Oh my! What!

Yep, that is what I thought when I saw that I haven't blogged since the first part of September.  The last two months have gone super fast and we have done a lot.  This will probably be a long blog post and I apologize for that.

Towards the end of September, I took all of the kids to get haircuts.  Truman and Avalon hadn't had haircuts before, so I took them to this kids haircut place that makes a big deal out of their first haircut.  They also had a cute little car that Truman could be strapped into so that he couldn't get away.

The day after I got everybody's hair cut, I took the kids up to Goldfield Ghost Town and took some Halloween pictures.  The kids and I made the cute Halloween shirts in the pictures.  They were really easy.  You just tie dye the shirts with elastics on them to make the little circles.  Then you paint on the jack-o-lantern faces.

At the beginning of October, my sister had a baby and so my mom came down to help her.  Here are some pictures of the kids and her with the kids.  It was great having her down here.  My kids really need to have grandparents closer.

Truman finally got teeth in October.  It was towards the beginning of the month and we were very excited.  He didn't get any teeth until he was 15 months old.  Of all the kids, his teeth came in the latest.  We were excited for him to get teeth, but now he has started biting people because he thinks it is funny.  We miss the toothless stage.

During fall break which was October 10th - 14th, we went to New Mexico to visit Aaron's sister Andrea.  One day while we were there, we went to a pumpkin patch.  It was a lot of fun.  They had this giant rocking chair the kids could play on.

They also took everyone on a hay ride to a pumpkin patch where everyone got to pick a pumpkin.  This was definitely the kids favorite part.

There was other stuff to do at the pumpkin patch, too.  There was a little old west town.  Aaron tried roping.

Truman loved sorting the fake vegetables in the little grocery store.

There were also these slides that were big tubes that went through the inside of a hill.  Avalon loved that part.

There was a big sandbox full of dried corn for the kids to play in.  They got covered in corn dust and looked like the living dead.

Sterling was very excited to get a map and try the corn maze.

A couple of times while we were in New Mexico, we took the kids to a park.  Aaron and the older kids played tennis and the younger kids slid down the skateboard ramps.

We also took the kids to the Albuquerque zoo.  It was a nice zoo and they had some animals that we hadn't seen before.

The hippos were really interesting.  One of the hippos started to poop while he was swinging his tail and flipped poop everywhere.

All of the kids together.

Sunday, the day we drove back from our trip, was my birthday.  The night before we left, they had a little party for me.  It was pretty fun.

The kids decorated the cake.

When we got home from New Mexico, we (well mostly Aaron) carved the pumpkins. The one with the hat is Sterling's and the little one is Avalon's.

On Oct. 21, we took the kids to the Arizona State Fair.  We go every year and it is a lot of fun.  When we got there they had trick motorcycle riders in the arena.  Here are some pictures and a video.  My apologies on the video.  Aaron just got me a new video camera and I am not very good with it yet.

The kids love the rides at the fair.  They are little thrill seekers.

Our fair also had a really fun petting zoo.  Sterling was trying to feed all of the animals, while Truman made friends with the back ends of several of them.

On Saturday, Aaron was in charge of the kids while I did some work.  He took this picture of Truman asleep at the dinner table.

Avalon's dance class had their little recital on Tuesday.  She loved her ballet class and is going to take another one next term.

Here are a few other videos.  The first is the two youngest kids dancing.  Truman has learned to spin and I think it is pretty funny.

Avalon and Truman have also gotten into swimming in their clothes.  I call them our polar bears because they keep going swimming in 80 degree weather (which is cold here) in cold tap water.  They usually come in freezing.

In other news, the other day we were taking Sterling to school and saw a Turkey walking down the road.  You don't see a lot of Turkeys in the middle of town and so the kids were pretty excited.  Sterling came home and said "I told everyone in my class about the Turkey, even the aid."   Oh, my kids are city kids.  So sad.  The next day, Sterling says "Turkeys like to come here in the fall, don't they?"  I asked him why he thought that and he told me that "Turkeys like to come to the city because you can't hunt in the city and they are safe here."  I have to hand it to him, he thought that through.

Avalon has been a little temperamental since Sterling started school.  Lately she has been telling me that she isn't going to live here anymore.  I asked her once where she was going to live and she told me she was going to live with Aunt Halee.  She has also been putting herself in time out all of the time.  If I correct her at all, she says "Fine, I'll go to time out then."  I don't know what I'm going to do with her.  If she is threatening to run away from home at 3 what is she going to be like at 15?  I'm in trouble.

Truman has gotten way too busy.  He is into everything and on top of everything.  He has started holding out his hand and saying "here go"  if he wants something.  Mostly, he uses it for food that you are eating and that he wants.  He is also a little sorter.  He will pull everything off of a shelf or out of a drawer and then he will put it all back where it was.  It is kind of nice to have a child that picks up after himself.  It is sad that it is the one year old.

I know there were other funny things I was going to post, but it has been so long I've forgotten most of them.

On October 28th, we had our ward Trunk or Treat.  It was a lot of fun.  For the past couple of months we have been working on Sterling's Halloween costume.  He really wanted to be the Transformer Optimus Prime and he really wanted to actually transform.  I made the mistake of letting him watch some youtube videos of transformer costumes that really transformed and after that he would not settle for a plain old transformer costume.  We used paper mache for the helmet and made the rest of the costume from foam board, duct tape and frisbies.

Avalon wanted to be a princess and wanted a nice crown.  Otherwise, I found some costumes on clearance that I liked.  My costume was fun because all of these little girls kept following me around thinking I was really Snow White. Oh and the kids insisted on dressing up the poor dog.

The day after the trunk or treat, we took the kids to another corn maze.  This time we did the whole maze.  It was pretty fun.  Avalon kept asking other people for directions and asking Aaron and I, "Are you sure this is a good idea"  referring to the corn maze.  Our 3 year old has no confidence in us.  Very sad.  The place with the corn maze also had a giant bounce pillow which was basically this giant pillow made of inner tube material.  The pillow was half buried in the dirt and the kids all jumped on it.  The lighting wasn't great, but I took a video of it.  They also had inflated bouncy horses, a small variety of animals, a hay bale maze and a train pulled by a little tractor.  It was a fun evening.