but it felt different, so they did an x-ray and sure enough, he broke it. They said it wasn't broken all the way through, the bottom part of the bone is just barely still together, but most of the bone was broken. So...he gets to wear a swath to hold his arm tightly to his body for 2 weeks and then a sling for his arm for 4 weeks. He's in pain, but he'll be just fine. Why the title of the post? Out of 4 kids, some more wild than others, not one of the kids has ever had a broken bone before---or stitches for that matter. I'm surprised we've made it this long.
PS He's a left-handed guy, so fortunately he's still able to "function."
