O October!

we have had a full month and are loving every minute of it! okay, maybe not the sleepless nights. but everything else is awesome!

one family home evening we decided that we needed to do a deep cleaning of each room starting with the guest bathroom. the next day i was cleaning the walls and realized that no amount of scrubbing would help them because they were horrible when we moved in. so i decided to touch up paint them instead. turns out i am a horrible judge of color because the paint i found in the garage it didn't match at all! the touch up paint job turned into an accent wall and then an accent corner ha ha! all said and done i think it is a huge improvement though.  

jenna is becoming more and more of a playmate for the older two kids. it is so fun to see her really participating! here she is in her staring role of queen amidala during a star wars play the kids put on for me and seth =o]

just a cute sunday picture of the kids one of the days before seth went to church. 

natalie continues to lose her teeth- she is smeagol no more! lol

to me, newborns are a lot of work for like not that much fun actually. they become 200xs cooler and turn into a real person when they...

start to smile!!! we loved him before, but man is he a blast now!

seth went to church for the first time =o]

here is jenna reading him a story before we left. priceless, right?

the ladies in my ward threw a shower for seth- so sweet!! it was so fun to get out of the house and we received so many kind and cute gifts. he slept through the whole thing, bless him! 

the sister on the right julie (one of the girls that i visit teach) hosted it at her house. 

my visiting teacher and fast friend christina on the far right made seth...

this adorable hat! easily my favorite gift of the night =o] we feel so blessed to be in a ward once again that has welcomed us with open arms!

the biggest news though, because of how much it has changed our daily lives, is natalie's homeschool experiences. seriously, i can't think of anything negative about it! we LOVE it!! natalie had a print assignment for art and here is her template. she calls it "butterfly at dawn" =o]

caleb has gotten into the habit of participating in natalie's art, music, history, science, and literature comprehension lessons, but the rest is hit and miss. jenna loves the music lessons! she doesn't care about the rest, but we are talking about the girl who won't sit through an episode of mickey mouse clubhouse (which she LOVES) without causing some kind of trouble. =o] here they are building Mesopotamian villages out of legos, which was an optional enrichment activity after her history lesson. sometimes i can handle coordinating the extra stuff and sometimes i can't. either way i think the curriculum is great! 

at least once a day, usually during "school", something like this happens. bored jenna is no one's friend. 

for Red Ribbon Week her school did a door decorating contest with the theme "the best me is drug free". so natalie decided to make a poster of her body filled with good things instead of drugs. some are painted pictures by them and some are magazine cutouts. (this is our little friend Rachel. we have had friends over a few times a week all month) 

they had a different way to dress up each day. this is crazy socks day so we would remember to "sock it to drugs" lol

we went on her first field trip to the Getty Museum and had a blast! the kids all loved it and seth slept in the baby pack the whole time like an angel =o]

after the guided tour with her class we went to the hands-on family room and the real fun began!

despite this picture, we all had a great time (caleb said "i'm being a party pooper mom!" as this picture was taken lol)

so there you have it! our (non-halloween version) october! i'm so THANKFUL it's november because that means we are so close to seeing my family!! =o]