Halloween & Happy Birthday, Michael!

 Our Halloween was so fun!

We dropped the boys off at school in their costumes with their character's book (everyone at school has to choose a book character and carry that book with them through their costume parade). We had a Captain America book and a book about fighter jets for the boys to hold. Then Asher and Camden and I went to the gym to watch the parade, and the boys loved having classroom parties and read-a-thons that day.

We had our traditional jack-o-lantern pizza before trick-or-treating with some ward friends and neighbor friends through our neighborhood that night. The boys loved dumping out their candy afterwards and making trades. "Um, did you know that Camden just traded me a twinkie for two packages of gummy bears? Gummy bears!" -Westin. "Oh wow, pretty good. Do you think he knows what a twinkie is?" -Me. "Umm... maybe not." -Westin, with a guilty grin.

We celebrated Michael's birthday this week, too! He was busy that day with a full day at work then a study club meeting and dinner that night, but I told him to make it home between the two to blow out candles and open presents. He's been doing my workouts with me and got some heavier weights for those, plus some hiking socks and some Trader Joe's snacks. We love Michael!!!!

I loved our weekend. We went out to dinner together Friday night, then to a friend's house to play games with lots of couples from our ward. Then on Saturday Michael took the bigger boys to Westin's first basketball game, and I put together a presentation for my annual Comma retreat. Then I put the little ones down and had the Comma meeting from 1-5 that day. It's really fun to be part of a community of writers. Next year I hope I can make it out to Utah to be at the retreat in person, but it was about half and half this year and still a great experience online! Then we watched the BYU game that night and I put the three littlest to bed during it and had fun finishing the game with just Westin, while Michael was helping a friend move. He made it back to watch the end with us.

Sunday's time change and 9am church was tricky, I knew Asher would be ready to take a nap before church even started. But he and Camden were coughing through the night so Michael ended up staying home with them and I took Westin and Bennett to church. I was amazed at how easy church is with a 6- and 8-year-old. Like, so easy. I didn't take anyone anywhere or have a bag with me or, just, anything. It was wild. I taught Gospel Doctrine this week and really, really loved the discussion about how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego responded before the king, "We know our God is able... But if not..." The stories shared about faith and the perspective of how trusting we need to be in our Heavenly Parents who love us was a great experience for me. I just really love our ward.

Now things are cooling way down, it's dark sooo early, our fireplace has been turned on a couple times, and I'm kinda itching to put up my Christmas tree!! But trying to hold out until after Westin's football birthday party in a couple weeks. But we'll see! 

Ready to watch brothers in their school's Halloween parade first thing Monday morning!

Please note Asher is in a Jack-o-Lantern jacket.

Our kindergarten Captain America!

And our fighter pilot who probably should've seen Top Gun before Halloween because of all the times he was asked if he was Maverick.

He crawls better than any of our babies and it's just the cutest thing to watch.
He even crawled up two stairs and also pulled himself to standing to get a car off the couch,
and I'm just in awe of how advanced he is.
Remember, it's all relative :) He's verrrry advanced.

Eating a little more food a little more every day!

This kiddo loved  making a monster from the things in his classroom goodie bag.

Teaching me a math game they learned at school

I love Asher's costume when he's on all fours,
but when he's on all fours he's heading straight for anywhere but here,
so this is what we had to do.

I stay on top of life in quite a few areas.
Laundry is not one of them.

This cutie really loved these lime green glasses and I'm the mean mom that ordered black.
These are in ALL pictures and they go to church with him and just everywhere... I couldn't do it!
I'll let him go pick out the most wonderful, crazy pair of sunglasses he could ever want.
But it'll be nice to get these bigger frames in a couple weeks.

Came home from errands to see these two watering plants.
Asher is slowly starting to prefer Michael more and more,
and honestly it's just rude.
But I sure love them both.

One of my more resourceful moments when I didn't want to go to the store to make the graham cracker crust for Michael's birthday cheesecake but I had no graham crackers.
Mixed the bottom of a bag of golden grahams (from when we made golden rice crispy treats last week), some teddy grahams and scooby grahams from the boys snack bin for school, and called it good.
It looks like dog food.

Wrappers for evidence. I was so amused by this.

Ready for our first of three November birthdays!
Blueberry coffee cake, of course!

There are 40 pounds of dumbbells in those presents and let me tell you,
that's not easy to wrap.

Favorite book to read with this cutie right now

Nice to have our ballots in the mail!

A little winter, a little fall.

We went to dinner downtown and it was the first night with all the lights up.
I just love downtown during the holidays so much.

This boy has such a goofy side. We're just in love with him,
and growing up is fun but if I could just freeze some Camden right now I'd do it,
because I just know I'm going to ache for 3-year-old Camden.

Speaking of aches.
How does he turn 1 so soon.
Looking so big on his first shoulder ride!

Second time having eggs and second time breaking out in hives.
Guess we'll head to an allergist. That'll be my first time.

I'm about to build two more of these for Christmas gift requests and I'm excited to have a little woodworking project again! It's been a while.

Westin so desperately wanted to pop my gold confetti popper from my package from Comma this weekend and I took a slow motion video of it that keeps cracking us both up.

He's really tired + a little sick here,
but this sweet face after I nurse him just pulls at my heart strings right now.
We've still got a few weeks ahead of us of nursing but I'm seeing the beginnings of the end. 
Sweet, sweet boy.