October 2019

Our (mostly) happy family. We could not get Macy to smile for the entire photo shoot. I sure love this bunch I've been blessed with.

Solar!

After lots of planning, our solar panels have finally arrived! Dave and Dad are getting started on installing them and they are HEAVY.

Trip to St. George to visit Beutlers

We took a trip to go visit Beutler over fall break, and were able to see Dave's parents along with his brother Joe and his wife Kaela, and sister Liz for a bit. We learned that Macy gets carsick while facing backwards driving through the mountains. It did not take very long before she was covered in puke and we had to make an emergency stop to clean her up and turn her around. Poor thing was so tired out after that that we had to rig this bungee cord to help her keep her head upright while napping. She was such a good little road-tripper though!

The kids loved feeding the quail peanuts with Grandpa Beutler. They would come every morning and evening and we loved watching them.

A hike to the petroglyphs with Grandma. My favorite picture is Cole trying to pose like them.

Grandpa and Grandma Beutler took us to go see a live version of "Little Mermaid" at Tuacahn (an outdoor amphitheater). Everyone loved it, even Cole!

Of course Clara and Lexi had to wear their little mermaid gear to the show.

Grandpa Beutler surprised Lexi and Clara by converting a bedroom in his basement to a little mermaid room for them. He did all the painting and decorating himself, and the girls felt so special to get to stay there.

Family Farm

Jan took us to a pumpkin patch/family farm where they had tons of fun games and things to do for the kids. They had a blast! We also had a little mishap with Jan's phone. I'm sure that Kaela and Dave will never forget fishing it out of the port-a-potty!

We literally lost Clara in the corn pit for quite some time, but she turned up in the end. ;-)

Joe and Cole had fun doing the football toss, but Macy had a better way to get it in the hole.

Everyone made it out of the corn maze!

 Jan also took us to several fun parks. Lots of outside time in with the warm weather!

 Grandpa spoiled the girls with lots of Barbie dolls and Cole with lots of Lego's during our visit. He had a blast working on the various sets.

Swim Meet

Lexi had her first swim meet this month with her swim team prep group. She really did quite well, but after a grimacing belly flop trying to dive off the block, her and coach decided it would be better for her to start on the edge of the pool instead of on the block. Her and Cole swam together, and he's getting much better as well.

Despite the weather being nice earlier in the month, we had a couple of big snow storms in October. Lots of big swings in temperature and quite a few snow days from school.

Lexi was a yellow crayon in her school play, "The Day the Crayons Quit". She was absolutely adorable and loved learning all of the songs and being on stage.

Family Fun

Macy spent the entire shopping trip watching the grocery store floor through the bottom of the cart just like this. I could not stop laughing, and neither could my fellow shoppers when they realized what she was doing.

Macy has discovered our dress-up bins.

Sightings of our neighborhood heard of elk (photo credit goes to our neighbor who snapped these while they were in his yard).

Halloween

Pumpkin Carving!

Halloween 2019. This year we had a Fairy, a Unicorn, an Angry Elf, a very happy Rapunzel, an Oompa-Loompa, and what was supposed to be Willy Wanka but it was too cold.

We even had a rare sighting of a male unicorn over Halloween! I couldn't catch a shot of his face, but here's proof that they do exist! ;-)

Lexi wanted to be a magical fairy for Halloween, and none of the costumes for sale fit into her idea of what that looked like, so I spent many hours making her one. With Grandma Blacker's help we were able to make this fairy a happy girl and she got to show off her costume all day at school.

Clara and I made cupcakes for our ward's Halloween party cake walk. Unfortunately the party was cancelled due to a rough snow storm, so we had our own cake walk at home. Lexi made numbers and we danced around the island until all the cupcakes were gone. It will be a memory I hold dear for a long time.