Halloween, Fixing Things, Concerts, Pumpkin Walks, Working, Book Fight, Losing Teeth, Missionary News

Another two weeks have flown by!!  Grandpa T was kind enough to offer to fix Sarah and Noah’s bikes.  Things have been busy for us and it just hasn’t gotten done so we were more than happy to let Grandpa fix them!  Noah got to help Grandpa out, too.  Sarah and Noah were both so excited to have their bikes working again!!

Daniel was able to go to the Sadie Hawkins Dance with his date Cassidy who had asked him a month ago.  That morning Daniel took the ACT test.  When he got home he got dressed and went out on his group date.  They carved pumpkins.  Here’s his date when she picked him up:

After carving pumpkins they came home and got dressed.  Daniel  and his date went as Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh:

Here’s their group.  The other couple didn’t end up dressing up, but they all had a fun night.

After dinner they went to the dance and then went to someone’s house after the dance to watch a movie.  It was a fun date.

Last week Sarah and Daniel had band concerts.  Daniel’s high school band concert was on Tuesday evening.  Daniel continues to play the baritone saxophone.  Here’s the Symphonic Band performing:

We were far enough back in the audience I didn’t get a good picture with him and his instrument.  Here his is the second from the left walking off the stage carrying his huge saxophone after they performed:

I caught him in the hallway afterward and he posed as Mr. GQ for this picture:

Thursday evening it was Sarah’s concert.  She continues to play the flute.  Here she is in the middle of the picture:

My cute flutist after the concert was over:

Last weekend we went to the Syracuse Pumpkin Walk.  We have been to this pumpkin walk every year except one since we moved up here.  We only had Sarah and Noah with us this night, but it was still fun to see all the different pumpkins.

BYU cougars:

Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride:

Van Gogh’s Starry Night:

Sophie is never far away when there is food around.  I was eating a sandwich when all of a sudden I looked and there she was just staring at me.  What a crazy dog!!

Daniel’s friend group chose to do animal onesies for Halloween.  Daniel ordered a penguin suit.  I made him try it on to make sure it fit, but he wasn’t to excited about getting his picture taken, though:

Noah decided to go as an old man for Halloween.  He borrowed a homemade cane from Grandpa T to complete his costume:

Last Monday evening the city youth council put on a pumpkin walk for our city.  We all went to check it out.  Sarah didn’t want to use her banana costume so she wore Daniel’s penguin onesie and Noah was an old man.  The pumpkin walk is usually outside, but the weather this day was horrible.  They moved it inside to the recreation building.  

Since Daniel is in the city youth council he helped man a candy booth.  He helped with the Clown theme candy booth.  Daniel is the clown wearing black and red:

Sarah had not asked Daniel’s permission to wear his costume to the Pumpkin Walk so when he saw her wearing it he was not amused as you can see--haha!:

There were quite a few other booths and it was fun to see all the differently carved pumpkins as well.

Last week Daniel said he was not feeling very well.  He was freezing and asked me to check him out of school.  When I got him home I took his temperature and was shocked to see it was so high.  He had no other symptoms which was weird.  I took it again with a different thermometer which read even higher at 104.4 degrees.  

I called and got him a Telehealth appointment.  I wanted to see if he had strep, covid, or the flu.  Luckily, all three of those came back negative, but he still felt awful for about a day and a half.  After that the fever broke and he felt great.  The weird thing was he had NO other symptoms at all.  I guess it was just one of those crazy/weird things.  

Our fireplace has been on the fritz.  It will turn on a run for a few minutes then it will turn back off for no reason.....  Aaron and Daniel tackled that project together and figured it out.  They took everything apart and cleaned everything out.

Since it has been cold it has been nice to have it working again.

Our dog sometimes gets too many loves.  Sarah wrapped her up in a cocoon using a blanket.  Sophie tolerated it for about 2 minutes before she ran away.  The poor dog.  She still loves us, though.

