Dia de los Muertos

We upgraded our ofrenda this year and I love it!

This year our Dia de los Muertos celebration has been extra fun because we have spent a bit of time getting to know our ancestors better. I loved being able to put their pictures up and actually know a little bit about them now. I actually forgot to put up Dad Blood's picture originally, and it was definitely sad to see it up there. I miss him. But it was also a beautiful way to celebrate his life and remember him. 

We hosted our annual Dia de Muertos party in our backyard again with lots of friends. We even made sugar skulls for the kids to decorate, which Elijah did with great vigor:

Decorating skulls and enjoying some pan de muerto 

(legit this year since Carlos bought it from a bakery to share!)

And of course there was the massive trampoline jumping party:

Followed by the less massive trampoline sitting party:

(I think maybe Talia was reading them a book?)

After some delicious food (mostly thanks to Carlos and Stephanie), it was time to tell ancestor stories! I loved how everyone brought a story and a photo to share. Such funny, and powerful, and beautiful lives. This is my new favorite holiday. 

Elise introducing Catherine Clawson Williams

Catherine introducing George Malin Williams

Aaron introducing Lafe Carnahan

(not pictured: me talking about Dad Blood and not really keeping it together)

I hope this is a tradition we can continue for a long, long time. 

Soccer Season

 Because we are apparently insane, we had three kids playing soccer this season (all for the first time!). We had soccer practice on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, plus three games at three different times and locations on Saturday mornings. If it weren't for Uncle Timmy showing up to help on Saturdays, it would have been completely insane (or people would have to miss some games).

Three soccer babies!

The most terrifying 15 minutes of my soccer mom career:

He actually did a decent job as goalie and seemed to enjoy it!

Elise's official soccer portrait:

(taken by me because I am not paying for that nonsense)

She wanted a picture with the back of her jersey.

Not awkward at all. 

Elise's cute little team.

She became good friends with Alyssa (back row, 2nd from left).

Alyssa was the team MVP and a blast to watch.

I didn't get any pictures of Catherine since Jon was the one who usually took her to practices and games. She was the only 6th grader on the team, the rest were mostly 8th and a few 7th. She lucked out and was on a phenomenal team. They never lost a game, even when there was a miscommunication on the schedule and they ended up playing a team of boys for fun. I thought the girls would be crushed, but they held those boys to a tie! They ended up losing in the championships because so many girls (including Catherine) were not able to play in the final round on Sunday. But Catherine had a great experience and is even thinking about playing again next year! Are we crazy enough to do this again??

Remember: reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, bye!

This year we let the kids pick our costume theme and the decision was universal: Gravity Falls. They all fell in love with the show this year. Catherine in particular watched the entire thing twice. I didn't watch as much as everyone else, so I felt like a bit of a poser, but it was still fun!

Elise as Mabel Pines

Aaron as Dipper Pines

Dipper and Mabel

Dipper and Wendy Corduroy

Silly Dipper and Wendy

Wendy, Dipper and Mabel

Catherine was the most dedicated to our costumes this year.

She designed and created her own costume (with a bit of help from Mom & Dad):

Catherine as Bill Cipher, her favorite character from the show:

Did I mention that Bill is the villain?

And Catherine still denies that she's a Slytherin...

Seth as Soos:

My favorite part was the tiny little moustache we drew on.

Too bad you can't actually see it...

(Yes, that's a pillow stuffed in there. 

Seth does not have a gut.

But Soos does!)

Jon as Grunkle Stan:

(We opted for the suit version over the wifebeater and boxers version)

And, finally, Elijah as Li'l Gideon (also a villain):

No shoes because we may have forgotten them at home...

Mabel and Gideon ready to get candy!

The whole Gravity Falls crew!

Elise also invited her friend Vivi to join us for the trunk or treat:

Enjoying some treats in the hall:

Trunk or treat felt kind of off this year. It wasn't well attended, and it seemed like a lot of people who did come were only there because they had various jobs to perform. Our ward is just so small now!

Elijah Mark

Elijah at nursery with his teacher, who he calls "Blomquist."

"Hi, Blomquist!"

-Elijah went from hating nursery to loving it basically overnight. No idea what triggered the change. But now he seeks out his teacher during sacrament meeting so he knows where to run to as soon as the meeting ends. He's also often the only kid in nursery, which means all the toys and snacks are his. 

