Happy October! We are still swimming and playing outside this month. The beauty of California! Our biggest new addition to the family is our trampoline. Darryl's wonderful coworker gave us his trampoline with the poles and net. We are so excited to have a fun and new play area. The downside to the addition is the loss of the garden this year, but thankfully the tramp is worth it. So far it has been in use several times a day and the kids were even willing to help haul out the old rocks and flatten the dirt so we could have enough space to set it up.
School is going very well for Tanner.
This month he was the student of the month for his class because he exemplified the characteristic of Respect that was the theme for the month. He was proud and happy to get a red certificate and a free lunch at Applebee's. He is getting good grades and his reading level has really taken off this year. He has started into Harry Potter and we have been loving reading it aloud and getting wrapped up in that fun story again. The school put on a very fun Fall Festival. The kids were encouraged to wear their costumes and then come for a BBQ dinner and play lots of fun carnival games. This year we dressed as a family of Mad Scientists. At the festival the kids got to walk through the haunted garden, play ring toss games, dance with a DJ, eat lots of treats and paint tiny pumpkins that they could take home. It was a wonderful evening. To end our night, we went to the haunted Dojo at the karate gym. There the kids got to jump in the karate bounce house, go trunk or treating and walk through the haunted dojo area. Tanner was thrilled and Parker ate it up. Alyssa was really scared so luckily the characters toned it down for her.
Another great event was the Mud Factor 5K run and obstacle course Darryl and I did. It was a crazy Saturday morning because Darryl also volunteered to clean the church and it took loads more time than he thought it would so we got off to a late start. After driving almost an hour to get there, Darryl realized he forgot his wallet, so he didn't have his driver's licence or money for parking. We almost turned back for home, but decided we would try to talk our way in. The lady at the gate confiscated my ID so we would come back to pay for parking, then at the registration we had a lot of explaining to do as to why we both didn't have ID. Luckily it was a very relaxed race and the people checked our birthdays and let us in. We found a ziplock bag buried in the car so we could bring our keys with us in the race, then we stashed our other stuff in the car in hopes we could keep them clean and dry. The race was fun and we met Deborah Bird and her husband Matthew. They were so wonderful and we had a lot of fun laughing and completing the obstacles with them. We started with white shirts and ended in a brown mess. The last obstacle was a giant blow up slide and landing in a puddle. Although it was a stressful start to the day, the Birds gave us parking money and we were able to snap a few photos. Then we dried off and came home. It was a ton of fun.
As a family we got great use out of our costumes. We were all mad scientists, so it was fun to play it up. We watched lots of YouTube videos to find out some fun scientific experiments that we can do at home, then we tried some out. I made all the pants and resized some lab coats to fit the tiny ones. Darryl and I attended a wonderful Halloween party with the Gessell's at their grandmother's home in Lodi. It is large and empty right now and it's a spooky old place, so perfect. We played some fun games, had great food and enjoyed our time together. I attended a Mom's night out for Mom's Club. We had a party at Iria's house. Lots of fun with costumes and great hair. Our ward had a trunk or treat and we made a mad science lab next to our van and had the kids playing with smokey bubbles and a lava lamp.
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