Eli is 10!

Eli had a great birthday this year. He was due for a friend party and he had a great turnout. We did it a few days before his birthday. We ended up doing it at Laser mania which was so easy and I loved it. Definitely might be worth the money to do that in the future. I loved these pictures of Eli conducting as they sang "Happy Birthday" to him :). That perfectly captures Eli:

He had kids from school and the ward come, along with Lily and Maddy. He got a lot of really fun gifts, including this jousting set that he and Maddy loved playing with when we got home:

We celebrated on his actual birthday too. He wanted to decorate his cake:

He got his birthday wish again--snow on his birthday! He, Nate, Joe and I all sat in the hot tub watching it fall and it was so peaceful. He got some good gifts from family, too:

He was so excited to get that box from Mark Rober's building subscription. He's loved making those when they arrive every month.

Eve gave him a Koopa Troopa:

Natalie got him some swords:

Lizzie got him a cotton candy machine:

Eli had a big year. He finished up his 3rd grade year and finished half of his 4th grade year at a new school (Summit). He made some good friends, played a season of soccer, and progressed a lot on the cello. He was excited to join Maddy at Summit this year and he likes his teachers pretty well. Unfortunately his main teacher was burned in an accident right before school started so he had subs for a while. That made things a little less stable. He still loves math, though, and likes his math teacher a lot. His teacher just raves about how advanced he is. When he was still at Horizon, he loved to spend time in Regina's STEM room. He got really into soccer this year after playing at recess a lot at Horizon. It was so fun for me to play with him and to watch him practice by himself in the yard. He even mastered a rainbow kick after lots of practice! 

Eli brings so much life and zest to our family and it's so fun to watch him learn and grow. He is a wonderful brother to his siblings and so helpful and kind. We can't imagine life without him. We love you, Eli!

Natalie is 16!

We had another big birthday around here. Sixteen feels like such a big milestone for some reason, even though you can drive earlier here and Natalie has been for a long time. We celebrated her birthday in pieces this year. We had her birthday breakfast on her actual birthday with acai bowls before the girls both left to go to Coeur D'Alene for state drama. Then we had her birthday dinner the Sunday after they got back with Cafe Rio pork and raspberry sorbet for dessert:

Then we watched Downton Abby since she has been watching it again :).

It was a big year for Natalie in a lot of ways. She got her license, jumped headfirst into theater and did 4 shows, dated a bit and got her first boyfriend named Jase, started working concessions at the high school, and made a lot of new friends. She has really thrived in a lot of ways since we moved to Jerome and has definitely had a lot of opportunities to try different things. It has been so fun watching her improve in so many areas. She is still doing amazingly in school and keeping her 4.0 even with everything else going on. She loves music and is always introducing me to new music that I like. I also love that she loves a lot of 90s music. She still loves to figure out songs on the piano and she has quite the repertoire of songs she can play well. She's a good friend and loves to work hard making creative gifts for her friends' birthdays that involve inside jokes. She still loves to cook and makes amazing food that we often get to benefit from. She loves to watch TV and movies, mostly comedies, romcoms, and coming-of-age dramas. She's always up for a board game. She's a gifted writer and makes us laugh all the time. We sure love Natalie and can't imagine our family without her! I'm so blessed to be her mom.

November

Now for the November recap. We had a fun time one time coming up with funny haikus. Lizzie couldn't do funny and did really poetic ones. Eli wrote this one that of course I had to save:

Natalie got bangs! So beautiful:

One day I told my kids I'd give them $50 if they memorized the poem "Good Timber". They actually all did it and pretty quickly, too. I wasn't banking on them learning it that fast :).

I love that poem.

We got our first snow!

Eve loved putting on her very own toy backpack and I thought it was adorable:

Eve and I went to vote! She won over everyone around us:

The older cousins went on a college tour trip all by themselves. Their album cover:

Sleeping at Jon and Jaime's:

Love those kids.

