If I'd ever leave you, it couldn't be in autumn

This PLACE! It is exquisite in the fall.

There's a tree on the highway that is sandwiched into a big line of pines and looks like a fire.

 And all the trees in our neighborhood are so beautiful. 

Especially ours.  

 Sometimes I have to pick up a handful of the leaves and just set them out and admire them for a minute.  I've showed this picture to Drew about 20 times.  He is tired of it, but it is so very pleasing to my eye! 

I rather liked this leaf rainbow too.  

 I had Vivien stand on my shoulders and throw a rope over one of the branches of our tree to make a good swing for leaf jumping.  Rafe didn't quite get the concept, but Vivi had a couple good flights.

  

  

Annie liked swinging pendulum-style on one of Vivien's beloved sticks she lent her for a seat.

 But our leaf pile didn't stay consolidated for long.  Leaf fights are just as fun as snowball fights. 

 SPLAT!

And it's just as fun to be buried in leaves as it is to be buried in sand.  

 Annie prepping to be covered:

 Things got a little crazy when the Witch Cauldron became involved.  "Cauldron Bum!"  "Really?  That's adorable."

  

Even Merrick likes to eat play in the leaves.  It's a good time. 

Thursday was the first day of fall break.  It was a hard day for us, because Vivien did not go to school.  Vivien gets bored when she does not go to school.  Her favorite activities are things that make a mess; things that involve a lot of parental supervision.  Well Drew had a bunch of Halloween related errands to run in the afternoon and I had put Merrick down for a nap and went to work on some Familton stuff for about an hour while I had my hands free, and when he woke up I came downstairs to this:

That is ALL of my salt, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, couscous, cornstarch, breadcrumbs, and quinoa from the pantry, along with a tomato, onion, lime, lemon, and clementine from the counter, which Vivien cut herself with a steak knife.  They got water from the bathroom.  There were little flour fingerprints on all of the cabinets and drawers, a trail of wet cocoa powder across the carpet from the kitchen to the bathroom, and couscous coating every open square inch of the floor.  I was not happy, Bob.  Not happy.  I put them outside on the porch while I secured the scene from Merrick's involvement and tried to impress on their minds the naughtiness of what they had done.  They did not seem to be responding and I still had "Flames, flames, flames on the side of my face...breathing, breathl-, heaving breaths." I may have yelled a bit.  And dumped all their good behavior beans out.  And told them they couldn't go to the ward Halloween party that night.  Then they cried:

But I was still angry, so I sent them upstairs to take a bath and then made them help clean up their mess.  And I texted my mom, who helped me calm down and refocus.  

I sat them down on little stools to the side of the oven while I started making their lunch and we had a good talk about repentance.  We went through all the steps, and talked about what those steps would look like in this situation.  Then we said a prayer together, and Vivien cried during it when she asked Heavenly Father to forgive her for making such a bad choice and to please help her to do better.  It's hard to be mad at your children when they do stuff like that.  So, we gave hugs all around and finished making lunch together.  They were mummies before the offensive olive eyes got picked off

We went to the Halloween party that night.  Vivien and Rafe finally decided on a costume (they are twin pandas) and we put Annie and Merrick in costumes we had lying around.  I went as Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  I am finally embracing it.  

We ran out of time for Drew to be a cool thing, so he had to be a very rushed skeleton.  I want to try this again with more time on actual Halloween, because he's got a good head for it.

The Primary was in charge of the party and had families from the ward run carnival games all around the gym.  I had volunteered to do the Pumpkin walk.  

I used my Ready! for Kindergarten dice to choose the numbers.  Merrick did his best to steal them and disconnect the speakers I was playing music on and be generally underfoot.

We had a good time.  A face-melting good time.

The next day I woke up to find Ms. Sneaky at it again getting into the Halloween candy on the very top shelf of the pantry and feeding it to herself, Rafe, and Annie, but the flames didn't make an appearance.  More talking, more teaching, more loving.  I think Vivien is the primary tool Heavenly Father uses to help me file down my rough edges.  

Later that morning we had Parent Teacher Conferences at the school.  Vivien showed me her work displayed in the hall.  I may be biased, but I think her pumpkin watercolor is pretty darn good.  I would even go so far as to claim that it is the best in show.