I have been working a lot lately.  Some clinics have been close, some have been further away in Salt Lake or even down in Utah County.  Last week, however, I got the chance to go to Green River, Wyoming.  I had an early morning clinic in Kaysville then I drove straight out to Wyoming.  I stopped for a few minutes as I passed by Devil’s Slide to enjoy the view:

The weather was iffy, but luckily, it didn’t snow.  The clouds did make for a pretty picture while I was pulled over on the side of the road with the sun rays, fall colors, and the mountains:

When I did get into Wyoming, it was snow covered in parts, but the driving conditions never got too bad--thank goodness.

Daniel started a job last week.  He is working at Little Caesar’s.  Here he is on his first day:

He worked the next day, too.  Aaron and I surprised him at work when we came to pick up a pizza for dinner.  He was not amused, but still looked cute:  

We only stayed for a minute, but according to Daniel it was a minute too long--haha!

We all had dentist appointments last week.  Everyone did well and had no cavities except for me and Sarah.  DOH!!  I am not happy about that.  This will be my 3rd cavity, EVER, in my whole life.  I guess making it to mid forties with only three isn’t too shabby, but still.  Also Sarah had an orthodontist appointment last week.  Aaron and I had to work so Grandma T took her.  It looks like her mouth is too small for all of her teeth and he wants to pull two permanent premolar teeth to make room.  Since we weren’t there the orthodontist called us that evening to talk about it.  I have mixed feelings on this, but I can see where it will probably happen--darn it!!  Not the news we wanted to hear, but what can you do?!

Speaking of teeth, Noah only has two--scratch that one baby tooth left to lose.  He lost one this afternoon and was quite proud of himself.  My baby is getting too big!!

Our family has been patiently waiting for the fifth book to come out in the Dragonwatch Series.  It came this week.  I sent this text to my family and got lots of responses--haha!  First from Daniel.

Then from Aaron:

Then Sarah sent me this message off our family thread--haha!

I was supposed to have dibs to be the first one to read it, but Sarah sneakily grabbed it while I was doing other things and read it first.  Daniel is now reading it so I guess I will be 3rd or maybe 4th in line to read it....Oh well, I am sure it will be good.  Hopefully they don’t give me any spoilers!!

We got ‘Booed’ two weeks ago.  

We had to ‘Boo’ two other people within a few days.  Noah chose his school teacher who lives about 4 houses away from us.  It is supposed to be anonymous, but when everyone has a ‘Ring’ doorbell, you can’t keep your anonymity.  Afterward she texted me and told me thanks for the ‘Boo’.  We just had to laugh.

The elementary school had Friday off for a teacher prep day.  That meant they had their Halloween parade Thursday.  Aaron and I were really sad because this is our very last Halloween parade to watch with one of our kids in it.  That makes me really sad.  That morning Noah was pretty excited to get his old man costume on again with his cane and white spray painted hair.

It has always been a lot of fun to see all kids in their different costumes.  I am glad Aaron, me and Grandma T were able to watch them in person this year.  Here is Noah as he walked by us:

After the Halloween parade I volunteered to help with the 6th grade Halloween Carnival.  That was mass chaos, but everyone seemed to be having a good time.  I was glad I was around to help out.

Halloween fell on a Sunday this year so we celebrated by trick or treating on Saturday instead.  Our primary did a Halloween Carnival open house style that afternoon which Noah enjoyed.  Then later that night came the trick or treating.  Matthew LOVES trick or treating and I love for him to be able to go out even if he is 20 years old.  We just have him go around our neighborhood and visit houses that know him--which are quite a few.  I am so grateful people have been kind and are happy to give him candy.  Noah went with friends this year.  He had a route all planned out and even gathered people for his trick or treating group at school.  To keep everyone in the loop he even had a group email going on to let everyone know what to plan for.  He has been pretty excited to go this year.  However, half way through our neighborhood his trick or treating bag split down the side and a handle broke.  He was not happy about it.  Luckily, Aaron was rounding the nearby corner with Matthew so he was able to grab handfuls of Noah’s candy and shove it into Matthew’s bag and his coat pockets so Noah could run home and get a different bag.  DOH!!  Sarah went out with friends, too.  Daniel went with another group of friends.  So in all reality we only had Matthew we needed to stay with. That seemed really weird this year.  Anyway, to start out we had an old man, a penguin, a mini lobster, banana, and pickle:

Sophie HATES her costume, but she looks so cute in it I still make her wear it--poor dog!

