October

Isn't he the sweetest thing?!  He's just the perfect mix! He's a crazy monster truck driving and sweet dolly caring boy all at the same time. 

Yay for warm October sunshine and a GG that lives in town and has sidewalks :)

Go Packers!  They are hard core like their daddy!

A day off of school, so mommy runs "PE" class.

Sugar is actually useful!  She treed some coons!

Three naughty but adorable nearly grown coon babes and their mama came to our house to eat our chickens.  I won't talk about how the story ended. 

Jaxon was not sure about the pumpkin guts for the second year in a row.

When I told him to try with his hands this was the look I got.

And then there's my Sierra......

She actually liked the taste of raw pumpkin guts.

The carving was hard for Jaxy, so he drew on his pumpkin.

He was happy to not have to deal with the insides anymore.

All done!

Princess Jasmine

A Princess and a Super Hero.  I'm such a lucky mama!

We've enjoyed some fall sunshine, are getting into the routine of first grade, and had a fun Halloween.  I'm never ready for the rains to return.  Never.  When it gets dark and rainy and cold it is so hard to get out of bed.  And when I do get out of bed, all I think about is crawling back into it.  But I have two little "motivators" that keep me going.... and going...... and going.

We're still getting peppers and tomatoes from the garden but this was a rough year.  Our well started giving us problems early in the summer and we were not able to water much.  We put in a new lawn and needed to keep that watered, so our garden got what was left.  And it wasn't much.  The tomatoes and peppers did okay but the strawberries and corn were pitiful.  We had a nice crop of grapes and black raspberries again, which are favorites in our house.  We also got some regular raspberries this year because we fenced that part of the garden and the deer aren't eating them anymore.   We have about 6 trees in the field, mostly apple, that have suffered from not being in a place where we can water them regularly.  We hope that someday we'll have a nice little orchard.

Sierra is enjoying school for the most part.  She's very worried about breaking rules and getting into trouble at school even though that's never happened.  So we've had lots of talks about being "corrected" which is part of learning verses getting into "trouble".  She loves PE and music.  She's doing excellent in reading and is also enjoying math.  She comes home and wants to practice math so she makes her own workbooks.  They are mostly working on single digit addition and subtraction right now, but she likes to come home and work on triple digit addition.  It makes her feel so good that she is really getting it.  I'm volunteering for 3 hours a week in her class again this year while my Mom and Dad watch Jaxon.  She counts down to the days that I'll be there.  I'm doing a lot more office work this year than working with the kids.  But I go where I'm needed and get to have lunch with Sierra before I leave.

Jaxon's still extremely into cars and monster trucks but he also goes through phases of carrying babies around.  He's very gentle.  He talks to them, feeds them, and puts them to sleep.  He's always telling me to be quiet because his babies are sleeping.  He's growing like crazy.  Sometimes I wonder how long it will be before he catches up to Sierra.  His feet are just 2 sizes below hers.  He is so active and so picky that it worries me that he only seems to grow up and never out.  But he is healthy and strong.  We stopped taking him to the bathroom before we go to bed this month and he is making it through the night dry.  We haven't had any accidents at all.  Whew.

Halloween was spread out through a couple of days this year.  Philomath didn't have school the Friday before Halloween, so they had their Halloween party on Thursday and the city of Philomath also had a trick-or-treat time after school where the businesses handed out candy.  Sierra had fun at both.  The next day we took the kids to the Corvallis downtown trick-or-treat but it was really rainy, so we didn't last very long.  On the actual day of Halloween we took the kids to the Elementary school party and then to my Grandmas.  It was pouring so Jaxon ate some candy while Sierra talked Jesse into taking her to a few stops around my Grandma's neighborhood.  She loves to go to my Grandma's for Halloween because she gets trick or treaters and Sierra loves to hand out candy.  It was a busy couple of days but we all enjoyed it (except the pouring rain part).  The kids don't eat much candy so now I'll have some candy to stick in their Easter eggs when the time comes.  It works every year!  I just toss out the weird eyeball chocolates cause that's kinda creepy for Easter.  Ha.

Here comes the rain..... so it may be Spring before you hear from me again.... ;)