Monday, January 23, 2012

Fall

Yeah, pathetic, I know. It's been how long since I posted? Eh, well, you'll have to take what you can get! I'll do a short recap of the highlights to get you caught up to speed. This fall, we did homeschool with Raelin and it went pretty well! We met our goals and accomplished some great things, but it's a dang lot of work for me and it's hard on the babies because we have to try to cram all our errands into one day which makes for hungry, tired kids and they don't get the attention they need because I'm trying to keep Raelin stocked with projects and tasks for so much of the day. It's just too busy. Plus we'd only planned to do it for a semester anyway. So Raelin went back to public school at the beginning of the new year and it has been great! She seems to be enjoying it just fine and it sure makes my life easier!! Ultimately, I wish I could afford private school and get them a better education that way, but meanwhile, homeschool, to me, is the way to accomplish that. But my sanity is paramount. So public school it is.

Also, with fall comes the pumpkin patch! The kids love the pumpkin patch (Alaina still asks about it on a biweekly basis) and the one by our house does more and more cool FREE stuff every year. This year they had some awesome mazes and hay mountains to climb, which, if you know my kids, they LOVE!

They also had a corn pit that was loads of fun for the littles.

And we went on a hay ride around the farms.

The kids had a blast! Except for Landon when he went to eat the corn and I quickly, but not TOO roughly brushed it out of his hands. But, I mean, EW! And I'm so not a germaphobe, but last year we went kinda late in the year and it was all fermented and stinky and there are SO many people who climb all over in there and just ew. So I didn't want him to eat it and I think I startled him. This was his response:
So sad! I broke his poor little baby heart! Awwwwwwww. And yes, I took pictures of it. I'm so mean.

We went on some cool hikes (love the fall colors--I think that's the best thing there is about Utah!)

and climbed all the trees the kids could find (have I mentioned that they love to climb trees?)




For Halloween we carved our pumpkins (Brice's turned out particularly cool--it's the puking cowboy one)

and went trunk or treating and trick or treating. LOTS of candy!! Raelin was a lizard, Ryker was Batman, Alaina was a monkey, and Landon was a banana. I was particularly proud of Landon's banana costume. I made it from scratch and I loved how it turned out!
Alaina got this awesome fat lip when she landed face first taking a tumble off a chair. Clearly, it didn't slow her down.
Raelin had a birthday and turned 8! Her baptism was awesome but I'll do a separate post for that.

For her birthday, she got some great books (she's an avid reader)

and her own sewing machine! She's been taking a sewing class and making lots of cool stuff so we thought it would be cool for her to have her own machine so she didn't always have to compete with me for mine.
We played outside as much as we could in the awesomely unseasonably warm weather, which I love.
Look at this little cute guy! I love that face!

Winter has just finally hit us in the last week or so with our first real snowfalls and freezingness. I'm hoping it goes back to spring rains and warmth again soon because I was really enjoying that! I'm not a winter person, in case you didn't already know that. HATE winter. Though I do feel bad for the kids when they're hoping for snow to play in and don't get any. I just wish there was such a thing as warm snow...