However, there were some mini meltdowns that required some rearranging of costumes.  Thankfully, by the time everyone left to go out trick or treating everyone seemed to be happy with what costume they had chosen after some changes.....

Here’s Sarah’s friend group:

Noah went to a neighboring neighborhood and they were giving out donuts and hot chocolate.  They made the fatal mistake of telling Noah to take as many donuts as he wanted.  Now coming from someone who lives in a big family (especially with HUGE appetite boys) he knows that if you don’t eat what is out right then you may not get any more later.  With this motto in mind he went a bit crazy with the donuts.  Amazingly he ate them all.  However, this neighborhood is in our ward boundaries and the mom at this donut house texted me this picture:

She then told me I may want to keep a barf bucket by his bed all through the night because he may have an upset stomach later.  She was laughing about it, though. I just had to roll my eyes and shake my head because I can’t believe he did that.  What can you do, though?!  I am happy to report there was no upset stomach last night, but he had no desire to eat any candy by the time he made it home from trick or treating, though.

Josh is doing great on his mission.  He seems to be learning Spanish well--even if he wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to tell because I can’t understand it.  His current companion is from Spain so he is truly getting the Spanish immersion experience--haha!  While we were on our P-day call with him two weeks ago he got a call from his Mission President via his companion’s phone.  He left us on our Facebook Messenger call while he talked to his Mission President on his companion’s phone.  We got to hear the conversation.  It was crazy because his Mission President asked him to be a District Leader.  What?!?!  He has only been out for 7 weeks.  I didn’t know if I was hearing the call right.  However, after the call Josh was a bit in shock, however, he was excited.  The next Pday call the following week he was doing great and enjoying it.  Throughout his mission he is learning some things the hard way.  Take budgeting for instance....He is learning that he needs to plan his expenses otherwise he will be relegated to eating toast for the last week before his monthly money comes in--haha!  I felt bad for him when he told me that, but some things you have to learn the hard way and I feel strongly about budgeting so I won’t be bailing him out....I don’t feel too bad because he told us he had been going out to eat the whole week before so he has since learned that is not the best plan--haha!  I love reading his letters and talking to him each week!  He is getting ready to buy his winter gear because it is getting cold in Chicago.  He has had some crazy experiences, but some really good spiritual ones as well.  We love our missionary!!  It has rained a TON lately.  Luckily, his jacket seems to be holding up well.  We did send him a Halloween package, but it was running two days late.  Hopefully, it will still be fun to get Halloween candy in November.  It might supplement his toast diet--haha!

Service, Mom Date, Meet, Pocatello Temple, Sadie Hawkins, Break the Rules Day, Costumes

These two weeks have flown by.  Daniel had a meet two Wednesdays ago.  He wore some bright red socks that were tall so we could pick him out of the crowd a bit easier.  Here’s right after the gun to start the race went off:

He did great.  I came straight from a clinic in Kamas to the race.  I was worried I wouldn’t make it in time, but thankfully I did.  The drive out to Kamas and back was beautiful.  The fall colors were really on display!  Anyway,  I was glad to make it in time to see Daniel run.  Here’s after the race:

Josh’s P-days are usually on Mondays so I work my schedule around that.  However, this past week, Josh and his companion had the opportunity to attend the Chicago temple on Thursday so they moved their P-Day to Thursday.  Unfortunately, I had to work so I didn’t get a chance to talk with him.  I was bummed about that, but Aaron, Daniel and Sarah got a chance to talk with him instead.  Aaron took a screen shot:

Aaron couldn’t talk for too long since he has to take a break from work and go out to his car to talk since he is not allowed to have a cell phone at his work.  After talking for a bit he had to go back to work.  However, when it was time for him to come home he walked in to see Sarah and Daniel still talking with Josh on the couch.  I was glad they get to see and talk to him, too.  Unfortunately, Noah had to stay late at school that day and didn’t get to visit, either.  

