October

Doing puzzles is hard work, sometimes you just need to take a break!

We finally made it to the zoo! The kids earned a trip to the zoo and we had to free kids tickets to use before they expired. We also made it while the dinosaurs were still there! It was a lot of fun. I was worried about how Maelee would handle it but honestly she did great, she just didn't really want to pose for pictures sometimes. 

Connor was very insistent that he be out of the stroller a lot, but he was actually old enough to see the animals and get excited so it worked out really well!

Look at all the baby dinosaurs

As part of their dinosaurs they had the two that spit water. This year it was Gunnar that was skeptical of them. He only walked near holding onto Bryant's hand. By the end of our time at the zoo he was happy to laugh and run like the other kids. 

Climbing on statues is always lots of fun

How many eaglettes fit in this nest?

Maelee insisted that Connor join in this picture

THE Polar bear was moving around everywhere!

After the bears we went back to the outside sitting area to watch the seals and sea lions more while we ate lunch. Apparently, several school classes also thought it was a good place to eat because not long after sitting down we were swarmed by several classes of children and even saw some student groups decide to find somewhere else to sit and eat. I was glad that we had arrived when we did otherwise we would not have had a nice show while eating lunch. 

The stinky house (reptiles and amphibians) is usually our last stop and the one the kids want to stay in the most!

The love the colorful birds that always move after being noticed and before pictures are taken, which makes some people sad.

Brylee's training wheels on her bike have been wearing out for a time now. When she was riding on them this month one of them would bend in half and make her feel unstable. We had a second set lying around and so we took her old ones off to put on the new ones. Thankfully, she thought it would be a good idea to try without training wheels, something that I was hoping would happen with the training wheels broke. She rode beautifully! It didn't even take much work to get her to be to start on her own either. 

She rode hers for a day and then moved up to our 14 in bike and then tried the neighbor's 16 in bike. She didn't realize that she did not have to pedal as fast on the bigger bike and got going REALLY fast! Then when she tried to stop she pushed on the brake like she would on the 12 in bike and released trying to touch the ground. Then she did a back flip off. I was grateful that she was wearing her helmet and did not end up with anything more than surface scrapes. She was a bit worried. I convinced her that she should stick to her bike for now as she is learning more about pedal and stopping without training wheels. After a couple more days on the smaller bike she tried the bigger bikes again with the knowledge that she did not have to pedal as hard and did much better. Of course, while I was inside working on the dishes before dinner she was riding the "medium" sized bike and somehow fell. She came in with a mouth of blood. Her chin was scraped and there was tons of blood in her mouth. She took the rest of the day off. Two of her teeth are slowly turning dark as a result of the incident. The dentist says that as long as they don't abscess there is no reason to pull them and they will likely fall out on their own, hopefully on the normal time schedule (1st grade for these ones I think). She takes comfort in knowing that I also had a "dead tooth" when I was younger. 

Bryant decided he wanted to make a fire pit out of a metal barrel. He was able to pick up the barrel for free from Young Living and only had to pay for the angle grinder to cut it with. 

Here they are rinsing it out, making sure that it won't be flammable. It filled the whole circle with the smell of spiriment gum. 

My sister Natalie was down this weekend visiting and also got in on the action. It was incredibly loud to be around!

And maybe even a little intimidating

Bryant didn't finish the fire pit until the evening so we had to wait a week to use the pit. It helped with all the clean up from cutting the branches in the trees. The children loved gathering the sticks and adding them to the fire! We saved a lot of the thicker branches to use a logs, but man do they still burn quickly!

During Fall break we went to the local pumpkin patch to play. They started charging admission this year but it was only $2 per person. 

Everyone loved the corn pit. Everyone except Connor. He HATED the feel of it on  his hands and feet. He cried when I put him in it and really didn't care to even sit on the hay bales that line the pit. 

Next the kids tried climbing the tower of hay bales. They really wanted to climb to the top but some of them were too short. Coming down helped them realize that they really were too short to have climbed up so high because it was easy to get up with the help of the other but difficult to slide back down!

Everyone enjoyed the animals. They tried petting them and feeding them corn cobs but these poor animals are way overfed by all the visitors so they don't respond to food. 

Here are the four of us waiting for the three older ones to find their way out of the maze and join us so we can go home for lunch!