Autumn Time

 Well September came and went in a flash!  I think the changing of the seasons has just been wild for us all.  A harvest moon, on top of temp changes, and just general changing made for a WILD September.  There was one week in there that I wasn't sure we were going to make it through!  Haha.  But we did!  And now we are well into our first week of October with lots to report from the last month :)

We have been loving our weekly park days.  The weather has been glorious and we really have some of the best friends!  It's been a little harder these days to make it out there because we have soccer practice 2x per week and then a game on Saturday, and then the park on Wednesday, plus a trip to Bluefield weekly for groceries.  It's a lot of driving, and sometimes we have to skip it for me to keep my house clean and save my sanity haha.  It sure is fun though!  One of the weeks our friend Judah taught Danny and the girls some pioneer dances.  They loved it!

Logan and Clara have been LOVING soccer.  Like so much!  And they have been playing so well!!  They have a great coach and a really fun team.  Their team name is Leopard Raptors haha.  I definitely think this is something they will want to keep doing.  Although fall seems really nuts for us haha.  We had to miss blading cane this year because of a soccer game, and there's conference, and apple butter making, and the cutting of cane and molasses festival, and the Gwynn's bonfire, etc etc.  We're wondering if we should only do spring soccer.  Haha!  We shall see.  I think on our second practice of the season a storm rolled in just as it was finishing up and it POURED.  Within seconds we were completely soaked through.  Completely.  It was the craziest thing ever!  I think if we didn't have kids crying we could have just laughed and enjoyed it a little bit more.  The little ones weren't loving it, but now it is a fun memory!   

A little update on Henry.  He's almost 9.5 months which is just crazy!  I keep forgetting to take a 9 months in vs 9 months out picture.  Maybe I will do that tomorrow...... Anywho.  He's still not crawling at all.  I try to move things away from him, and he will just spin himself around in circles looking for something to grab and the circles eventually shift where he is and then he can grab something.  Haha. He still rolls, and he's good at pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, so I don't know what the deal is.  I'm not really stressed about it, but we'll see I guess!  He has his two bottom teeth and his top two are probably just days away from coming through.  He's tried to bite me a couple of times while nursing and it's terrible.  There was one time he got me good though and it brought tears to my eyes and my scream scared him real bad.  Whoops!  Since that one bad one though, he hasn't really tried to.  I just have to be careful not to let him nurse too long while he's awake otherwise he gets bored and will try to bite haha.  He still wakes at night to eat, and he loves food.  He is content to just always be eating haha.  He does love to play and is starting to get really fun!  He makes the funniest gremlin baby sounds instead of laughing, he babbles and is saying dada and baba now and not just mama, and he still loves mama the very most!  He loves his bouncer thing we want to pull out the walker thing and see what he thinks of that!  We are just starting to enter the stranger danger phase now.  He's getting a little more nervous around people, and he does NOT like when I walk away from him.  Ever.  Haha.  This month he also got a nasty virus and he cried and cried and cried and cried.  It broke my heart.  I sort of assumed it was teeth because he has never acted like that before.  We were up allllll night and he was just miserable.  Poor guy.  We quickly learned it was a virus because it spread through the rest of the family like wildfire.  It came on hard and fast and we all got it.  Thankfully the sickness part really only lasted about 10 hours for us all, but it was not fun.  Henry is thankfully back to his happy smiley self!  We sure do love that chubby little hunk!

LOVES to watch the chickens/animals.

Drooly like dad 😂

Sick baby :(

his profile 😍

Ok there are just a few more random things that have happened that I will share real quick and then throw some more pictures and videos at the end.  I'm going to start with the most recent and then work backwards.  

We officially joined HEARTH, which is the homeschool co-op and we are so excited about it!  We had our first co-op learning thing on Monday and I think the kids really enjoyed it!  Rory was pretty shy at first and Danny was being very clingy, but by the end they were both playing and participating!  And they all want to go back!  The little kids talked about the moon and did some fun stuff with that.  The older two got to do some sewing practice and do a little science experiment.  We also signed them up to do swim lessons through the group...which was a total bust haha.  I thought they were getting legit swim lessons, but they weren't.  The fitness center just reserved 2 hours for the homeschool group to come in and do an open swim.  That's it.  It ended up being a waste of time and we left after like 30 minutes because I didn't bring a swimsuit or anything, and Rory can't swim without help. *face palm*  I learned my lesson to ask a lot more questions, and I was a "Karen" and got my money back haha.  I will put that towards actual swim lessons!  