In order to go to the temple the missionaries can’t drive their mission car so they have to find a ride from a member.  Luckily, there is a temple worker that was willing to take them.  Since the temple worker was their ride they got to spend the whole temple worker’s 8 hour shift at the temple.  They got to do a few Endowment sessions, some Initiatories, and baptisms, too.  Josh was shocked about how small the Chicago temple was, but still enjoyed his time there.  Outside of emails and P-Day calls with Josh we don’t know what he does day to day.  However, we are friends with him on Facebook and see him post stuff occasionally.  We don’t understand most of it since it is in Spanish, but sometimes we cheat and use Google Translate.  He posted this last week and according to Google Translate it says that the missionaries care about you.

I am missing Josh.  He is my scary buddy. He was the one that loved going to haunted houses and things like that.  No one else in my family wants to do anything like that so I am really missing him about now.  What can you do, though?!

Last Monday was Columbus Day.  The kids all had school, but Aaron and I had the day off of work.  Wahoo!!  We spent the day together just running errands and going out for lunch.  It was a really fun day.  We also go to talk with Josh that afternoon since it was his regular P-Day again.  He had a lot to talk about and we ended up talking to him for about 2 hours!!  It was nice to actually see and talk to him.

Daniel got asked to Sadie’s two weeks ago.  One girl had verbally asked him at school if he had a date yet and he told her no.  She told him she would like to take him, but didn’t ever follow up with an official Sadie-proposal.  A few days later a different girl verbally asked to see if he had a date and he said he hadn’t officially been asked.  She quickly asked him that night with an official Sadie-proposal.  The first girl got bummed out that she didn’t officially ask him quicker, but what can you do?!  Here’s his Sadie-proposal:

Daniel answered her back.  I helped him with the poster and Sarah helped him deliver it.  I told him to take a picture of it on her porch, but he forgot.  We ended up reusing the saying from one of Josh’s old Sadie-proposal answers.  This is what Daniel’s answer poster said, “I want to tackle Sadie’s with you.  I have taken the bait and would love to be your date."

Noah’s school had a Break the Rules Day fundraiser.  If you paid $5 you got to wear pajamas to school, have some crazy hair, wear a hat, chew gum and have an extra 5 minutes at recess.  Noah LOVED being able to do all of those things.  Here he is before school that morning:

Also about Noah since school was so crazy last year, the 5th grade never got to have their Maturation meeting.  The school sent out links to the videos and information and asked the parents to take care of it at home.  Well things got super busy and I completely forgot until two weeks ago.  I then sent the information over to Aaron and we both talked and watched the videos with Noah.  I got the short end of that deal since Aaron was supposed to attend all the boys’ maturation and I would do the girls.  Oh well, it all worked out anyway.  

Sarah was helping out with a Fundraiser Carnival for the city.  They had asked the National Jr. Honor’s Society to help man some booths at the carnival.  The NJHS kids already need service hours so it was a good fit.  However, Sarah told me she needed a costume for the Carnival and wanted to be a Medieval Pandemic surviver. We tried to find what she wanted online, but since it was so close to Halloween it was either sold out, or shipping wouldn’t get it here in time.  I then decided to take her to the store to see if they had what she wanted.  We looked ALL OVER and didn’t find exactly what she wanted.  It was a bit frustrating.  I finally told her she could either choose to be something else or we would have to piece the costume together and it wouldn’t be exactly what she wanted.  She decided to be something else and found a blow up banana costume.  That was a complete 180 degrees from her original costume idea, but it was in stock and easy so I got it for her.  Here’s my Chaquita Banana:

