Fall Fun

We went on a fun hike from Dry Creek to Garin Park. We found tons of wild blackberries that the kids loved eating:

It was a fun outing.

We had a groupon to go to Rockin' Jump and took Nate's friend Carlo along:

One day, while Eli was doing his homework, he told me, "I am like crushing this homework packet." :)

Some of Eli's writing in papers he wrote for Nate:

My friend Kristen took some pictures of the school jog-a-thon for me since it happened while we were in Mexico. 

Eli:

Nate:

Nate made the standings for most laps in his class:

I wanted to remember this cute moment of these three reading in our bed together:

Eli really wanted to learn how to write his name in cursive and he did.

Not bad!

Eli had a Fall festival day at school and Joe and I both got to pop in to help out.

We discovered a hilarious face that Natalie can make at dinner one day:

Speaking of Natalie, she was excited about her Halloween costume and worked hard on it. She was a wolf:

All the kids' costumes at the ward trunk or treat:

A police officer, an assassin, a guy in a cloak (he refused to be labeled) and a wolf.

Nate and his good friend, Brendan:

My girls and I had a fun opportunity one morning to go to a conference with Hank Smith, John Bytheway and Meg Johnson. We have loved listening to some of Hank Smith's CDs so they were excited to hear him. We loved it! They all gave powerful, really funny but inspiring messages.

Since I love a good pumpkin patch, I took the kids one day after school, plus Brendan. We tried a new one in Livermore that was fun.

Especially the corn pit:

Lizzie was glued to her book but I did get her in this picture:

They all loved the inflatable pillow thing too:

Then we did the corn maze. It was a funny experience. First, some of the kids were complaining about how easy it was. Then, when we started circling around and feeling lost, kids were complaining about that. :) They'd given us a little cheat-sheet maze that we whipped out and were able to figure out where we were and navigate out.

Halloween rolled around and Natalie invited her friends, Izzy and Mulan, over to our neighborhood to trick or treat with her.

Our pumpkins:

Natalie has gotten some comments about looking like Reese Witherspoon so we looked up a picture of her and tried to recreate it:

I can kind of see it. :)

Natalie wanted to make some pumpkin pies one night and deliver one to someone:

Our nice neighbors (Aira and Khushi's family) invited us over to their home for a Diwali party. It was so fun to learn more about that holiday and visit with so many of our neighbors.

 We loved this beautiful chalk drawing on their driveway:

We left straight from there to drive up to Old Greenwood for veterans day weekend. We met our friends the Ashbys there who we miss so much. We had a blast taking them to some of our favorite spots, eating and just hanging out. It was chilly but sunny and we had good weather.

These deer surprised us one night when we were going out:

They weren't even scared!

Sand Harbour:

The kids loved climbing on the rocks.

Cute Elle:

We climbed around the rocks above Donner Lake, too:

It was a great weekend!

We actually ended up going back up to Greenwood the week of Thanksgiving. With the wildfires around, the smoke was so bad and so we couldn't get outside much. We decided to head back up and this time Mary and Andrew met us. It was really fun, too. We puzzled, I took the kids swimming one day, and we mostly just hung out at the cabin:

We loved having some time with them before they move to UT soon.

One night, we spotted Andrew while watching a football game:

So fun!

I love the bright yellow ginko trees around here so much in the fall:

Another fun moment with the kids all watching something:

 Those times are getting more rare.

Joe and I snuck out one night to an Afghan restaurant to talk about some important decisions:

It was delicious.

Eli wrote this for his homework one day and it made me laugh:

"He who must not be named is bad." :)

So many fun memories!