Octovember Festivities

Holidays this year with Luke have been so much fun. He has turned that corner of, "Oh this is neat," to "AHHH! I'm so excited!" He just "gets" the excitement, now, which makes them that much more fun for us. However, the pressure is now on to make them magical. No lazy holiday-mom, anymore! Lucky for him, and Caleb, I love the holidays and packing in as much of the festivities as possible.

To kick off the Halloween season, we went to the pumpkin patch. We were going to go to our favorite, Petersen Family Farms, down in Riverton, but our beloved Sarah Watts got a job at Pack Family Farms in Farmington, which is a very close second to Petersen. It is also closer, so we loaded up on the bug spray and ventured to Pack Farms. This year was unseasonably warm for pumpkin patch going so we got to enjoy a couple of hours just roaming, playing some of the games and picking out our pumpkins.

We ended up going back a couple of weeks later with the Evans, just to get out of the house after our sickness run (it serisously lasted a whole month). While there, Parker and Luke took a picture in the wood cutouts and poor Park got his head stuck! Like, full on, movie status, stuck. We got the owner, who had to get a handsaw and saw his head out. Traumatizing, but we did get free game passes and he got a pretty sweet cookie out of it. I say it was win and both husbands busted up laughing when we told them that evening what happened.

Feelings on being sick for so long

Ever since we have moved here, we have heard oohings and ahhings about the Alpine Loop in the fall. We finally took a Saturday to drive down to Utah County to drive the Loop. It didn't disappoint. The Aspen grove is what I want my little sanctuary to look like in heaven, year around, with the wildflowers from the Albion Basin and the shoreline of Montana de Oro. Yeah, that would be just perfect. Anyway, it was breathtaking to see the vast variety of colors and the spectacular view of the Wasatch front showing off it's true colors. Even though we got stuck in traffic on the way down for over an hour and had to find a pull off to use the restroom with a VERY hungry Caleb whimpering, it was well worth the trip. The pictures do not do it justice. Not even a little bit.

Towards the beginning of October, mama B sent a message saying school was cancelled that day due to some wildfires. She was so calm about it and then I saw a friend post on Instagram the fires. Holy  cow. Whole neighborhoods were burned, people I knew growing up lost everything and they were out of control due to the wind. We then had sporadic communication with my mom for a few days because cell towers were wiped out along with electricity. It was a little scary! Luckily, the fires didn't reach the actual city of Napa, but the surrounding areas were not so lucky. We are grateful my mom is safe and for having grown up in an area that, when tragedy hits, just bonds together and helps each other, even if they have lost everything.

Smokiness for weeks

That bright spot is a fire that sparked up just 7 miles from my mom's house. She took this picture from the upstairs window

We have been working with Caleb with some bristle blocks we got for his birthday for quite some time. Luke LOVES them and creates some pretty amazing things with them, but Caleb's little fine motor, chubby fingers was struggling. One day, when I was cooking dinner, I went in to check on him because he was being so quiet and was not emptying every cupboard in my kitchen, so naturally I thought he was unraveling the toilet paper or ripping up books. To my pleasant surprise, he was succesfully building with the bristle blocks! When I walked in, he looked up at me with such a proud face, showing off his tower. It was heart melting.

Raking leaves was a big hit this year. The boys requested to have it done every day. They would play in the pile of leaves for hours, just giggling the whole time. We even tried to teach Luke how to rake. He was not too big of a fan. We need Parker to share his raking wisdom with him.

We made the trek up to Logan with the Glenns for a day of fun, ring cleaning and Brother Hunsaker visiting. While there, we went to the pumpkin walk to see the displays people put together this year. We have been to this a couple of times since living here, but never with the boys. As always, we were impressed with the displays, the kids loved the wood cutouts and the sunshine felt glorious.

Very fitting

Luke's preschool put on a Halloween program with a few songs and some trick-or-treating. It was such a treat to get to see my silly Luke participate, while still showing off his personality in a much more controlled manner than we usually witness at home. Have we mentioned he LOVES preschool?

Luke earned the movie Wall-E back in September for making good choices. It instantly became a big hit with our robot loving boy. When asked what he wanted to be for Halloween, there was no hesitation with his response of "Wall-E!" Dallin and I are quite impressed with how his costume turned out! It was a team effort and everyone loved it. It was fun to see kids run up to him in complete awe and excitement that it was actually Wall-E. He loved wearing it and being his favorite character, ever.

