Fires, freezing, and free bread

 Michael:
worked outside a lot this week -- all the leaves. He also guessed the date that a Great Harvest employee had her baby, so he won free bread for 9 months haha. A loaf a month and we are here for it. Work was pretty busy this week, and he's really liking it still. One day was his hardest day yet with a bummer situation but things turned out ok. He works with such nice people and that's the best. He helped me with finishing installing our shiplap on his day off this week, and Saturday he worked outside the whole day. The boys are so happy when dad is home and they still love hanging out with him in the mornings and pushing his car out of the garage when he heads to work!

Maddie:
This week has felt pulled in a lot of directions -- well, four directions. Painting, three kids, my book, and keeping our house afloat. One of those is always hitting the back burner at any given time while three are moving forward but all four need constant attention right now :) I painted more doors grey, filled all our shiplap nail holes and sanded it down and then caulked all the edges, and finished (almost... darn second layers) the trim in our hallway. Kindal and I decided on the type for our book's COVER and it felt so good! It was the first time we had pretty different opinions on something with our book in the three years we've been working on it. I thought about it later and realized it's because I'm always more involved with the words and she's more involved in the art and this was those things coming together in a new way. We ended in a great place though and we are getting this book ordered THIS week! Then it's on to prepping our website, Instagram, and Kickstarter campaign while it's in production.

Westin:
was looking forward to our neighbor's Halloween party for weeks and yesterday was finally the day. He was SO excited. They wanted to be their same costumes as last year, which still fit, so that was a major mom win this year. Captain America and a Fireman, back at it. Our neighbors are so sweet to our boys and we feel so lucky. They invited a few families over that they know and the kids got to hit a pinata, play Halloween bowing, decorate a pumpkin, and eat yummy Halloween treats. They had a blast. Westin loves the days he gets to go to school, and he loves making Camden happy. He was so helpful on Wednesday when Bennett was at school and Michael and I were trying to finish up installing shiplap. He kept Camden happy while we worked, and then later on in the day when we did the end of our hallway he ran the board I'd cut in the backyard up to Michael upstairs so he could nail them up. His back and forth help was super helpful, especially since we decided to do that little mini project between dinner and bedtime and everything started falling apart around us while we busted it out. But the boards are up!

Bennett:
Didn't want to participate in crazy hair day this week, and neither did Westin. Another mom win. Can you tell I'm feeling so busy and stretched thin right now... it's all with good things and I'm super happy at the progress happening with our house and my book but it feels like such a busy time. Bennett is so good at getting me to slow down though, with his always frequent "Mommy?" (What Bennett?) "I just luh you so much." Sweet, sweet boy. When people ask him if he likes school, always says, "yes because my friends." And his speech therapist emailed me this week to say that Bennett is working so hard and is so agreeable and sweet at school and during speech. He loves to be goofy during their speech games, like when he had her feed all the non-food items to a picture of a boy with their flashcards, or this week he was working on saying names of body parts with her and he made a Mr. Potato head with arms in every hole and just kept giggling about it. He's just so joyful. He loves being in his fireman costume. Westin wore that two years, and Bennett has worn it two years, and you know it's got a couple Camden years in its future. 

Camden:
Would prefer I never worked on a project while he was awake but that just had to happen this week. He's still booty scooting quicker than ever and sure loves to come find you if you're in a different room. We tried giving him more independence with spoons and forks this week because we didn't feel like meal times were quite messy enough. :) He took a nap during our neighbor's Halloween party at home with daddy so he didn't get to try out his dalmation costume yet, but he's doing to be a very cute and cozy puppy.

Just giving him the most random things these days to see if it buys me 4 minutes of time to work.

Dinner turned out a little later than anticipated this night,
and Camden needed a mid-meal-prep snack.

First time using my jig saw! It's so satisfying when it fits!

I was soooo tired Wednesday night but we had wanted to get our ballots filled out and get them to a dropbox early. I felt grateful when I saw there were only 7 propositions to vote on -- we're not in California anymore!