Cleo (Harold's jersey cow) fell at David's and broke her hip.  David had to put her down and butcher her.  Dallin got to help with that and I took the kids to see some of it.  I'm going to share a couple of pictures of that, so just beware.  I was worried it would be really disturbing, but we all seemed quite fine.  It was a little sad, but no one was traumatized.  Clara wanted to try skinning her and Logan just observed.  Dallin also had to shoot a coyote the other day at the Boone's.  They had gone out of town, but had set a trap for a coyote because one had killed a few lambs last week.  So Dallin checked the trap on Saturday morning and there was a coyote.  He's getting to do all kinds of country things out here.  It was sad that it had to die, but also, it sort of has to be done too.  It's a weird thing.  Hmmm...let's see.  What else... I've been baking lots of bread lately and I think I am finally learning how to do it right!  I even got a loaf that the kids WANTED to eat haha.  That's a big deal!  But then I ran out of flour :/ Uggghhh.  I tried to order more and it's out of stock, so I won't be able to get my good flour again until the end of October!  I guess we will just have to survive without bread for a couple of weeks haha.

Chicken Butt has decided she is our friend.  She's been letting us hold and pet her.  She even hops up next to me on the bumper of the trunk when I unload groceries.  We also went full country mode and let our chickens, dogs, and cats come in to clean up supper one evening.  That was hilarious and so weird haha.  Thankfully no one pooped in the kitchen, but when a chicken tried to go down the hallway, we decided it was time for them to go back out ;)

Clara is becoming a fantastic little milker.  Makes me want to get a cow just for her haha.  The country life suits her.  She likes to work hard and get things done.  It's one of her favorite things to go do chores.  I love that about her.  

We took Luna to the vet for a lump on her leg and found out she has active Lyme disease.  I had noticed her getting tired quickly when we would play with her, but that was really the only symptom she had.  We're going to get a vaccine for her now because we just can't keep the ticks off the dogs.  In fact I pulled like 15-20+ tiny ticks off of Duke's EYES the other day.  Like along his lash line and right around his eye.  It was awful.  I tried to give him a sleeping pill before I did anything and it didn't work. Dallin had to hold him down while I did my best to not stab his eyes or pull out all of his eyelashes.  I hated it.  We got Duke a radius collar though to keep him in the yard (he has been sneaking to neighbor's stealing food/bones and even garbage) and keeping him in the yard has helped sooooo much with the ticks.  It's hard though.  They like to explore and the ticks like the dogs.  I was sort of against doing a tick shot, but at this point I think it's worth whatever possible side effects it may have.

We celebrated my 32nd birthday!  The Wood's sent some party supplies and the kids had a lot of fun decorating and playing with balloons!  I got a delicious breakfast in bed, plus a relaxing day at home and delicious dinner!  It was a great day.  I also took Logan to the orthodontist that day, which I feel like maybe should be mentioned haha.  He's developing an open bite and he is to work on training his neck muscles to swallow instead of his tongue and then we will go back in 6 months to see what changes that makes! Dallin got me a dry pack vacuum sealer for mason jars and a normal vacuum sealer and my parents got me a dehydrator!  I'm really excited to put those to use!  One big goal of mine being out here is putting up food for our family, and I am getting the stuff I need to be able to do that!  It makes me so happy!  My sisters also got me some wooden spoons and cutting boards that I am also so excited about!  It was a lovely birthday!  

General Conference was this past weekend and I tried out the Come Follow Me FHE conference bundle this year.  It was AMAZING!  I think I needed to have done a little bit more prep work for the kids, but they all enjoyed it so much and we had a great conference weekend!  I still need to go back and listen to everything again, but we decided making it a good experience is probably more important for our kids right now, and I think we were successful in that!

We went to Lake Witten for the Hale's birthday celebration for Hudson and Jayne.  It was just absolutely beautiful and we had a lot of fun.  The kids especially loved fishing!!

Rory's been letting me give her Elsa braids :)

The waterfall at Camp Creek that we decided looked like a rootbeer float haha.

Henry loved to watch the calf eat!

Clara's writings <3

My girls. 

Some (not all) of the ticks off of Duke's eyes!

("Restaurant", which they pronounce exactly how she sounded it out haha)

More writings!

He's a character hahaha.

Farm kids and haybales :)

Clara taking a turn.

Lake Witten

Her crossed legs!

Duke found some vertebrae to chew on...😳

All the sickies!

Reading to sick Danny. Oh my heart.

Bought himself a shotgun and now he thinks he needs to hunt the chickens haha

Coyote

Making moon craters at the co-op

I love when the vines on the rock walls change!  It's so stunning!

It's been a wild September and beginning of October, but we have lots of good things going right now.  Life feels like it's in a good spot and I am ready for the fall season and also the 'rest' that comes with winter ;)  Happy October my dear friends and family!  

Have a blessed day! 🤍