I got Eve this Bluey set at Walmart and she wore it out on an errand one day and posed so perfectly I had to get some pictures:

Lizzie and Natalie had their drama competition. They did this humorous duo piece together that was legitimately hilarious. They wrote it themselves and it was about an elderly criminal and the officer who put her away who is the only one who believes she's still dangerous. Natalie's southern accent was so perfect and their physical comedy was amazing. I got to go watch them perform and they did amazing. They should have made it to the next round but sadly they were the alternate. Lizzie sang a medley of songs from Into the Woods as the baker's wife with Chase and they got first place at districts! Natalie also did a pantomime piece with a friend that was really good but they didn't make it through even though they should have. The hard thing about these competitions is how subjective they are.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of Lizzie in costume.

Eve loved when they got out a parachute after storytime one day. There's something so magical about parachutes.

I babysat Jimmy and Ruby one day and we had to take the boys to the dentist. It was cute watching them play together:

We took some quick family pictures before Thanksgiving for the Christmas card:

It was a great Thanksgiving. We had all of Joe's brothers except Jon here along with Marsha. It was my best turkey yet! 

Once Thanksgiving was over it was time to start playing Christmas music:

I think Eve took that picture and I love it.

Eve started to love packing up her little suitcase and pretending to go on trips:

We got more snow! I loved watching Nate play with Eve:

One of our favorite ways to make a day at home more fun is to build a blanket fort and have a picnic lunch:

She also took these pictures of us playing:

Poor Eve got really sick at the end of the month. It's so sad to see her so sick:

October

October was a fun month. It started off with Conference. This was our breakfast spread between sessions on Sunday:

Lizzie got her senior pictures done. She and James did a combined session. She wasn't thrilled with them but I thought some of them turned out really cute. These were my favorites:

Joe and I got to get away for a weekend down to SLC. We stayed at the Grand America hotel and went to a Faith Matters conference. We got to hear a lot of our favorite LDS writers speak and had fun eating good food together. We also got to meet up with Matt, Brad & Kelli for dinner one night. Unfortunately Melissa was in Europe:

Eve and I had fun hanging out together. She loves playing with play dough and I remembered the old trick of blowing out circles from the roller to make little cakes. She loves doing that now. :)

I love finding pictures like these on my phone:

She and I also had a blast going to the little free pumpkin patch in Twin:

Becca and her kids met us there:

We got lunch from the food trucks there. It was so fun and festive! I love pumpkin patches.

We also went to our ward's Halloween carnival at our friends' the Doughty's house. That was a blast too. Eve especially loved the cupcakes:

Nate dressed up like Dwight and was even in a little skit that the youth put on:

Natalie was busy putting on a play at the high school. They actually worked with Canyon Ridge to write and put it on in only a couple of months. It was called NME. Natalie ended up doing a ton of the writing and editing (otherwise it would have been hours long--no one wanted their parts cut). It was really fun to watch them put it all together and it turned out pretty spooky. It was the perfect Halloween play.

I caught this picture of Eli dancing with Eve:

I thought this was sweet--Eve found a doll at the library and was snuggling with it:

We got to go to the big pumpkin patch with Regina and her kids and then Becca and her kids met us there. It was so much fun! We especially loved watching the older kids pretend like they were young again.

We did a race on the inflatable pillow that was so funny to watch:

They had these fun round tubes you could roll, too:

Natalie got these pictures one Sunday on the way to church:

I can't remember why Eli and I weren't there

We took Nate on his birthday lunch one day to Outback and he and Eve loved playing in the rain while we waited for it to open.

Eli had his last soccer tournament in Boise so he and I drove out for it. It was a cold morning but it was fun to watch him play. He made some great plays!

We had fun carving pumpkins together. Unfortunately, I didn't realize one of the pictures was blurry:

Eve and I got to go to his school to watch his grade do a Thriller dance:

We had a fun Halloween. The girls were off doing their own thing so the younger kids and I joined Chris and Regina's ward trunk or treat and then went trick or treating with them our Tom and Shari's neighborhood. It was fun to watch Eve get the hang of it. Here are the kids' costumes: