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.
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