Fall leaves

The truth is out

After all these posts about trips to the zoo, football games, pumpkin patches, etc. I thought I should do a post about what life is really like at our house...

A bunch of crazy animals

And I'm not just talking about the wildlife at the zoo...

Zay's friend Emma has a zoo membership and she's taken us a few times now.  This time I had our neighbor friend Esther with me too while her mom was at an appointment.  We had two double strollers with 3 two-year-olds plus Eliza, and we didn't even lose any of them while we were there!  Esther likes to run away, Zay likes to whine, and Emma hides behind her mom if I try to talk to her, but we all survived.  It's fun to see the kids get excited about the animals.  And it's funny to watch them copy each other and just generally act silly.  We're lucky to have many good friends for Zay to play with--it makes the terrible twos a little less terrible!

The Pumpkin Patch

While Jerel and I were at the football game, our awesomest babysitter ever took the kids to the pumpkin patch!  Some moms might be annoyed with someone who took their kids for their first pumpkin patch experience, but not me!  Pumpkin patches are one of those things I think my kids should experience, but I don't really enjoy doing myself.  So now it's all taken care of and I didn't have to get muddy!  They even came home with a pumpkin for us to carve! 

 Isaiah was very excited that his coat matched the pumpkins.  For a while afterwards, whenever we asked him which coat he wanted to wear "red one, brown one, or orange one?"  he would pick orange because it was the pumpkin coat.  Then he would tell us all about how it matched the color of the pumpkins at the pumpkin patch with the chicken lady.  The chicken lady?  Sometimes Zay forgets the name of the babysitter, but he knows they have chickens at their house, so the house is the chicken house and the baysitter is the chicken lady!  We're so grateful to have the chicken lady.  She is always willing to watch the kids, in fact she's the one who watched Zay while I was having Eliza.  Nap time, crying time, crazy time, she's done them all with my little ones! 

BYU Football Game

So Jerel and I are both BYU grads and decided to head down for the BYU/Oregon State game.  It was super fun!  We saw a few people from our ward, Jerel saw a few people he knew from when he grew up in Utah, and we got to watch the Cougars win.  I wasn't surprised at the win because they've NEVER lost a game I've attended.  (This is the second one I've gone to...)  We even went to a CougarTown tailgate party beforehand.  We left our kids with a friend (an AMAZING friend to watch our kids for ten whole hours!  She even took them to a pumpkin patch.)  but we saw lots of people there with babies and toddlers.  For a minute I felt guilty for leaving my kids at home, but then I remembered how they would've just cried the whole time and then I felt fine.

Our unappreciative little girl...

Sometimes I put her in the most darling little outfits and she just doesn't seem all that grateful!  I made her this little skirt, which I think turned out pretty cute, plus the fabric only cost me $1.98.  How thrifty is that?!  (Of course when we got to church Jerel asked me if I had purposely made it so short it didn't cover her little bum, or if that was a mistake; perhaps I should've used a bit more fabric). 

Eliza is more and more fun every day.  She army crawls really well now, can pull herself up on a few things, switched from bottle to sippy cup (except when Daddy feeds her at night), and loves trying table foods.  If only some of that love for new foods would rub off on Isaiah "Mac-n-Cheese" Atkinson...

Octomom (for a few hours anyway)

Some girls in our ward started a "Temple Swap."  Every two weeks one or two of us stays home to watch all the kids while the others go to the temple.  This time Carolyn and I were on babysitting duty for these EIGHT little cuties!  You can see here that snack time was very popular!  Carolyn moved in down the street from us this summer and it's been so handy having a good friend so close by--last minute babysitting, a grocery item needed on Sunday, etc.  Her girls are 23 months and 3 months so she knows all about 2 under 2 just like me!