October and November 2015

We started off October with the traditional General Conference/3-course fondue party for Daniel’s birthday.  You’d never guess it, but he was turning 38 that day.  The two little extra boys in the picture are my nephews; we were babysitting them for a few days while their parents were out of town. 


Which meant fun cousin slumber parties:

And jack-o-lantern drawing lessons:

Here's Rachel and Lizza doing some tricks out on the swingset.  One of the best things about our rental house was the backyard.  The kids spent so much time out there.


Cindy got pretty good at keeping herself busy while the older kids were all at school.  She loved to follow me around the house with multiple buckets of toys, and then she’d make elaborate “set-ups” (a favorite Mott child activity) in whatever room I was in (that bandaid on her chin is from an accident involving her chin somehow colliding with and then skidding across Oliver’s broken-arm cast.  It was a really gross sore that took forever to heal, because little pieces of cast got into it, and kept working their way out.). 

She also was a fan of dragging around hundreds of stuffed animal “pets”.  Her pets were very loyal and followed her everywhere, mostly because they had to – she invented a complicated leash system involving several jumpropes. 


Bonus video extras:  Cindy's pirate patch and the beginnings of a "cover the whole table in puzzles" project.



We love fall weather in Utah.  It’s something we definitely missed during all the years we lived in Texas.  October weather was perfect for spending a lot of time outside.

Pizza, fishing, and s’mores up American Fork Canyon:





A hike with my mom and grandma up to Stewart Falls:



Checking out the scarecrow contest at Thanksgiving Point:


And lots and lots of exploring on the hill behind our rental house.


Pretty much every day after school plus Saturdays the kids would disappear into the great wilderness behind our house.  They kept telling me about an awesome hole that they had found, and how it was so big and they were turning it into a fort.  They kept begging me to come see it, so finally I hiked out there to check it out.  I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting, but it for sure wasn’t this:


It was so big!  The ultimate Family Game set-up! They had a shelf and everything! Here’s Rachel explaining all the coolness, plus the fact that they've been up there working on it since 7 am on a Saturday:



Then Miss Cynthia turned five.

Crepes with berries and whipped cream for breakfast:                                                 


And this fantastic card with a door and windows full of coins from Lizza:

All she wanted for her birthday was a skateboard (easy):                                             


And a Halloween cake (tricky).  She really does make the most bizarre choices for her birthday cakes.  I wasn’t exactly sure what a Halloween cake was, but I did my best.  She was thrilled with the idea of having little tombstones on the cake.  She wanted one to say “Happy birthday”, one to say “Happy Halloween” (because, get it, Mom? It’s a Halloween cake!), and one to say “I can read.”  We’re not clear on why that one got to be on there.  The only thing I can think of is that after some of the older kids finished their reading lessons I made them cakes that said “I can read!”, but when Cindy finished her reading lessons she had picked to have ice-cream cones instead, so maybe she was feeling left out that she never got an “I can read” cake?  It’s hard to know with her.  We love her so much. 


And so do all these people (my parents, one of my brothers, and a niece all came over to help celebrate):

Saturdays in October usually mean football games (for Tristan, Oliver, and Henry):


And soccer games (Lizza):


Daniel also had some fun on the football field when he took a trip to Dallas for work and got to kick field goals at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium. 


Here’s Henry and Cindy relaxing by the fire (the best way to spend a chilly October evening):


Me turning 35:


Crazy hair day:


And Lizza with her bike:


Then it was time for Halloween fun.

It started with Cindy getting to visit the older kids at school for their Halloween costume parade. 

Things I like about this picture:

-Cindy is wearing the witch hat and cape that my mom sewed when I was a little girl. My sisters and I all took turns wearing them. 

- She has her sparkly pink pretend camera around her wrist, just in case she wanted to snap any fake pictures of the parade

- She also brought a wand.  Probably made out of chopsticks.  Cindy tells me regularly that if she only had one wish, she would wish for a wand.  “That’s so smart, right, Mom? Then you could make all the wishes you want after that!”  It’s such a good plan. I can't even fault her for wanting this; I probably shouldn't admit this, but there have been a few times after I've finished re-reading all the Harry Potter books when I'm doing something hard or time-consuming and I have actually thought, "wait, I should just use my wand for this!"  And then I have to remember that I don't have a wand and then I have to feel embarrassed for myself (and also sad that I don't have a wand). We had this conversation (again) just the other day about how fabulous it would be to have a wand.  She said that in her wish she would make sure to say that you didn’t have to know any fancy spells to use the wand – you could just wish for things and wave it around and they’d come true.  I asked what she would wish for with her wand, and she said her first wish would be that nobody would fight ever again in the whole world (I guess even 6-year olds know that this is the kind of thing you have to use your first wish for), and second, she would wish for a dog, but she can’t decide between a French Bulldog or a German Shepherd.  Good luck, Cindy.  I hope most of your dreams and wishes come true. 

