October started out, as most months do, with the kids being silly. On the 3rd Buddy wanted me to take a picture of his awesome breakfast (Toaster Streudel & hot cocoa).
Later that evening, Faith had fun with some clay.
I wanted to post this pic from the 4th showing what kind of breakfasts Christian requests. This day it was bacon, "circle egg" (over easy), toast and hot chocolate. That kid is so spoiled!
Faith was already at school, but since he's in Chinese immersion kindergarten, he goes to school 3/4 day instead of 1/2 day like regular kindergarten classes. He goes from 10:40 am-3:25 pm Mon-Thurs and 11:20 am-1:25 pm on Friday which is early out for all grades. Faith has to catch the bus at 8:20 am every morning, so that gives me time alone with my little Buddy. The only bad thing is that I work Mon & Fri mornings, so Christian has to fend for himself, which usually means playing Legos or some other toy on the floor next to me in my office.
On the evening of the 4th Christian started Karate lessons. He really liked it at first, but has a really hard time when the instructor asks the kids to find a partner to practice their newly learned moves. He is just too shy to ask another kid to be his partner!
That night we made homemade mini pizzas. Buddy was thrilled that he loaded his with so much cheese.
On the 5th we decided to pick our pumpkins out of our garden. We ended up with one really nice one,
And one that we knew had gotten a hole eaten into it (by a bird? giant bug? rodent?) when it was just a wee itty-bitty baby pumpkin. To our amazement, it continued to grow, even with it's severe injury! We think it turned out way cool and deemed it the creepiest pumpkin of the year, and we didn't even have to carve it!!!
We also got a few baby pumpkins which were still yellow (not pictured) and this gorgeous rose off our rose bush.
On the 6th we met up with Lana, Tammy, Tina, Zach & Liam at Gardner Village. We ate lunch and went searching for all the crazy witches.
The kids' favorite thing, of course, was the face painting!
After Sunday dinner at my mom & dad's on the 7th, we walked to their neighbor's house who goes all out for Halloween.
Joy was friends with these people's daughter in high school and said that it was super scary to go into their unfinished basement storage with all these life-sized ghouls down there!
On the 8th we had white bean chicken chili and the kids helped me make some extra creepy rolls to go with it. Here are Christian's bone, skulls, and zombie.
He woke up on the morning of the 10th looking like he got beat up during the night. I told him that he must have fallen out of bed, but he didn't believe me since he doesn't remember it and he woke up back in bed. Tony says that he thinks I went in and pounded him and Christian's just covering for me ;)
It looked even worse the next day at karate. He had a real shiner--this picture doesn't do it justice!
On the 16th the kids decided to take Skittles swimming. A week or so before, we had gotten the little doggie lots of outfits because they were on 90% off clearance at PetCo. One of the outfits was this red floral bikini!
Sure enough, Skittles could swim, but she totally hated it!
For a school project, Faith and her friend Katie made this volcano out of rice krispie treat and had diet coke inside.
On the 17th, they got to set it off at an event with all the fifth graders and their volcanoes.
That afternoon the kids had their yearly well check doctor visits. Both are tall for their age, average weight, and doing great.
I got invited to sub at another neighborhood bunco group and they were having a costume party. I decided to throw caution to the wind and wear my skin tight sexy cop costume. Obviously, Tony helped me pick this out at the costume shop ;)
Here's some cute artwork by the kids:
Faith did this cute picture of a semi truck-
and a great room with perspective-
this is a project she did at school, a tribute to Monet's lilies-
This isn't artwork, but I had put it up on our ironwork project display. It is a certificate I got from my surgeon's office for loosing over 100 pounds and it came with two movie passes!
Christian imagined this cool house with lots of cool steps up to the bedrooms from the door on the bottom and a ladder to the hideout-
Fathi's tribute to Skittles-
and Buddy's (love the ribbon for added dimension!)-
We had this picture up of my Grandpa Quinn in his military training days-
Christian did this representation of the movie "Puss in Boots." It has the golden egg, the goose, and Puss in Boots in the lower right quadrant-
On September 1st Christian turned 6 years old! On the 2nd we celebrated at the grandparents'. Tammy's display of awesomeness:
Christian's self-designed Avengers cake:
Happy sister and doggie enjoying the festivities:
He got lots of fun presents at my mom & dads including a suitcase,
and Tony's parent's including a Lego Pirates of the Caribbean bedroom set.
September 4th was the first day of school!
Christian's first day of kindergarten was just an hour of introduction to the Chinese immersion program where parents attended, so here's me trying to make the ride home fun. Buddy was way disappointed that he didn't get to ride the bus until the next day.
The 5th was the first day that both kids were away at school and Skiddle-doo was SOOOOO excited to have them home again!!
On Labor day our family had reservations to tour the Brigham City temple, but when we got there we found out that they weren't really requiring reservations and it would be over three hours of waiting in the insane heat for us to get in. We decided to bag it and just head home, but my dad, who had met us there, set up a new reservation for the morning of the 6th. I was sad that the only time Tony could go had been ruined, but the kids and I got up early and had a beautiful tour.
Sorry that there's just random art in the middle here, but when I take it down off the wall and put it into memory box storage, I like to get a picture for my blog book! Here is an awesome lion that Faith painted:
The 15th was Christian's first soccer game! He was so excited that he finally got to play instead of just being on the sidelines.
Here is a vampire that Buddy made out of a balloon later that day:
On the 22nd Faith had a piano recital.
She did a beautiful job and aunt Tam came through with some gorgeous flowers!
September 23rd we went to Lagoon for the first and only time with Tony this year and timed it just right so that we could enjoy Frightmares.
The weather was perfect, we got Christian to go into a haunted house (he's more afraid this year), and we had tons of fun!
September 27th I volunteered to help out with 5th grade splatter paint day. The students were painting pieces of tissue paper that lined the grass, but had even more fun painting themselves and each other!
On the 29th we enjoyed some lunch at the Greek Festival and my dad was kind enough to buy for us. Tony had never been there before, so we had him try a bit of all of our favorites: gyros, tiropitakia (feta cheese pie with flaky pastry), spanikopita (spinach pie), souvlaki, and galaktobourekos (pastry with custard that we affectionately call "galactic burritos").
We drove up into the mountains to enjoy the changing leaves on the 30th. It was windy and we couldn't find many great places to pull over and take family pictures, but the scenery was beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen so many dark red trees!