Voted! So ready for the election.
Praying for quick and clear results, no matter which way it goes.

Camden just loves these huge stuffed balls that our neighbor gave us. 
He loves to try and hold them over his head and throw them as hard as he can,
which gets... not very far and it's so cute.

They saw some flakes of snow on our deck so this had to happen ASAP haha.

See the snow they're ready to go play in? Haha cuties.

Took my kids with me to the dropbox so they could "vote!"
Bennett dropped the ballots in and Westin was a little curious about presidents.
He asked if any kids could be president and I told him there were rules about how old you had to be.
He seemed bummed.

Camden came too but I couldn't get us all in a picture!

This was like this the entire time I painted a door this week. Sometimes I just NEED to get something done off my to do list so I don't go crazy.

Luckily Westin brought him a banana.

We had such an eerie day this week with the fires near us,
which spread significantly overnight. It felt like night during the early afternoon.

Unamused by the snow.

It looks like our pumpkins are rolling their eyes at the snow :)

Camden on the Move

Michael:
was with the boys on Saturday and Sunday while I was in Utah, then my parents were with them Monday and Tuesday while Michael was at work. He had a fun boys weekend with them. He had an unfortunate procedure situation at work this week and it ended up turning out better than expected, but it was still not a fun situation. He's doing a good job and works really hard, but he's had a couple things happen that never happened to him once in dental school or residency and it is just a bummer when those things do happen. He helped me install some shiplap in our bedroom this week, and we never fought, just like I asked for my birthday present haha. Our first run with the miter saw and nail gun was actually really fun, we just ran out of shiplap and will have to finish that up later. Another mid-project pause to add a little more chaos around here :)

Maddie:
spent the weekend and first part of this week in Utah with Kindal finishing up our book. In 10 days we will have sent it off to our printers, which will then take 3.5 months to produce. At that point we'll be filming a kickstarter video and starting on some marketing promotions that we've got planned, and then running a kickstarter through mid/Feb to mid/March. We're setting it up that way so that our children's book about the life of Jesus Christ can be in Easter baskets this April! I have been on a happy high ever since last weekend. I feel like this project is why I studied what I studied, and writing has always been my favorite work/fun, and this project has had tons of tiny miracles along the way to let us know that this is what we're meant to be doing. I spent the last half of the week taking a crash course in law school (google) and set up our LLC, filed for our Employer Identification Number, bought our ISBNs, and figured out copyright and trademark stuff for the future. This is getting REAL!! We've been working on this as much as two young moms can work on this for almost exactly 3 years.

Westin:
got to go on a late night errand with Michael on Saturday to get his free ski pass from Epic in Westminster. Then they went to Cabela's. Thanks to Katie for telling us all about that program to get young kids free ski passes! I haven't been skiing in half my life, but it'll be a good thing for our kids to learn and Michael would probably love going with them. Soooo we'll see. I feel like we're not at a stage of life to ski, but I also feel like we're not at a stage of life to like... do much of anything but you still have to do things. So even though they're little we'll need to get some snow gear and ski gear and get these kids learning some new skills. Westin was thrilled that Jack and Oliver came to a pumpkin patch with us on Saturday. Ryan and Katie drove up for the day, and baby Finn was looking so big! It was fun to carve pumpkins together.

Bennett:
is such a cutie. We had a parent teacher conference with his teacher Tuesday night and he said that Bennett is pretty shy and quiet at school but always happy and easygoing. He said they put him in the front row because they don't want him to get lost since he's quiet and content. He also said he had his first glimpse of Bennett getting out of his shell this week -- he said Bennett was playing with a toy scorpion, made eye contact with him across the room, then Bennett ran over and pretended to sting him with it and started laughing. It's so funny to use because Bennett is a loud goofball at home but it sounds like his teacher has only had just a glimpse of that so far. I love that Bennett will be in this class for two years before going to Kindergarten. He'll grow a lot there.