First day as a Mini Mustang!

Emma Knox insisted that we sign Elijah up for the preschool program at the local high school since she would be one of his teachers. Sadly things didn't quite work out that way, but Elijah still headed to preschool in October! He went three days a week for 2.5 hours. He had a rotating cast of teachers (all the kids who were juniors and seniors in the child development track at the high school), but Miss Kathy was the head teacher. He was often confused and called her "Grandma Kathy," which she thought was a hoot. His class is pretty small (7-8 kids). Hoping he has a great experience!

My son, Darth Vader

Our Halloween costumes this year required that Elijah acquire a powder-blue suit. Thanks to eBay, I got one for super cheap. And we just had to try it on to make sure it fit okay. Prepare to die of cuteness overload:

Little boys should dress like this ALL. THE. TIME.

Complete with the suitcoat this time.

Complete with the Elise this time.

-When Elijah needs to go potty, instead of just going to the bathroom, he'll start running in circles around the house. We'll have to stop him and ask if he needs to go potty before he recognizes what's going on. Makes zero sense to me. 

-I had the craziest dream this month. I was visiting my friends who (in my dream) lived in this beautiful old house with a fantastic library and a collection of various animals and insects from around the world. One of their collected items was an egg. I picked it up and it began to hatch. A baby pterodactyl emerged from the shell and immediately started flying around the house and destroying everything. As we were running around the house trying to catch the pterodactyl, it suddenly morphed into Elijah. Dreaming Megan thought, "Ah, that explains SO MUCH." Awake Megan somehow agrees. 

Aaron Art

Can we ever have too much Aaron art?

I think not!

 

Shiny Imminent Death 

The Murder Hornet

(this was a major motiff this fall after Aaron was stung by a hornet 

while playing on the hill behind our house with our neighbor Bennett).

And my personal favorite:

I have no idea what is happening here, but it's charmingly horrifying.

Also Uncle Aaron was playing around with Chat GPT and was trying to get it to create oil paintings of Seth playing Roblox while riding a velociraptor in Tucson, Arizona. Despite adding qualifiers such as "with linebacker shoulders", all the pictures ended up looking way more like little Aaron playing Roblox while riding a velociraptor in Tucson, Arizona:

(bottom right especially)

We sure love our Aaron art!

(Not art-related, but I wanted to write down Aaron's recorder playing. At elementary school in third grade the kids all learn recorder. For each song they master, they get a "belt" (a colored piece of string to tie to the end of their recorder). Aaron is not a music lover, but he is a competitive guy, so we heard a LOT of recorder practicing for a month or so!). 

Seth Man

Seth has been thriving in high school. I think he's a pretty great kid so it's been fun to see him succeed in public school. His magnet program holds an information session every fall and Seth was asked to be one of the ambassadors to help answer questions and guide tours. He also got to run the slideshow during the presentation:

He did a great job.

Seth is definitely my biggest people person!

Seth and Jon also got to go on a beach campout with the YM. I don't get a lot of details about what happens at said campouts, but I did get some pictures, so...

Seth, Gabe and Adam running majestically along the beach

YM and leaders at the beach.

Gabe is totally winning the fashion competition. 

I was worried about how Seth would do in high school after so many years of homeschooling, but it's been an absolute non-issue. It's really cool to watch him grow up, while also being really weird to think I have a kid in high school...

Sara the Cat (sitter)

Catherine has endeared herself to some of my good friends, three sisters who live together and have two beautiful cats. When they headed out of town for a trip, they asked Catherine to cat sit for them. She was THRILLED. Not only did she get to hang out with Mika and Al, she also got to pretend she was living all alone in a townhome during a good chunk of every day. I told my friends that if they needed a fourth sister, Catherine would happily volunteer:

Feeding the kitties (Al is waiting impatiently)

When Catherine was at school, Elijah and I got to feed the kitties.

He was so happy every time he got close enough to pet or play with them.

They are not used to small children, so it was hard to get them to cooperate.

He was so thrilled just to get this close to Mika.

Catherine does not love Primary Activities for Girls. She's not particularly close to any of the girls in her group and she complains often about how the boys have better activities, like bike rodeos. Which is why I was shocked to get this picture from her leader:

I guess this activity must have been a hit!

