November

After the Primary Program, we drove to the (empty, thanks to the drought,) Millikan pond at Cal Tech for family photos.  Each year, we trade off as photographers with our friends, and it always turns out great.  Or at least, as great as it can with so many people being asked to smile all at once.
  

 

  
For several months, Ryan worked on creating family stickers for our van based on Street Fighter characters.  He asked everyone who they wanted to be, searched the internet for the best image files, and ended up picking a vendor on Etsy who could print them on vinyl.  We are now represented by Ryu, Chun Li, Zangief, Sakura, Ken, Cammy, and Blanka (supposed to be Wiley.)
   

     
Evan has made a lot of progress in reading.  He spent almost an hour reading in his "Fun in the Sun" book one day.
     

   
While I was cleaning up the garage, the little ones got into one of the Halloween boxes.  They had a great time spreading costumes all across the yard.
     

Sad Face

 
We met Helena at Venice Beach one afternoon to ride bikes, and stopped at a beach playground.  They have several sets of gymnastic rings there, and a lot of the guys using them had clearly put in hundreds of hours - they were amazing!
   

Beach Rings

     
While waiting at taekwondo, Corinne got these candid shots of Connor and Elise preparing to spar. 
    

     

Corinne is almost done taking naps, but she still gets tired around dinnertime.  Once in a while, I walk into a room to find this:
     

Once school started this year, and now that Elise is eight, she got to begin attending Activity Days a couple of times a month.  They work on fun projects, eat treats, play games, and pass off requirements in their Faith in God booklet.  On this day, our friend Tomomi taught all the girls some origami.
   

     
We had planned to spend Thanksgiving in Utah, but my mom suddenly had to have surgery on a torn rotator cuff in her shoulder!  So, we stayed home, and started a tradition of Thanksgiving Pie for Breakfast.  That will be definitely be repeated next year!  Later in the day, we got together with friends for dinner.  I was in charge of stuffing, mashed potatoes, "set salad" (a wonderful and mandatory dish) and sparkling cider.  We stayed late roasting s'mores and hanging out while the kids watched Thanksgiving movies.
     

Breakfast

Thanksgiving Walk

  

    
On Black Friday, while Ryan was out shopping, the kids (primarily Evan) decided to make a pretend church.  They drew up programs, set up chairs and "rugs", and created a podium with a microphone.  They even brought out a heater to make things more comfortable.  After I arrived at the church service, they had songs, prayers, a pretend Sacrament, and a lot of very inspiring talks.  It was stinkin' cute.
    

  

This tool set is one of the many items Ryan "needed" on Black Friday.

 
Connor is working hard on finishing his Webelos and Arrow of Light requirements for Cub Scouts.  One of the things in his book was to create a sculpture self-portrait.  I like the belly-button.
    

   
Since turkey was already taken care of on Thanksgiving, Ryan didn't get to make a smoked bird like he wanted.  So, he decided to do one of his own on the Sunday after.  He tried a technique called "spatchcocking", which involves removing the bird's spine and flattening it out so it will absorb more smoke flavor and cook more quickly.  It was pretty tasty, but trying to make gravy from smoker-drippings is not recommended.  It tasted like cinders.
  

October

When we got back from Tennessee, we were thrown right back into regular life.  Corinne and Evan decided that "cleaning" windows was the coolest thing in the world.
    

    
Co-op continued every Friday.  I especially love my Latin class - it's just three third-grade girls, and they are the sweetest things ever!  My insects class and mammals class are both delightful, too, just bigger!  We have park day once a month after classes, and Corinne took the opportunity that day to show off her superhero shirt.
    

The first weekend in October was General Conference.  I had been challenged by my friend Claire to read (or listen to) all of the April Conference messages, about one a day, before this one started, and it transformed my experience.  Not only did I benefit from the wisdom I absorbed while reading them, but October Conference was so much more rewarding because I didn't feel as cheated.  Instead of being frustrated that the kids did so much interrupting, I looked at those (new) sessions as more of a preview of things I would study later.  It was the first Conference in a long time where I ended feeling satisfied and refreshed!
  

Waiting for the "Conference Coin Shop" to open.

    
We almost always carve pumpkins in the same spot in our yard.  Coincidentally, there have often been volunteer pumpkin plants that spring up in that area!  This one did unusually well, although it failed to produce any pumpkins.  It made beautiful pumpkin blossoms each day, which wilted by afternoon.
    

