The Mott Family: April 2016

We started off November with a few more soccer and football games.

Lizza:

Oliver, and Tristan with his friend Drew:

Rachel at gymnastics:

Then Daniel got to travel to Europe for work. He flew into Vienna (Austria), and then mainly stayed in Bratislava (Slovakia) before taking a train to Budapest (Hungary), and then a train to Prague (Czech Republic).

Bratislava, Slovakia:

Budapest, Hungary:

Prague, Czech Republic:

Meanwhile, back at home, I was starting to get our house packed up for our move to Utah, which was stressful. I found so many random things that I had no idea why we owned or what category of box they should go in. It made me want to get rid of all of our stuff. I had grand plans to use the packing process as a way to really get rid of clutter and sort through every single belonging and only keep what we needed; I started out by labeling each box on every side, and then I had a list that had all the boxes numbered on it, with notes on what was in each box. That only lasted for a few days. Then I realized I was running out of time, and I started panicking and just cramming random stuff in random boxes – blankets with clocks and batteries and lone socks and also broken things and junk that we would want to throw away as soon as we got to Utah. Pretty soon every room looked like this. It felt like an impossible task.

There was also some dumpster diving for boxes. So many boxes.

The kids tried to carry on with their normal activities

Drawing together:

Falling asleep on books:

And reading in uncomfortable forts:

And speaking of forts, Henry built a huge one up in the playroom (which was also filled with packing boxes). He was up there playing with toy food, cooking pretend stuff, and I overheard him doing some wild singing, so I sneaked up with the video camera to record. I’m really not clear on how he got this song stuck in his head:

Also, here’s a conversation I overheard between Henry and Cynthia. He had taken it upon himself to teach her the difference between villains and heroes, so they were making a list of all the things villains do versus all the things heroes do.

On the villain list:

go to jail
steal stuff
kill people
eat meat (ha! I don’t know where he got this idea; he eats meat)
never do their jobs
mostly lazy
try to destroy good guys

On the hero list:

kill bad guys, well not really (I guess he wasn’t sure how he felt about violence over on the hero side, so he added the “well not really”)
help people
do other good stuff
protect people
obey

Cynthia: Oh! So heroes just do the things that they’re supposed to do!
Henry: Correct!

I’m glad they got that all figured out straight.

Here’s Lizza with a cherry pie that she baked all by herself at Activity Days:

And a card I found that Henry had made me for my birthday in October. I love that he drew me an Elsa picture. And that he made sure to add “and this isn’t the last thing," as a little warning that there might be more cards and pictures coming (there were).

Rachel, Lizza, and Henry found this neat little spot near our house that they passed every day on their walk home from school. They decided to name it their Fort/Adventure Campout, and they started hanging out there a lot. They had it all set up – a spot on the left with pencils and paper to do homework, that middle block with the bowl of honeysuckles was their kitchen, and that blue cup was the garbage can. Then they added a blanket for relaxing.

Here’s Lizza demonstrating what relaxing at the fort looked like. It didn’t bother her that it was raining on us.

Rachel made a great little map to show how to get there:

Henry at one of several doctor appointments to try to solve problems he was having with his ears. We had been wondering what was going on with him for awhile, because he seemed to be really struggling with listening and following instructions; we finally realized he couldn’t hear us! He kept getting repeat ear infections and his ears were not draining right. They decided to wait and not put tubes in his ears in the hopes that it would get better when we moved from Austin to Utah, and it did.

Saying goodbye to our pet snake, Lucy. We weren’t allowed pets at the house we were going to be renting in Utah (plus it would have been tricky getting her there anyway), so we gave her to a family in our ward. I can't say that I miss her a lot, but she was a pretty decent pet and didn't cause too much trouble.

Tristan and Oliver getting dropped off at the church to go on an overnight backpacking trip for scouts. It rained on them the whole time.

When they got home the next day this is how hard it was raining (my favorite part of this video is at the end when I started to walk inside with the video camera and Oliver panicked and tried to dive out of the way because he was wearing his fuzzy pajamas).

Then we took off to Arizona for Thanksgiving with Daniel’s sister and her family.

We love to get new music before we go on road trips, and usually the kids will pick a favorite song that they’ll ask to hear every time we get in the car and it will become our theme song for that trip. I’m not sure how, but the Kongos “Come With Me Now” was it for this trip:

Cousins!

Happy to be reunited:

November weather in Arizona is awesome. The kids spent so much time outside.

It helped that Adam and Gretchen have an amazing backyard. I have always dreamed of having a yard with a path like theirs. The kids spent hours just going around and around the yard.

Another backyard dream of mine: cage fighting on the trampoline. (Just kidding) But they did actually spend a lot of time doing this.

We decided while we were in Arizona to drive up to the Grand Canyon. We spent the day there, and then stayed the night in Flagstaff and drove home the next morning. The kids loved seeing the Grand Canyon, and it was even more fun being there with cousins.