 Her teacher told me she's doing awesome.  She's exceeding all her educational targets and she loves to help her classmates.  Every day 15 of the 18 students in her class have 30 minutes of reading intervention in a different room, so it's just Ms. De La Cruz and the three little blond reader girls, Vivien, Quinn, and Analise.  They love that special quiet time with their teacher.  Vivi also earned her "Self Manager" badge at the school.  The program "is designed to positively recognize those students who consistently model self-manager behavior."  She gets special privileges (like an extra recess or first to lunch) as a reward for being a good example.  Here are all the self managers at the school for this year:

Ms. De La Cruz told me she's been encouraging the kids to start trying to spell things out on their own (she had a special name for it, but I can't remember what it was).  Vivien posted this sign in her room this week that I think we may need to frame and permanently attach to her bed:

 Ms. De La Cruz also asked me where I shop for my clothes, because she really loves the skirts I wear.  I was very flattered, since I made them myself!  After the conference we went into the library where there was a Scholastic book fair and a bunch of STEM activities for the kids to do. 

 Building 3D shapes!

 We had to balance on everything on our way out to the car. 

 On Saturday we went to a pumpkin patch in Port Orchard to find some suitable jack-o-lantern pumpkins.

There was a fun little playground for littles, and in the back of this picture you can see targets for a water balloon launcher they had set up at the top of the hill. 

 Annie showing off the little pumpkin house.

There were also a couple of goats, chickens, and pigs.  

We paid $2 each for the kids to take a barrel ride.  They sang and waved the whole way around the farm.  The guy driving the tractor remarked, "That was the happiest ride I've had all day," when they disembarked.  

And then we paid $1 each to go on a Pumpkin Hunt in the old-growth forest behind the farm.  They gave us a little laminated card that had a secret message.  There were different colored pumpkins hiding up in the trees that had a letter associated with them.  When you saw the pumpkin, you'd fill in all the spaces on the card marked by that color and in the end it spelled out a message ("Happy Autumn Adventures!").  Rafe named all the letters if we could remind Vivien to give him a chance, and Vivien wrote them all on our little card by herself.  

 There were also trees with faces. 

The kids delighted in pointing them out by screaming loudly.  It wasn't the serenest nature walk, but it was really fun!

A good day at the Pumpkin Patch, all in all.  Even Stinky Rafe couldn't keep himself from hating all of it.

Random things! 

Rafe: I like Daddy because he's bald and tells jokes to me.  And he wrestles with me.  

Drew stood watch for the last time, and had his very last PRT.  Here he is showing off his bulging . . . head veins.  

 I've been tending a little girl in our ward in the afternoons for the last couple weeks to help out her mom.  It was going to be a steady thing, but her mom has been in the process of switching jobs so it's just been every now and again.  Which is fine with me.  She is a 1st grader at the other elementary school near us, so we are all home when it's time to walk to the bus stop to pick her up.  The bus stop is in front of a house with a cool front yard.

 Merrick is continuing his eating of ALL THE THINGS.  We had two unfortunate incidents this week.  One came to my attention when I heard little Annie squeaking, "He's eating my poopies!" Andelynn "Crazy Hair" Rei Forbes

There were some old, dry, pebble-sized turds on the floor of her bedroom that I had missed but Merrick had found.  Better vantage point.  Blech. He has Drewpy eyes

The other was when Rafe was playing with some salt dough at our Japanese table and Merrick popped up beside him to take a big piece and stick it in his mouth.  It was not a pleasant experience for him.  I washed out his mouth, but he kept freaking out for several minutes after.  When I laid him down to change his diaper and he opened up to let loose a wail, I saw that the entire roof of his mouth was aquamarine.  I guess salt dough is the consistency of that white bread that cements itself to your hard palate.  He was much happier when it was gone--he has no love for a salt lick. 

I've been playing floor hockey with some ladies from the stake on Wednesday nights.  It's really fun.  We play at the stake center.  They've put socks on all their sticks so they don't rip up the floor.  When I drive home after playing there is always mist over the road, which is rather thrilling.  It's a good me-time break.

Rafe dropped a weight he was messing around with onto his big toe, so we have matchy purple toenails. 

We have to read Annie three books every night.  "Next book?"  "Next book?"  "Last book?"  Here she is reading The Pout-Pout Fish. Bluuuuuuuub