     
One Thursday, as I was "assisting" Evan to stand up and walk to his room to clean up dirty clothes, we had an ill-fated collision between his heel and my foot.  I've often thought my toe was broken, but this was the first time it actually was.  It wasn't too subtle, either.
   

Eeeeew.

The day after getting my toe x-rayed and buddy-taped at urgent care, I (probably foolishly) decided to go to Rise of the Jack O Lanterns - an awesome outdoor display of pumpkin art at Descanso Gardens.  It was quite a long walk on my gimpy toe, but it was really cool to look at.
  

Note the jellyfish in the background.

    
The next morning (still on my gimpy toe) we attended the Club 21 Walk-a-thon in Pasadena.  This was our second year, and the first year we all officially registered.  We also took Elise's friend Ashlee while her family was moving that day.  The kids had a great time, both at the walk-a-thon and at the carnival that followed.  We even came home with two carnival-prize goldfish, one of which promptly died.  Club 21 is a learning and resource center for people with Down's Syndrome.

Hairstyle Booth

   
After the carnival, and some lunch, we drove to the Pomona Fairplex to look at their RV show.  (Yes, this was still on my very unhappy toe.)  We found this tiny "TAB" teardrop trailer and fell in love with it.  It was all we could talk about for about a week afterward.  It's small enough to be towed by a Honda Odyssey, but has all the amenities we would need for comfortable trips.  The plan would not be for us to sleep in it (at least until the kids were old enough to do a tent on their own), but to use it as a gathering place, kitchen, and bathroom.  Sadly, we discovered a bit later that neither our driveway nor our garage would admit such a lovely toy.
   

     
Connor and Elise tested for their yellow belts in October.  They both did great, and broke boards with their feet this time.  Evan's taekwondo class had their own promotion day, where Evan earned a preschool stripe on his belt.  He also broke a board, and was SO excited to be like his older siblings.  In moving to the yellow belt class, Connor and Elise started sparring as part of their training.  
    

Promotion #2

Evan's Board Breaking

There were a few days in a row, where a ton of really gross black flies kept accumulating in our living room window.  At first I thought someone had just left the door open, but they kept reappearing, even after I swatted all the original ones.  We searched everywhere to see if there was something dead or disgusting under the couch or something, but couldn't find anything.  Eventually, they stopped appearing.  However, a week later, different insects started appearing in the same window area.  These were like tiny, hook-legged wasps.  I went online, and with great difficulty discovered that the big ugly flies were "flesh flies" and the wasps were called "chalcid wasps".  There was a small hole in the windowsill that went down into the wall cavity, so I realized that the flies had apparently grown in something dead in our wall (probably a rat).  Some hatched, but some were parasitized by the wasps, who lay their eggs on maggots.  The wasp babies ate up the maggots, then hatched out as adult wasps a week after the surviving flies.  Isn't nature beautiful?  We sealed up the hole.
    

Chalcid Wasp

Halloween was great this year - not overwhelming at all.  Elise's friend Sarah convinced her to be a "twin witch" with herself and her friend from school.  Connor, very practically saying that he couldn't think of a better costume, went as the Grim Reaper for the third year in a row, and Evan wanted to be Captain America, mostly because of the shield, since Evan doesn't really know anything about Captain America.  Corinne went to the church party as a chick, but did Halloween itself as a black cat.  That is the benefit of having lots of hand-me-down costumes to choose from.
   

Ward Party, with Our Neighbors

  

Connor's, Elise's, Evan's, and Corinne's (Ghost-Carved by Mom)

  

After trick-or-treating, they always end up watching Garfield's Halloween Adventure

We also spent October preparing for the church Primary Program.  These pictures pretty much sum up the craziness of rehearsal!
   

 
On the day of the program, Connor and Elise were among the kids who played prelude music before the meeting started.  Our ward newsletter guy took these great pictures, since I was too busy and stressed to think of such a thing.  (It's not appropriate to take pictures during a Sacrament Meeting, so there are no photos of the actual program.)  The kids all did an amazing job, which was helped by the great writing and directing of my first counselor, Danni.  Afterwards, we had our traditional milk and donuts outside!
  

Waiting to Play Prelude

Me Trying to Remember Everything

  

Danni and Claire are two of my favorite people.  I'm so lucky they agreed to work with me!

    

Donut Line