I am trying to take each son out on a date before they turn 16 to teach them manners and how to act on a date.  Daniel went out for Homecoming before I could take him out on his mom date, but he still had questions on manners and etiquette.  He still wanted to go out on a date with me to learn proper etiquette and date questions.  We went to Hug-Hes two Saturdays ago.  I even let Daniel drive us since he was 16 and had his Driver’s License.  It was fun talking to him and showing him what is expected like opening doors, ordering not the cheapest thing on the menu, keeping an eating pace like his date so no one is finishing dinner too early, how to scoot a chair out for his date, etc.  It was a fun date and I think it will help him know how to be on future dates.  

Daniel is also realizing that he likes to spend money and to get that money he needs a job.  He applied to two different places and had an interview at Little Caesar’s Saturday afternoon.  They did recognize his name and asked him if he was Josh’s brother.  I am hoping that being known as Josh’s brother will help him get the job....Daniel also completed the online class to get his Food Handler’s permit last week.  I hope he gets a job soon, because I can’t afford to financially support his activities--haha!

It was Fall Break this past week.  The kids got Thursday and Friday off from school.  I took those days off from work, too, so we could be together.  We did a bit of a staycation instead of going anywhere.  Thursday I signed me and the kids up to pack lunches for the Food Bank down in Salt Lake.  It was a food drive sponsored by Silicon Slopes and they were hoping to pack over 1 million lunches in the space of two days.  We signed up to help out on the second day.  On the drive down to Salt Lake it was stormy.  You could see the snow starting to fall on the mountains:

We got down to the Salt Palace Convention Center and they paired us with another group of volunteers and put us to work at a table.  We were packing dry bags of macaroni and cheese.  Sarah and Daniel got to be the bag sealers and box packers at first.

Noah got to be a powder scooper at first:

We spent two hours there.  We got to try all the stations--noodle scooper, powder scooper, cheese packet placer, weighing station, bag sealer and box packer.  

Every time you got enough packets for a box, which is 42 bags, you got to box it up and ring a cowbell to celebrate.  Everyone made sure they got a turn to ring that cowbell.  

We packed over 300 lunches and it was a good service opportunity.  They did have a photo op as you left which the kids took full advantage of:

Friday we had reserved tickets to attend the Pocatello temple open house.  We left early that morning after Sarah and Noah’s piano lessons and made the drive up there.  Unfortunately, a lot of people without tickets showed up, too, which meant we ended up waiting in line for two hours before we got to go inside.  It was CRAZY!!  However, it was beautiful and we were grateful to get a chance to see it.  Here we are in the line that went on forever!!

There was snow which was fun to see.  Too bad we didn’t all bring coats, though.  It was a chilly two hour wait!!

It is a beautiful temple, though!

Afterward we went and grabbed some Mexican food for lunch and then made the drive home.  It was a fun day.

When we got home Daniel got his physical Driver’s License in the mail as well as his Food Handler’s Permit, too.  He is official now!!  He was glad to get rid of the flimsy paper temporary license he had.

Yesterday G&G T visited us and gave the kids their Halloween goodie bags.  It was a nice visit and the kids loved the goodie bags.

Matthew got his goodie bag today and he loved it!

Matthew has been quite anxious about getting his flu shot.  He has been calling quite a bit asking when we could take him to get it done.  I was hoping to have him get it at a clinic I was working, but that wasn’t going to work.  Instead we ended up taking him to the pharmacy to get it done last week.  He did great!  In the past he knows he needs the shot, but was quite vocal that he HATES getting the shot.  However, this time he didn’t even say a word.  He just sat down and rolled up his sleeve and let the pharmacist give him his shot.  I was impressed!