We went trick-or-treating with the Evans in their cute little neighborhood that they recently moved to. Watching Parker and Luke run from house to house was exhausting, but also wonderful to see their little friendship just continuosly growing, even though they are so different. Caleb was Frodo, because he honestly is just a little hobbit and Dallin was Gandalf. A dream come true for him.

The boys were a little braver with pumpkin carving this year. Caleb was not too sure about the guts at first, but we eventually got him to grab out big handfuls. Luke was determiend to get the guts out with a carving knife. When that proved ineffective, we showed him how to scrape with the spoon and he had a bit more success with that. He had been studying the pumpkin patterns all month and knew exactly the one he wanted.

Kayla and I ran away for an evening to Witches Night Out at Gardner Village. I had only been once when I very first moved to Utah with my old roommate, and she had never been. It was an experience to see so many woman compeltely dressed, head to toe, in the most elaborate witch outfits you have ever seen in your life. I mean, alter egos were shining strong! It was quite impressive. There was shopping, dancing, caramel apples (of course!) and just a good night out.

At the beginning of November, we found a listing for a townhome in Centerville, right in our price range. We had pretty much given up finding something in Bountiful or Centerville because the housing prices are so inflated in these areas. When this little place popped up, we thought for sure there would be some major flaw to it. However, when we saw it, we fell in love and it was perfect. In an amazing school zone, cute, quiet little community, just great. We put in an offer, thinking for sure we wouldn't get it because they were having two open houses after we had seen it and people are offereing crazy amounts in this market right now. However, our realtor advised us to write a letter just introducing ourselves and why we wanted the house. We did and included pictures of our family. Turns out the wife used to work with special needs children in the Phillipines and noticed Caleb in the pictures. That, along with some other things we wrote about, made them really want us to have the house! We have been under contract ever since and could not have asked for better sellers, especially in this market where buyers are being treated completely unfair. We officially move in December after we clean, paint, replace the carpet and close. Every other house we felt a little off about, but this one has just felt right from the get go. We are pretty excited to finally have a place of our own!

A couple of moms in the Down Syndrome community out here had a progressive dinner Mom's Night Out at their houses. I had met one of the moms when Caleb was first born and we just became instant friends so it was exciting to see her again, as well as meet so, SO many other moms. It really was a little overwhelming beautiful to have so many woman who have littles with a little extra in one place.

We also got invited to a little playgroup for kiddos born in the year Caleb was born. It was fun to get to see them all together. Most did not want anything to do with the picture, but this little guy and Caleb just buddied right up and stayed on that couch, hugging and giggling for a bit. It was pretty sweet to witness.

The rest of November was mostly getting things in order for our move/house buying process. We made a trip down to Sandy to visit Harry Potter Christmas at the mall. We waited in line for two hours to be sorely disappointed. It's all about the experience, right? Luke also got practice waiting in line for when we make it to Disneyland someday.

And now, a hodgepodge of pictures that we took during October and November that show our everyday life.

No shave November

I walked out from the bathroom after Luke and I had made cookies to find Caleb just hoarding a big pile of them. He was in heaven.

We recently discovered Cosmic Kids Yoga on Youtube. Luke LOVES doing them and they change his mood for the better.

One night, Caleb decided it was party time from 10pm-2am. Dallin even tried driving him around for a bit. Wide awake the whole time!

We went to the Shakespeare Festival at the Children's Theater

Sleeping in Sacrament has become the norm for this babe. I'm not complaining

Snocones for a successful dentist visit!

He had everyone in the office cracking up during his check up. Such a silly boy

 We had Thanksgiving with a family in the ward, pretty low key and a little odd not having ANY extended family at all. Got us really excited for Christmas in Napa, though!

The day after Thanksgiving, we ventured to Salt Lake to walk around City Creek and see the temple lights. Remind us next year to not go on opening night of the lights. SO. Many. People. But, it was fun to see the lights switch on and watch Caleb audibly gasp.

That brings us to the Christmas season! Hope everyone enjoyed Fall and are ready to share some love this Christmas season. We are pretty excited for the advent calendar of kindness we are creating based off the life of Christ. Love you all!