- Henry’s face! I’m not sure what was happening to inspire this look of pure love and adoration, but I’m happy I captured it, since I’m pretty sure it will never happen again. 


The big night: two kind and cheerful pirates, Darth, and a witch (now in a different witch’s costume; she changed every 5 minutes):


Tristan helping Rachel out with her pirate look (he thought a fake black eye would make her seem more pirate-y):

Cindy with her green (ish) face on:

NOVEMBER

November always starts out with the Halloween Candy Draft.  But first the sorting!  Candy bar pile (the kids are mostly getting better at knowing this is the only true pile to choose from), chewy candy pile, sucker pile, gross weird candy pile, etc.  Happy kids. 


This picture requires a bit of a story.  Short story: those are the kitchen windows of the house we live in now.


Long story:  In October (this is still 2015 that I’m talking about), we found out that the people we were renting from had unexpectedly sold their house, and we were going to have to move out at the end of the year.  We had originally planned on renewing our contract and renting for at least a few more years while we waited to either build on our lot or sell it, so this caused a bit of panic while we started quickly looking for another rental house.  Then it caused more worry when we realized that there was nothing available to rent.  We really didn’t want to have the kids change schools, especially since then they’d have to change back whenever we ended up building.  We also needed a rental house that had a room for Daniel to work from home.  The night we found out we were going to have to move, Daniel had seen one home listed for rent online that looked perfect for us, but when I went to look it up the next morning, the ad had been taken down.  When we kept looking for other rentals and coming up with nothing, I couldn’t get the one he had found out of my mind (even though I had never seen it).  I finally decided to go drive around Alpine and find it, and then knock on the door and ask about it.  I took Cindy and we found the house, but there was a “for sale” sign out in front.  I thought it was weird, since it had just been listed for rent the night before, but we left and started driving around Alpine looking for houses to rent.  About 10 minutes later I told Cindy we needed to go back to this house and check one more time.  We knocked on the door and explained the situation.  The owner, who had built the house two years before, ended up selling us the house and buying our lot from us.  The plan was to move in the middle of December.  Even though it felt weird to change gears so suddenly, we were relieved to finally be done with the whole process and not worry about building or selling our lot anymore.  The floor plan of this house was perfect for us, and even though there were a few things about it that were different than what we would have picked if we had built, we were really happy with it.  (Minus the curtains and blue paint in the kitchen – I took that picture before we moved in so I could start figuring out what we wanted to do about that). 

Before we moved, we enjoyed a few more months in our rental home.  Here’s Cindy at Wal-mart with all her many children, and then at a tire place dressed up in her finest cheetah-zebra-witch-pirate outfit.  That’s a velvet dress with a unicorn on it underneath all of that - her stylishness amazes me.


She also spent a lot of time on her new skateboard in November.  Sometimes in normal ways:



And sometimes not.  I don't even know how to explain this one. I love in the second part when she says, "You don't know what I'm going to do, right?"  No clue, Cindy.  We have no clue.



Here’s another video of Henry just learning how to play the piano.  He was fun to teach at this age, because he was so darn excited about it.  He played every song with lots of feeling and emotion (just look at those shoulders!).  Also, I love the awkward way my kids introduce themselves in videos - "so, this is me playing my piano. . . "  Ha!



After skateboarding and piano practice, the kids could always check the “Fun list” that Rachel and Lizza made if they got bored.  I love when they make things like this:


Other November stuff:

Lucky for us, fly-fishing is not just a summer sport.  The Provo River in the fall is gorgeous.

Then we got a little bit of snow.  I was less excited about this than Cynthia:

Here’s Lizza selling bows and crafts made out of crepe paper and tape.  After she made some money, she bought better materials and learned some basic sewing skills, and ended up starting a little business, complete with her own website and everything. She is such a hard worker.
 

This is Daniel and me at a wedding in India.  At the end of November we took a two-week trip to Singapore, Malaysia, and India, but I’ll do a separate post about that.


While we were gone my brother and his wife stayed at our house to watch our kids, and these four got to go to a BYU football game.


The end.

