October - our favorite month around here!

October always starts out great with a Sunday at home in pajamas watching General Conference!

 

Then, an outing with Joseph and his mom and little sister - a fall farm with a miniature corn maze and a spooky hayride through a forest full of moving monsters.  We took home pumpkins too.  We had a blast!

October is the month for Northwoods Elementary's Spirit Sprint.  Here are all three of them sprinting!

Pumpkin carving this year was at its finest...

And the costumes were unique and fun!

Here we are on our way to the ward Halloween party -  Yoda, fairy and vampire in tow.

 Avery, the ultimate organizer of everything - even candy!

Six years old!

We started the birthday celebrating the evening before with a bowling party. Bowling with a lot of five and six year olds was great fun and great chaos!  Avery and Presley both invited several friends from their new kindergarten classes.  This is Caroline...

Their good friend Abby came too, and Yunus that lives across the street.  Here they are at the table in the party room after they finished bowling.  We had pizza and cake!

Then they all got to spend time playing arcade games, which was even more crazy!  They love their friends though and had the best time!

The next day was their birthday and we had a nice, relaxing day together as a family.  They tried out a new magic set, worked on making bracelets with their new rainbow loom and had fun on their new scooters.

Presley wanted vanilla and Avery wanted chocolate, but they wanted a stacked cake...so this is what they got!

Happy Birthday Presley!  Happy Birthday Avery!

We love weekends!

 After a long week of school, we had a fun relaxing weekend.  And it was actually Aaron's birthday weekend.  So we hit up miniature golf for the first time ever.   I thought maybe we'd have to quit halfway through because of several issues, especially when someone exclaimed, "there are 18 holes?!?"  But we made it and even had the spunk to take these pictures...

Hmmm...what does it look like is going on here?  When we got home later after dinner at our favorite Mexican place, we discovered the garage door was locked (which is never the case) and mom's keys with the house key had been left on the counter inside.  Now why haven't we ever given a neighbor a spare key, or put a spare in a hiding place somewhere??  Thank goodness Mr. Matt and his enormous two story ladder came to the rescue AND one of our bedroom windows was open!  

Tic-tac-toe tournaments with dad have become a favorite lazy Sunday activity - I was amazed there were four bodies on the chair at once!

On Monday evening before a birthday dinner, Mr. Matt and kiddos set up a sneak firecracker attack near our front door (long story, but essentially a firecracker battle has been going on between us and the Kolinski's for a while now...) and right when they were going off, Jack ran down the stairs and right into the blasts.  He definitely got spooked and took off running, but no one thought twice about it, because he always takes off running.  A little while later after dinner was over, we finally noticed we had no Jack around and decided to go look for him.  Caleb and dad left in the car to go drive around and the girls and I stayed home calling his name.  After a few minutes, Presley started crying and both of them were very upset.  I suggested we say a prayer together and in my prayer I asked that Caleb and dad might have good ideas about where to look.  Right after we were finished, they drove up smiling and Caleb announced that it was his idea to drive all the way down to the pool and look for him and there he was!  I made eye contact with Presley right after he said what he did, and I was sure she had made the connection between my prayer and the way he was found.  Some nice people had found him wandering in the street and scooped him up.  Here's the picture they took that showed up on a Silverton Home Owners Association email a little later.

And they're off!

Caleb's off to third grade!

And Avery and Presley are kindergarteners!

Their first official day they were soooo excited to try out the bus...they've been watching their brother and the neighborhood clan climb on board for a long time, and it's finally their turn to go!  I almost didn't get any pictures because they were dying to run out and wait for the bus.

Can't believe my girls are really grown-up school kids now!

the rest of our summer...

Well, how did the rest of our summer go?  The girls took an art class, Dr. Seuss themed!

Caleb went for an accidental dip in the fish pond and fountain at the arboretum.  Woops!  The girls and I couldn't stop laughing!

We found this surprise out on the lawn the day we went too!  It was a cooler NC summer day - we seemed to have quite a few of those this summer.  Lucky us!

The arboretum has become a favorite place or ours in the last couple years...I loved this - the natural next to the manmade.

Dad the hair cutter, or hair buzzer that is, and his audience!

We spent another cooler than normal day at Pullen Park.  A carousel ride on a bunny, cat and lion!

A paddleboat ride (Caleb helped me with the paddling)

and a train ride!

Presley was the first to experience having a cavity filled.  Boo!  She was such a little trooper.  The technicians kept commenting on how small her face looked with everything on it and in her mouth!  She is famous for that cute little face!

We spent a few days at the beach house in Topsail.  Don't know if they love the sand more or the water!

Here they are one morning having breakfast on the deck outside...

We drove to Carolina Beach for the day, mostly to taste some famous donuts.  And boy, was it worth it!

The girls and I bought matching sun hats that day.  The beach itself didn't end up being as fun as the beach at Topsail because of the big waves and steep incline into the water.  But we did experience a downpour on the beach for the first time - interesting!

At the park with Preston.  Caleb sure adores him!  

We started a fun tradition of having date night dinners with one kiddo at a time this summer.  This is Avery and I sharing a salad at Chipotle.

And here are the girls showing off their end of summer/beginning of school haircuts!