How the babies entertained themselves while we canned...

Elle used the water bottles as bracelets... such a girl. Will just antagonized Elle, which is what he does best :)

What to do with 65 pounds of apples...

Well after picking 65 pounds of apples we had A LOT of work to do... We came home that night and peeled, cored, sliced and canned. Canning with 4 kids ages 7 and under who all want to help is always interesting :)

Apple Picking

On October 12 we decided to skip church and take the family apple picking instead. Aaron had been out of town the whole week and we needed some quality family time. We headed to Tyler's farm in Emmett where all the trees are dwarf so the apples are low enough for all the kids to pick from. We picked 65 pounds of apples and had such a great time. The kids all loved it and each of them contributed! Hannah found the BIGGEST apple we had ever seen! I am bummed we did not weigh it alone... anyway she was very proud of it. Ava was great at scouting out a tree with LOTS of good apples and also making sure no bad apples were making it into the buckets. Will just tromped around everywhere picking up all the apples off the ground and putting them into the buckets. He also liked to test each one by throwing it! Elle was a little moody but seemed perfectly happy as long as she got to carry the bucket. She drug that thing around with her everywhere she went. We love these 4 little munchins so much and are so thankful for the time we get to spend making memories with them.

Annual Halloween Party

So for the last 3 or 4 years our friends have thrown and adult halloween party. Aaron and I have never been much for dressing up so we usually opt out. Well this year with a little peer pressure we caved... Unfortunately we only had about 2 hours to come up with a costume before the party started. I did a quick search on easy homemade costumes for couples and came up with the idea for "legos". Not the most comfortable costume, but they worked. Next year I will try to give myself more than 2 hours to put a costume together :)

We will MISS you guys :(

We have been so fortunate to have Courteney, Aspen and Audrey living just down the road for the last 2 years and are so sad that they are moving on to the chapter of their life. Audrey and the girls have become "sister's" and we like to call Audrey our 5th child. We love this sweet little niece of ours and are so sad to see her go. It has been so nice having Uncle Court and Auntie Aspen close to help out with the kids and to be here as a support system when we have needed them. They were here during my LONG hospital stay while pregnant with the twins and have become second parents to the twins and the girls.

This being said, we are SO excited for this new adventure. Court just finished up his training as an air traffic controller and they are headed to Knoxville, TN where he will begin a new career. We are proud of you guys!!! But we will miss you terribly :(

Hannah loses her first front tooth

I was just getting ready to mop the kitchen floor and Hannah was helping by moving chairs into the living room. She started to tell me how loose her tooth was and started wiggling it, she said "I think I will have daddy pull my tooth out when he gets home from work." Just then she pulled her fingers out of her mouth and looked at me with the most perplexed look ever, holding her TOOTH!!
(of course this happened back in early September... behind as usual)

"Clyde Park" in the mountains

If you're from Montana you will understand the title right away. If not you will have to visit clyde park, MT some day to fully understand. We went up to Silver City, ID in the mountains south of Murphy this weekend.

It was an hour drive up a windy dirt road that seemed to take forever. We drove into town and immediately got pulled over by the sheriff. There is one stoplight in the entire owyhee county and we blew right thru it. Turns out that one of the locals operates the stoplight from the general store and he turned it red as we were half way thru the intersection (if you call the convergence of two rocky trails an intersection). So the sheriff threatened me with some prison time, but I agreed to make a "donation" to the local watchman fund and he let us go on our way. We had lunch and walked around the town. After seeing the condition of the town I regretted my "donation" to the sheriff, because I'm sure I could have pushed the wall of the jail over, caused the building to fall down and made an escape. Instead we visited the church and confessed our sins before heading on to the cemetary. While walking among the dead we found one headstone in particular that caused some concern. It read "Here lies John, died by hanging for making fun of backwoods type folks that live in run-down shanty-towns". We decided that was our signal it was time to leave. We all hopped in the suburban and left in a cloud of dust (avoiding the stop-light this time).

Thanks for the memories Silver City, we'll be back as soon as we feel the need to have our lunch eaten by a wandering pack of dogs and meet some more "true" idahoans (the kind without teeth)!

Aaron