October

Max thought his "All About Me" page was pretty funny:

"My name is Max; I am 6 years old; I like to play; My favorite color is Black; I can clean; I love to sit".

We did our traditional General Conference bowl treats, and this year we added having the boys listen in particular to President Nelson and write down three things they learned.  They then gave our family night lesson about what the Prophet told us.  They did a great job, remembering the Prophet emphasized the name of the Church, to not shorten the name of the Church, and to read the Book of Mormon.

We had a great family visit with Christian, Robin, and their cute kiddos.  We went to the Red Barn for some pumpkin patch fun, riding the tractor, racing the karts, going through the corn maze, jumping on the air mattress thing, and going down the slides.  It was great!

And of course the treats at the end!

We built some tents for the boys to have a fun sleepover that night, and then the next morning they took care of the monsters outside (at 5am...).  They had breakfast with Bishka and then some art fun.

Rocket, our cat dog, loves to play catch with me when I sweep and mop.  He'll run under the curtain and stick his paw out to catch the mop as I swing by.  it reminds me of the boys playing catch with the vacuum, which they still do.

Then we had Pace's birthday party!  David set up a huge nerf battle arena in our backyard, and manned the station with a bunch of boys running around for the nerf battle!  Pace loves pumpkin pie, and picked that for his birthday treat instead of cake.

One of Pace's friends gave him night vision goggles for his birthday, so he had to try them out right away that night!

The next day was Pace's real birthday!  Pace is our big 8 year old boy now--he is so thoughtful, diligent, mindful of doing all his work, and loves to move and play.  He is a master builder with legos and minecraft, and wants to be an architect when he grows up.  He is already planning his super mansion!   

Since we have 9am church, we went to church first and then celebrated Pace's birthday when we got home.  He was tickled to see more nerf guns as presents!  And Max got out his aiming eye to hit some targets.

David went shooting with the boys one Saturday morning while I was on a long run.  The boys did not shoot any guns (obviously), but they did like helping clean up with shells--our friends told them they'd pay them a penny per shell, haha.

That night David and I went to Salt Lake to see a documentary about Alex Honnold free soloing El Capitain--and imagine David's surprise when we got there and Alex and the filmmaker, Jimmy Chin, were standing outside the theater!  (I didn't have a clue who they were, but they were nice enough to let me in on the photo shoot)

We got invited to the annual Iris and Magrid Halloween Hunt again, and it was super fun to be on a team with a bunch of our friends, figuring out all the clues.  We got back to the main house 20-30 minutes before any of the other teams showed up!  Blue Team rocked this year!

The next weekend we had Pace's baptism.  It was quite an emotional day for both David and me.  David was reviewing his life since being baptized himself, and seeing things come full circle was a neat experience for him.  For me, it was so emotional watching my little boy reach a big milestone.  We prepped a lot before Pace's baptism, and emphasized this was something that was his choice, no one was making him be baptized.  On our way to the bishop's interview, I reiterated that being baptized was his choice, and we were going to talk with the bishop so the bishop could make sure he understood hat was going to happen, and make sure this was something he wanted.  Pace emphatically replied, "But I want to be baptized, mom."  When I asked him if there was something that made him feel that way in particular, he said, "Because I want to make my own worlds someday."  Haha--way to hold on to little nuggets we throw out there during family night.  We had our close friends in attendance, the Esplins and Davis', and Pace's two good buddies, Parker and Ben.  After the baptism Bishka treated us to breakfast at Kneader's.

I've been applying to jobs right and left since graduating, and haven't had too much luck with interviews.  In an effort to keep busy and try and make a little money, I started a pie and frozen custard side business.  I had a tasting, to try some new recipes and get some feedback, and was ready to go by Thanksgiving for my first month's orders.  

Parents got to sit in on Pace's dance class one week, and it was fun to watch Pace move and demonstrate what he'd learned about functional movement.  He's really having a good time!

We finished out the month with Halloween!  We even tried to make it extra special by David taking the day off work, and keeping the boys home from school.  We'd planned to go to two pumpkin patches, get pumpkins, carve them, and then go to two different trick or treating parties, the trunk or treat at church, and then make the rounds in our neighborhood.  These were great plans, but turned into a huge MomFail of a day.  BOTH pumpkin patches we'd planned on going to were closed, and we drove to 2-3 different grocery stores trying to find pumpkins to buy to carve, but they were all gone.  We tried to grow a pumpkin patch in our garden, but the squash bugs were pretty bad, and we only got 4 very puny pumpkins.  The boys were so good natured about the whole day, saying things like, "Well, at least we still have those little pumpkins at home", and "Having the little ones is better than nothing at all!", and "Well, at least we got to stay home from school!"

We made it to the church trunk or treat, and walked around very quickly, and then made it back to our neighborhood where David walked around with the boys, and I stayed in the cul-de-sac for the food party.  Our neighbors set up nachos, I was giving out slices of pie, and other neighbors had hot dogs.  They boys loved it.  We are so grateful to have such good-natured and sweet boys who don't throw tantrums.  It really helped me feel better after everything during the day failed!

And the running adventures!  This was a big month, as these were the last runs before Moab the first weekend of November.  I did Grove to Battle loop a few times--lots of good climbing there.  We got the last of the leaves--just two weeks' difference and the landscape was totally different!  It's just so nourishing being in the mountains, on trails, breathing in the seasons.

The next weekend we hit up a big 20 mile loop that ended up being more like 22-23 miles.  We ran down Deer Creek, then instead of an out and back, turned in into a huge loop, heading into the mountains of Midway, and then back towards AF Canyon, then Provo canyon where we'd parked.  The weather was slightly chilly and turned to rain later in the run, but we did it.  There was a huge climb in there, and two stream crossings--quite the adventure!  

The next weekend I was on my own and didn't want to go deep into the mountains by myself, so I did a long BST run.  I really love being out in the morning when the valley is waking up, it's just so clear and peaceful and it's a good place and time to let go of the clutter of life.

Back to Grove/Battle loop, just two weeks later, and there was snow up on the trail already, and a ton of the trees had been blown down.  The trail looked totally different--there must have been microbursts or something, it was wild how many trees were uprooted.

The next weekend a couple of us went up into the Nebo hills to check out the damage from the fire.  It was just heartbreaking to run through whole sections of just ash, and see entire mountainsides covered in burn scars.

And then just a pretty run along the river trail.