Autumn in Utah

After school on Wednesdays, my kids' class often plays in a wooded lot across the street.  It has no playground or landscaping, but all the kids love it.  I thought it was cute, though, that they spent this day reading together:
  

 
Elise loves her baby sister.  She also loves princesses and butterflies.  I guess this is the natural result of those passions:
  

  
In the middle of October, I got to take the kids to Utah for some fall weather!  Ryan took a separate car and followed us to Las Vegas, where we saw the Bodies exhibit at the Luxor.  Elise's passion project (her first!) is on the body, so we figured it would be a great field trip.  My mom was in town for a dog show, so on Sunday the older kids rode part of the way up to Utah in her RV, while I brought Evan and Corinne (Ryan went home in his own car to earn a living all week - sorry, honey!)
  

Showing off the sticker he got at his first dentist appointment.  He's also eating candy.

   
The day after we arrived, we slept in a little, then went to run some errands near Manti.  We went for a walk around the amazing temple grounds there, and the older kids were kind of exploring on their own a short distance away.  I guess Elise was running down the hill and missed a curb between the grass and the sidewalk.  When I heard her crying and went to get her, she had blood pouring down her chin, and her two front teeth were bent backwards.  We found a really nice dentist a few minutes away in Ephraim, and he predicted that the teeth would either have to be removed or would fall out on their own fairly soon.  Luckily, though, they seem to have mostly recovered.  They're both still loose, but look normal and don't hurt, so hopefully they'll last awhile!
  
On Tuesday we got to see Kelli and Kyle's new house!  I'm so jealous  They have four stories (well, split-levels, including a basement), four or five bedrooms, a chicken coop, and an amazing landscaped yard with fruit trees and a deck.
  

  
We visited Grandma Cloe on Wednesday, and the kids got to pick apples in her backyard.  I'm so bummed that we forgot to bring them back to California - they were awesome!  Grandma Cloe met Corinne for the first time, and spent a crazy amount of time playing with the kids.  She always surprises me with how much energy she has.
  

Playing Cars with Evan

Yep, she sang her special baby song!

On Thursday we went to Jaker's Pumpkin Patch in Springville.  This place was unbelievable.  They had a straw-bale maze, a petting zoo, hay rides, a real pumpkin patch (pumpkins still attached to the plant), and a "corn box" which is a giant sandbox filled with dry corn kernels.  That was the highlight for my kids.  Kelli and Felix came, and she was nice enough to take my kids on the hay ride while I dealt with Baby Girl.  At the end, the kids all went into the field to pick their pumpkins (Grandma watched Corinne while I helped the kids carry them.)  Everything was free except the pumpkins, and they only came to $7.  I gave the guy $10 out of guilt.
  

Elise runs like a princess.

She kept jumping off the bales into the corn.

Corn in Mouth

Connor and Felix really get along well.  They both like to scream and be hyper!

Little Cousins

Autumn is my favorite season.  I miss it in California!

Sunday we celebrated what we called "Canadian Thanksgiving", although it was a little late for that, technically.  Ryan has to work Thanksgiving week this year, so my sweet family did a fake one just for us.  I forgot to get pictures, but Grandma Cloe, Kelli, Kyle, Felix, Kevin, and Katie all came down for it (plus Grandma and Grandpa, of course.)  Katie spent a lot of time watching the little boys play cars in the basement while everybody else goofed off upstairs.  It was great to get to see everybody!
   

  
The drive home wasn't as bad as I'd feared.  I did it all in one day, but the kids were pretty well behaved.  We stopped a lot, and Corinne slept most of the time, other than that fussy hour we spent in the parking lot of Whiskey Pete's in Primm.  She's such a good baby!
  

  

  

Miss Corinne

I don't know how much time I've wasted in my life trying to get pictures of babies smiling.  You'd think I would have learned by now that when they smile, the surest way to make it stop is to pick up a camera!  At any rate, I did manage to get some cute pictures of Corinne this week.  Her ear splints are taking a break, because she had a reaction to the tape.  The doctor will decide on Tuesday whether they're off for good.
  

  

She likes kicking the back of the couch.

  

Connor woke up one morning determined to make a "sculpture" out of toothpicks with Elmer's glue.  Unfortunately, that didn't work very well, so I suggested he use marshmallows.  He played for awhile (no pictures of that), then left his art materials on the floor, where they were discovered by Elise and Evan.
  

  

Oh, and we finally have a working air conditioner again!  They installed it yesterday, just in time for tomorrow's predicted hundred-degree weather.  Hooray for resource-sucking technology!  
  

County Fair

It's become a tradition in our family that we attend the L.A. County Fair every September (it helps that we get free tickets from the kids' charter school.)  Ryan took the day off - selflessly missing the space shuttle flyover - to help out.  I didn't think I could do all four kids by myself this year.  We ate fair food, saw "safari" creatures, a cheesy magic show, and a monkey demonstration (the monkey caught grapes and got tickled, it was awesome.)  Of course, we did the farm animal thing, and the kids got picked to go onstage for a baby animal show.  If it hadn't been a million degrees we could have spent all day there.

  

Zebras and Zebra Elise

We forgot Evan's shoes.  He got carried a lot.

The cowboy was giving Connor advice about women.

Baby Goat

  

Ever since February we've been telling ourselves we were installing a pool heater.  Ryan did all kinds of research, then nothing happened.  Well, two weeks ago we finally got our solar heater!  The pool is actually comfortable to swim in, plus it's supposed to extend the swimming season through October or November.  We'll see.  Anyway, everybody is invited to come test it out!
  

Solar Tubes on the Roof

  
Evan is going through a very naughty phase.  He thinks coloring on the walls is the best way to get attention.  I tried confiscating all the ballpoint pens in the house (he used Sharpie on our closet door, sadly), and bought him some shiny new "washable" crayons just in case, but he's still tagging everything in sight.  The problem is that all my kids are constantly, constantly, working on art projects in the dining room, so I can't keep stuff out of his reach.
  

  

Other than that, we've mostly just been doing our weekly routine with a little baby in tow.  Corinne still has her ear splints on, something I'm looking forward to being done with.  They keep coming off, and I'm not supposed to give her tub baths.  I guess it's worth it to have movie-star ears, right?
  

In-Between Ear Splints
  

Corinne looks very threatening in this picture . .