Camden:
is on the move! It's a booty scoot, but still. He can finally go from point A to point B and he's 1000x happier. He's going to wear out the bum of all his clothes, but whatever, the knees are already pretty worn out from his crawling older brothers so this will get some good use before we retire some hand-me-downs. I couldn't believe how much more he was moving when I got home from Utah. When I left, Camden stayed stationary wherever you put him in the house. I was still taking a shower with him on the floor by me in the bathroom. Now, we have to keep the door to the basement shut and he's always circling all the way around the area between our piano room, dining room, kitchen, and entry. My boys were letting him chase them around and around that route, or around the kitchen island, and all three were just cracking up. I'm grateful this progress happened right before I take him to his 15-month check up on Tuesday, haha. I still can't tell his pediatrician that he's crawling, but I can at least say that he's made definitely gross motor progress since his 12-month appointment. I'm sure he'll make even more huge strides before his 18-month mark. He also ate his first Oreo this week and he was really into that.

The House:
I painted our dining room a dark mauve, and the accent wall in the piano room a dark green. The hallway trim is almost done except for one door frame. I need to do all the baseboards in the house... I also painted the doors on the first level grey (most of them) and it's one of my favorite changes I've made. The grey doors with the white walls just make me really happy and I love the added contrast. I need to do that upstairs this week, and a few other things on the list. But slowly the list is becoming less and less project items and just purchase items, which can wait until we have some more cushion in our budget and know more of what we want. My motivator is my sister visiting in November and Michael's sister visiting that month too, so I'm trying to get lots done before then because it's fun to bring your vision to life before visitors come! But I look at what we've done in our first 3 months here and I'm happy we've made it as far as we have.

We ate lots of yummy food during our book weekend!

This temple is so pretty.

Rockwell Ice Cream -- delicious!
This was honey flavor and muddy buddy flavor.

Kindal is so super talented.

We haven't spent uninterrupted time on our book together in all the 3 years working on it.
This weekend was so fun and so productive!

First piece of shiplap is up!

Coming along! I'm going to paint this wall black when it's done.
My mom thinks my taste is pretty out there but usually likes it when it's done and she sees what I had in mind. While she was here I asked, "Are you catching my vision around here now?" And she said, "Well... it's a pretty big vision..." Haha. They like the kitchen and family room way more than when they helped us move in though, and those rooms are basically done except for new rugs and door knobs.

I love that his teacher posts pictures of them at school!

This is the before pic... and I forgot to take an after... but you can see the grey doors in the picture below.

So much better than the off white doors! I love them, and I'll love them even more with black doorknobs.
The boys are making mummies for dinner. I love when you make super easy foods in an easy fun way so that your kids are happy and dinner takes 3 min. But I mean, you have to eat hot dogs for dinner in the end.
Worth it to have grey doors painted instead of time spent making meals.

Mummies! We put the eyes on with ketchup which ended up being an unintentional morbid detail.

Walking along a new spot on the Poudre River Trail.
The colors are just so pretty right now! The boys each brought a bag for a leaf hunt.
Bennett made a good effort to bring home allllll the leaves.

I love my parents!!!
This visit was quick, but I was so grateful they gave me two extra days to work on my book.
Their visits during residency kept my head above water. I'd get both our cars worked on, go to the dentist, get a haircut, major shopping trips, all the things that were so hard to do with tiny kids.
I don't take it for granted now that Michael is home most Wednesdays and that simple detail makes my life feel completely more manageable. 
So, it felt so nice to enjoy a day out with these guys on the trail and not feel all this pressure to get tons of stuff done while I had help around.
Though we did spend the day before doing our shiplap in our bedroom...because we had help around.
Haha, mobile Camden's fault!

This hat is my favorite! My kids just melt my heart when they wear it.

All my kiddos in the hat. Camden, Bennett, Westin.

It was soooo windy and dusty, haha. Poor kids.

We showed the boys different faces to choose from and Jack kept saying "No, scarier!"
Then when he chose one, Bennett only wanted the same as Jack's.

Camden supervised with Halloween-themed Pirate's Booty that Katie brought.

The babies!

Ending his late date night with Daddy at Cabella's!