September 2015

We started off September with a fishing/camping trip on the Wild Strawberry River over Labor Day weekend.  Daniel and I fly-fished with Tristan and Oliver, and the younger four played around and had adventures in and out of the river.  Packing clothes for these kinds of fishing/camping trips is the worst – it’s usually freezing cold in the morning, and we’re out early down by the river and bushwhacking through all sorts of wild terrain, and then by mid-day it’s hot and sunny and even though they need to start out the day with enough clothes to protect them from the cold and wildness, at some point they always end up in the river – sometimes when it’s still cold, and later when it’s hot.  After a few trips like this, the kids kind of figured out what their favorite combos were; somehow those turquoise leggings became Cindy’s Official Fishing Pants. 

Here’s Lizza, Henry, and Cindy on a fence:

Oliver all set to go in his waders.  Rachel and Cindy partnering up.

Lizza started out with Tristan. They worked out a system where she got to net any fish that he caught.

Taking breaks to catch caterpillars and do some reading:              


Finally warm enough to swim a little bit in the river:



Henry being risky and excited and enthusiastic – my favorite way for him to be (maybe minus the risky). 



Later in the afternoon I took the younger four who were ready to be done back to our campsite, which was right next to Starvation Reservoir.  We hung out and got dinner ready while Daniel and the older boys kept fishing. 

This water was freezing.  Normally water of all types tempts me to get in, but on this day I felt just fine about staying out and taking pictures while these crazies swam around. 


Cooking hot dogs for dinner over a hot fire helped everyone warm up:

And then finishing up dinner with some Dutch oven peach cobbler helped everyone feel pretty happy about life in general:


After that we added telling creepy stories by the fire to help everyone be just the teensiest bit scared to sleep in their tents that night.  Thank you Henry for your scary, scary stories.  Also, I am still proud of that fire, even though this happened two years ago.  It was a tricky thing to build a fire early enough in the day to cook our hotdogs, and then keep it going all through the evening without running out of firewood before the boys got back super late from fishing . 
 

We had just enough left for a fire the next morning, which was a good thing because it was cold. 


Day two of fishing. 


Here’s Oliver doing some shadow casting like Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It.  Just kidding, he’s just regular casting.  But this picture seems like he could be shadow casting, if that were a real thing. 


Me and my boys.  Henry and a snake.


Here’s Rachel and Cindy, probably in the middle of The Family Game.  This is their favorite game to play when we’re camping or fishing, or basically any time they are outside and feeling either tired/hungry/hot/cold/bored, etc.  It works for all of these situations because how you play The Family Game is you pretend you live out in the wilderness and you don’t have any food or shelter or parents, and lots of bad stuff happens to you but it’s all a big adventure.  I’ve never actually played, but I picture it kind of like the Oregon Trail game that we used to play when computers were first invented. 

Although it is most helpful on long fishing/camping trips, it has also been played several times at baseball games, football games, and soccer games, by anyone who wasn’t interested in watching the actual game.  Cindy also plays it regularly with her best friend who lives next door.  Cindy will come in and ask for snacks, saying, “Mom, I really need some granola bars because we’re pretending it’s really cold outside and we’re lost and we don’t have any parents and we only have one grandma but she’s really mean and we have to search for our food, so I want to hide some granola bars and then we’ll find them.”  She loves to pretend to be poor and starving and orphaned – the sadder and more dramatic the better. 


Some other September things:

Cindy made these lines of cars (I am not sure why, but most of my kids have liked to set cars up instead of drive them around.  I guess we’re not really car people.  We’re more “set things up in lines” people):


Lizza played a lot of soccer, and we fly-fished some more up American Fork Canyon. 


We went to football games:


And big family dinners:

Oliver broke his hand playing football.


And Lizza and Cindy made this fort out in the backyard, complete with a bin full of hundreds of books:


Sometimes when the older kids were all at school, Cindy built her own forts right in the kitchen, and this is what those looked like (super cozy):


She also put together her own fancy outfits for when we had to go out and about running errands, and this is what those looked like (princess gloves, pinwheels, a recorder, fairy wings, and a metal box full of “special things”):


Here’s Daniel in Ann Arbor, at the BYU-Michigan game.  Sad, sad game, but a fun trip.

Also fun – Brandon Flowers concert in Salt Lake with our older four. 


Last September thing – Henry, Lizza, and Rachel being cute sitting on rocks out in the backyard.  I think this was picture day, and I knew I wasn’t going to order any of the school pictures, so I took my own. 


That’s it for September.