I love October. It’s a big birthday month for us (Daniel’s, Cynthia’s, and mine), and it’s the start of all the fun holiday months. I also like to imagine that the weather starts to get cooler, which I love, although here in Texas it’s not always true, because Texas thinks that October still fully belongs to summer. But we did get a few chilly days, and there’s nothing cuter than a Cindy in fuzzy jammies coloring with Henry.
This October was especially exciting for us, because after 6 1/2 years of living here we finally painted our house! (And when I say we painted our house, I mean we paid someone to paint it for us, which was even better.) We’d been living with the awful factory flat paint that just comes right off if you try to wash the walls, and after awhile I gave up on even cleaning the walls, so then they were a mixture of bad paint and dirt. I picked a warm gray color for the whole house (I’m boring like that), and our guy had it done in four days. I love it – both how it looks, and also how when Cindy spills her whole cup of spinach smoothie and it splashes all over the wall I can just wipe it right up.
The kids mostly thought it was exciting because we got to rearrange the furniture and make boats out of the living room couches, which was awesome for doing homework in:
The lighting isn’t great in these pictures, but you can see the new color in the background. Our old color was about the same color as the mantle.
Daniel’s birthday happened the week we were painting, which is maybe why I don’t have a picture of him. He turned 35 and celebrated by going to football practice.
And speaking of football, here are some pictures of our first October game. When the boys played at a field nearby, a lot of times we would drive separate cars – Daniel would take Tristan and Oliver early to practice before the game, and then I would get there with the rest of the kids right when it started. This game was in Manor, which is a little further away, so we all drove together. We dropped the boys off at the field, and then drove around until we found this fun little playground.
Swinging. Somehow Cynthia made it out to the car with no shoes on, and nobody noticed until we were already there. 
And Henry had brought tennis shoes that were too small for him and were hurting his feet, so he ended up wearing a too-big sparkly pair of Lizza’s shoes, which we happened to have in the car because Lizza had brought three pairs of shoes to the football game (she was wearing sandals because she couldn’t find her tennis shoes, so I had gone out to the garage and grabbed two pairs of tennis shoes from the next-size up box – I wasn’t sure which ones would fit her). So we were a mess in the shoe department.
But we did get in lots and lots of good underdogs. The girls wanted pictures of themselves while they were doing underdogs, so they took turns taking pictures while I pushed. I love Lizza’s hair in this one – she’s not even that high, but somehow her hair is having a major party:
Rachel’s turn to swing, Lizza’s turn behind the camera:
Trsitan (#15) and Oliver (#1) playing together:
Henry and Cynthia sharing and reading together:
Lizza and her friend being silly together:
And Elizabeth and Rachel being twins together (not at the football game). They love dressing up the same. I’m not sure how they decided on such an awesome outfit.
Birthday/General Conference fondue – since Daniel didn’t get much of a celebration on his actual birthday, we decided to celebrate it a few days later by doing our favorite cheese and chocolate fondues during General Conference. I usually get some sort of pound cake to dip in the chocolate fondue along with the fruit and marshmallows, but this time I couldn’t find any at the store, so I substituted with donut holes. I think now they’re going to be a permanent request. 
Dad plus giant beanbag = kids’ favorite game. In our old little condo in Provo this beanbag was in our front room, so it was used daily for all sorts of crazy games. When we moved here we put it upstairs in the playroom, so sometimes we forget all the fun things we can do with it. Here’s Daniel making sure the younger kids who missed out on all the fun in Provo still grow up with their fair share of “flying through the air” memories with Dad:
He kept trying to give me a “thumbs up” sign as he flew by the camera:
I love her little feet sticking out in this one: 
Here’s Ollie and Tristan doing their best to create awesome flying pictures too:
Rain! It has been so dry here forever, but we did get a few rainy days in October. Everyone except for Tristan went outside to enjoy it (I think he was still at school – he gets out later than everyone else):
Cindy was running around yelling, “This is so freaking awesome!” (thanks to Ollie for teaching her how to say that)
Another football game. This one was Homecoming, so the boys got the whole cheerleader escort across the field thing. Of course Oliver is looking away, to try to show how not interested he is in walking anywhere holding onto the arm of a girl. 
Tristan had the same idea – “maybe if I just stare off into the distance like there is something really interesting over there, people won’t notice that I’m almost holding a girl’s hand.”
The girls playing around during the game: 
There was a little Homecoming celebration after the game – chili dogs and happy kids. 
And here’s Oliver with a little snake he caught on the way home from school:
And Cynthia on her 2nd birthday. She really, really loves all of Henry’s Avenger toys that he got on his birthday in the summer, so she was so happy to finally have her own. 
And she was even more excited about this sweet Avengers t-shirt:
And a new stroller to push all her Avengers around in (plus a few dolls and birthday cards thrown in there):
All she wanted to do on her birthday was go to the park:
And work on her state puzzle: 
And have a snake cake. I tried to see if she was interested in any other cute little animal cakes (“really? are you sure you don’t want this sweet pink kitty cake?”), but she was pretty set on a snake. When I googled snake cakes online to get ideas, all I found were a bunch of horrible gross cakes that actually looked like real snakes, so I decided to do a more friendly “cupcakes in a line” version. She was pretty happy with it. 
I love this picture. She really does love her older brothers and sisters so much. And we really love her so much. We can’t get enough of her cuteness. 
