The Atkin Family: Fall

Here are some highlights from the last couple of months.

Joe and I took a Friday off to go down to Utah for an appointment for Joe and the BYU/Cincinnati game. We got to Provo in time to pick up a delicious lunch from Burger Supreme and then we had a picnic at Rock Canyon Park. The kids loved rolling down the hills and playing at the park there. Eli loved posing for us on this rock:

The cougs are #1!

Nate managed to wiggle out his very first lost tooth at the park!

He wouldn't open his mouth for the picture but luckily I found this selfie on my phone later:

He's getting so big.

The game was fun. We met Chris, Emily & Isaac, along with Brad & Kelli and their kids at the game. Eli was tired after missing his nap and he managed to fall asleep during the game. He didn't appreciate the noise but he took a decent nap:

Here's the crew:

(Eli covered his ears like that the entire time :)

We took a fun trip to the pumpkin patch here. The kids love the straw maze and the big slides:

Again with the posing :)

I finally took Nate out for his birthday lunch. He was so excited to hear at school that he could read 20 books a month and get a free little pizza at Pizza Hut. Plus, if he does it every month he gets a ticket to a water park. He is so funny about it and reminds me to read him books and write them down over and over again.

Anyway, here we are getting his free pizza one day:

One day I couldn't resist taking a picture of Nate doing his homework in his Halloween costume:

He wanted to be Harry Potter again. That made it easy!

Sadly, sickness struck us again around Halloween--this time it was Elizabeth--so she missed the trunk-or-treat. Here are the rest of the kids with their neighbor friend Anna.

Two Harry Potters:

For the very first time, I volunteered to do a trunk. We're just not Halloween people so I usually shy away from that but I guess I felt guilty for never signing up all these years. I don't have Halloween decorations but we do have a ton of Star wars stuff so I did that instead and played some Star Wars music:

That night was also the famed Halloween party of friend of mine puts on. It was amazing again. I didn't get any pictures except our photo booth shot:

(I love how Natalie is evilly petting the skull.)

We were thrilled to have Chris and Regina and their kids come for Halloween this year. It was so fun having them. Here the kids are eating mummy dogs:

We had Shari and the kids over one night, too (Tom was sick), We were all amazed to see Shari go jump on the tramp with the kids. I think it tired her out pretty well but it's fun to see her doing so well:

(It's hard to see her but she's sitting)

I love this serious fighting look Eli gets:

It cracks me up.

We got all of our pumpkins from our garden this year! The one pumpkin plant produced 6 good pumpkins (and two green ones).

Here they are:

(From left to right: mine, Elizabeth's, Natalie's, Nate's and Eli's painted one)

Lizzy and I did the Frankensteins and I started that last one-eyed one. Joe said he wanted to carve it but then never got the chance so it remained one-eyed. :)

All the kids:

My kids were Annabeth Chase, Lucy Pevensie, Harry Potter and a dragon (Grandma marsha worked hard to add those yellow wings to our dinosaur costume).

Regina and I told the older kids they could go around the neighborhood while we took Eli and Maddie around to a few houses. Unfortunately, we weren't too clear about what "around the neighborhood" meant and it was getting dark. We went out driving around looking for them and luckily spotted Lilly's Rapunzel wig. After that, we went out to Jerome where Christine and Hallie were nice enough to take the kids around some more (except Eli--he was done).

Poor Tom was recovering from jaw surgery but still a good sport:

It was a fun Halloween.

A few days later we had our first snow storm!

The kids were stoked. It was really wet snow that was perfect for making a snowman, which Natalie did before school. It melted pretty fast but the snowman stayed for a little while.