I didn't get any pictures, but Catherine and I did go to watch her elementary band teacher perform in a local jazz band. It was really cool to get to see a whole bunch of professional women musicians, plus the music was awesome! Catherine was so happy to get to see her teacher (plus she got extra credit for her middle school band class). And I loved getting to spend a few hours one-on-one with her!

October

 

We really, really lucked out with neighbors here. Mr. Chris lives next door and is basically a surrogate grandpa to all the neighborhood kids. They love to raid his little dollhouse/shed and pull out all the lawn furniture. Then they steal all the snacks from my pantry and have a tea party in his backyard. 

We heard it was going to be a potentially bad flu/Covid season, so we decided to have everyone get their shots before things got bad. We got an appointment at the local Walgreens, only to have them announce that they were out of shots. So we loaded everyone back up and headed to the other Walgreens (which is literally 1/2 mile away, thankfully) and waited in line. Thankfully I was smart and brought all the devices:

We survived. 

And we got ice cream after because we needed it. 

Melissa asked me to pick up her boys after school one day. I was there a bit before the bus and decided to just wait in the car. I opened my door to let some cooler air in and got a special visitor:

The Knox boys thought it was pretty funny to find their cat in my car.

Thankfully Zara hopped out before we tried to drive away. 

Our ancestor celebrations continue! In honor of one ancestor who was a bartender, I tried to buy some birch beer. Walmart substituted with ginger beer. Being naive, I popped one open and had everyone take a sip. And it tasted like BURNING. 

Drunk children

Doug Mullins came over the next day and informed me that no one drinks ginger beer straight--it's a mixer. He whipped up some lemonade with a bit of ginger beer and it was delicious. Sorry, children!

And, finally, a project! Elijah has outgrown his high chair, which meant we had outgrown our table with six seats. Solution: buy a bench! We couldn't find one we liked that was padded, so we did our own upholstery. Not perfect, but it works!

Two thumbs up from Elijah!

School Schedule

Because it's hilariously insane, I just wanted to document what our schedule looks like this year. We have kids in preschool, elementary, middle, and high school. Woo hoo.

5:12 am: wake up, get ready, breakfast/scriptures with Seth

5:53 am: Seth leaves for seminary at Knoxes 

        -sometimes I drop off, other times Jon drives him and takes his laptop and works during seminary

            -every other week Jon drives the boys from seminary to school, around a 45 minute round trip.

6:30-6:45 am: Catherine gets up for the day

6:45-7:00 am: Aaron & Elijah get up for the day (sometimes Elise as well)

7:10 am: breakfast/scriptures with Catherine

7:18 am: Catherine leaves for the bus

7:30 am: breakfast & scriptures with Aaron, Elise, Elijah

7:40 am: wake up Elise if she's not already up

7:45 am: I take Elijah to preschool

8:05 am: I get home from the preschool run

8:12 am: Aaron & Elise leave for the bus

10:15 am: I leave to pick Elijah up from preschool

(a short break from the insanity, including lunch with Elijah and a walk with Elijah and Jon if the weather cooperates, sometime around 1-2 pm)

2:30 pm: I leave to pick up Seth, Jack & Gabe from the local high school and take them home

        -unless they have something after school. Then I leave around 3:20 or so. 

            -it's a 25 minute drive to school with good traffic, so trips to the school and back are about an hour.

3:00 pm: Seth and I get home

3:05 pm: Catherine gets home

3:45 pm: Aaron & Elise get home, snack time

4:00 pm: outside time for an hour! 

5:30 pm: idealistic dinner time goal

6:00 pm: actual dinner time

7:30 pm: littles get ready for bed

8:00 pm: Elijah in bed

8:30 pm: Elise in bed

9:00 pm: chase all other kids to bed

9:15 pm: idealistic bedtime goal for me & Jon

9:30-9:45 pm: actual bedtime for me & Jon

And sometime in here we have piano lessons and sewing lessons and church activities and Come, Follow Me reading, and FHE, and dessert and family prayers, and reading books, and playing games. And lots of screen time for Seth & Aaron. It's funny that I thought I would have more time once I wasn't homeschooling anymore. HAHAHAHAHA.