Also in October – pumpkin decorating! I always get the kids some mini pumpkins for them to decorate themselves. Usually they just draw funny faces with markers, but this year we tried something new, and they loved it.
Step 1: peel a bunch of crayons, break in half, and hot-glue onto top of pumpkin.
Step 2: Get a blow-dryer and hold it over the crayons for a few minutes (watch out, it splatters everywhere)
Step 3: Enjoy your awesome colorful pumpkin. 
All the baby colorful pumpkins sitting next to their big Mama. 
Lizza added a little more Halloween drama to our front porch with this pack of wild spiders and a creepy note: “Danger. Do not go near the spiders or else you will never be seen again.” She is certainly Oliver’s little sister (because remember this?). Also, the next day Henry drew a bunch of frightening ghosts and taped them up on our front window with his own little note that he wrote himself that said “do not go by these ghosts or you will never see your mom or dad ever again.” So our house was looking pretty haunted, as you can imagine. 
More football. You can’t tell, but this is a picture of Tristan blocking a punt, that his team then recovered. He is the one leaning over the kicker’s leg on the far right:
Coach Mott getting a good luck kiss from Cindy through the fence:
Rachel taking care of Cindy during the game:
This was towards the end of October, and it was our last swimming day of the year. Henry and Cindy had been begging to go, and I thought the water would be pretty cold, but we decided to give it one last try. First we played around at the playground next to the pool: 
And then Henry and Cindy braved the cold,cold water. I didn’t. 
See you next year, pool. 
The next day was my birthday, and I was lucky to have these two around to help me whip up some fruit pizza with lemony cream cheese frosting. 
The big 32. 
Lizza on “wear boots to school” day. She proudly told me when she walked in the door that she read her book the whole time she was walking home from school, and she didn’t even stop to look up once. I guess I should be thankful she made it home. 
Carving our pumpkin, a few days before Halloween (Tristan and Oliver were at football practice, so they missed out on all the fun). Everyone was half excited/half mortified to help pull out all the guts:
Except for Cindy, who was mostly just mortified. She thought they were way too gross.
She kept saying, “No, you get some guts for me, Mom!”
Trying to make scary jack-o-lantern faces:
My favorite Halloween picture. 
More Halloween stuff – all the kids at Daniel’s work party, the day before Halloween. 
We decided to do an Avengers theme this year. Plus Wonder Woman (we figured she could be friends with them):
Henry found a couple of other Avengers guys at the party. He really wanted me to take his picture with them, which I thought was funny. I love how they look like just a bunch of super heroes hanging out around the office, chatting about the stock market or something.
Another picture request - “Hey, Mom – you really might want to get a picture of this!” I was worried that when he saw the other Ironman kids he would realized that other moms actually spend money on real costumes, and that he’d feel sad about his red thermal pajamas with an ironman suit that Oliver made out of cardstock on top, but he never complained. Luckily he had the little arm blaster thing that a friend had let us borrow, so he still felt pretty awesome. 
She also let us borrow some Hulk stuff, which Henry wore to playgroup on Halloween morning. Here he is doing his best Hulk Smash: 
Also on Halloween – he finished lesson #50 in his reading lesson book. Half-way done! 
All the kids getting ready to go trick-or-treating:
Tristan as Captain America. He was a really good sport about this - he had wanted to be a football player again, but he agreed to be Captain America when I told him we were trying to have all the kids match. I didn’t even think about how it might be embarrassing for him to be all dressed up in tights with a shield and stuff until we were walking around on Halloween night – whenever we ran into kids his age I could tell he was a little embarrassed. Whoops. I guess I need to start thinking about stuff like this now that he is almost 12. I’m lucky he’s such a nice kid. 
Oliver, on the other hand, was thrilled with his image as Hawkeye. 
Rachel as Black Widow: 
Lizza as Wonder Woman: 
Henry as Ironman (he had a mask, but it kept slipping off, so we just went with the Tony Stark goatee):
And Cynthia as the cutest little Incredible Hulk ever: 
She was cracking me up when I was taking pictures of all the kids together – she realized they were all doing special super hero poses, but I think she wasn’t quite sure how hers should go (I should have just told her to do her Hulk Smash move – she had that one down really well). 
Ready to go:
A few days later we had our traditional Halloween candy draft – we combined everyone’s treats, sorted them into different piles (good candy bars, starbursts/skittles, suckers and other gross things, etc.) Then we decided on a draft order, and everyone got to take turns choosing until they had 20 treats, which they get to eat whenever they want. It’s always funny seeing the different kinds of treats they choose (Tristan and Oliver have finally realized the candy bar pile is for sure the best one to choose from, while Henry was still wasting his picks on weird little gummy candies or tiny tootsie rolls).
They also all have different strategies for saving them – Tristan decided to not go as extreme as last year (he made his 20 treats last until Christmas), and instead he’s just trying to be reasonable and eat one every few days when he feels like it. Oliver just wants to have more left than everyone else, so he is always asking the other kids how much they’ve eaten. He hasn’t eaten any of his yet. Rachel and Lizza ate a few right away, and then panicked and asked me to hide their bags so they wouldn’t get tempted anymore. Henry ate about 6 right away, and then I put them up in the pantry, and he usually asks me for one every day when he gets up from his nap. And I’m just doing my best to not eat all the leftovers. We’ll see how that goes. 
