Finally Found My Camera!

Dear Family,

I finally found my camera, so get ready for a bunch of pictures! I'll try to touch on the highlights of the past month too. We stayed busy with Halloween celebrations, school field trips, school and just playing together :)

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of driving a group of Thomas's classmates on a school field trip to two BYU museums that I didn't know existed. I knew that BYU had an art museum and a natural history museum, but this was my first time visiting the BYU Palentology and Peoples & Cultures Museums. Both museums were very interesting and I'd like to bring Matthew back sometime.

Our group watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid and ate lots of
popcorn & movie candy on the drive to and from BYU

Going on a scavenger at the Palentology museum!

The coolest group strikes a pose just before going to the
Peoples and Cultures museum

While I was on the field trip, Emmy and Cora went to Silver Pups, a program that I'm so thankful for. It's so nice to have the flexibility to volunteer and substitute teach at Thomas & Matthew's school and to know that our girls are having safe fun and being productive at the same time.

The Awesome and Amazing Miss Emily (Go BYU Early Childhood Program!!!)
plays with and reads to Cora, at Silver Pups, whenever I sub, volunteer, and/or run errands

My job as a substitute teacher has gotten so much easier since the school has mandated a new name tag rule for all of the students and faculty. Now I never have to guess on names. Here is my cool new magnetic name tag:

Thomas and Matthew wear name tags like this one almost every day

I went with Emmy and Cora to the Silver Pups Halloween party. The teachers are so fun and creative in the activities they do with the kids there. Emmy dressed up as Elmo and Cora was a strawberry. We went trick or treating through all of the school offices, through the cafeteria, and to a few classrooms. Emmy went on a pumpkin hunt on the playground and she painted her pumpkin pretty fall colors. The kids also sang some Halloween songs for us.

The Silver Pups, with their parents and teachers,
trick or treat their way through the school halls

Elmo stops for a quick taste

Emmy-Elmo leads the charge!

Then she stops for another treat with her
buddy/neighbor Jacob Speckman, who wore a cute monster getup

After the playground pumpkin hunt,
Emmy-Elmo admires the biggest pumpkin of all!

Our whole family went to Ron's office's Halloween party as well. They boys trick or treated through three floors of offices in Ron's building, getting an huge amount of loot. They dressed up as clone troopers this year.

The clone troopers, Thomas and Matthew, make
their way through the spookily decorated Workman Nydegger.
By the end, those "Grandma Ward" pillow cases were FULL of candy.

Yikes! Who is this guy?!

He can take his face off! Gross :P

One of the attorneys and all three of his kids dressed up as
Sesame Street Yip-Yip Martians. This Yip Yip almost ate Emmy!!!

After the Workman Nydegger party, Ron had to stay to finish up some extra work before the weekend. Thomas and Matthew really wanted to ride the train home with him, so all four kids and I played around on Temple Square (across the street from Ron's office), until Ron's work was complete.

There are so many pretty fountains to play around!

Matthew tests his balance

The Joseph Smith building was decorated for October.
This picture was taken past Emmy's bed time. She was ready to go home.

Ron, Thomas, and Matthew made it to Sandy on the Trax train before Emmy, Cora, and I arrived there in our minivan. I think it was because I stopped for a couple of diaper changes and feedings. I picked the guys up and we all drove home together.

By now, you're probably sick of all of the Halloween parties, but I'll just post one more picture from our ward Chili Cook off and costume party. This one is of Emmy-Elmo and our cute little neighbor, Mia. Emmy and Mia are in nursery together and like to play together.

Emmy and Mia show us their cute costumes at the Ward Chili Cook-off!

This year Halloween fell on Sunday and so most all of our neighbors did trick or treating on Saturday night. It was raining, but that didn't stop us from giving out nearly 15 pounds of candy! On Saturday night we went to a small Halloween party at the Villagomez's house. They made homemade pizza and we turned off the bright lights and told scary stories. Ron went home and put the girls to bed, while the Thomas, Matthew, and I stayed late. We only had three trick-or-treaters come on Sunday and we didn't know any of them.

Our trick-or-treaters stop at the first house, our house!

One night, a few weeks ago, our whole family went to Juan Diego Catholic High School's performance of Cinderella. Juan Diego donated a bunch of free tickets to American Prep (our school). Emmy and I loved it! The sets, acting, and the costumes were incredible! I think that the boys were worried that they might get seen their by some girls from their school. Sure enough they did! They were good sports about it :)

Emmy and I visit with the "back-up" Cinderella

Emmy wishes that she had worn her Cinderella costume too.

Sometimes after I pick up the kids from school, we stop at parks or other places to play for a while. We loved stopping at this family's pumpkin patch and corn maze off of the corner of our neighborhood. I especially like to support this pumpkin patch/corn maze, because all of the money earned from it goes to that family's kids' missionary fund :)

Thomas and Matthew help Emmy climb up to "drive" the tractor

We enjoyed pizza for our picnic dinner, inside a hay trailer

And yet another corn maze for our after dinner entertainment

I hope that you're not totally bored yet :) Just a few more photos! On a teacher work day, Thomas and Matthew didn't have school and Emmy and Cora did have the opportunity to go. And so I was able to spend some special time alone with Thomas and Matthew up on the top of a mountain, at Silver Lake, next to Brighton Ski Resort. It is such a beautiful place and we had so much fun just hiking and playing around together.

The Silver Lake ice was really hard to break with rocks and sticks

Thomas and Matthew enjoy a little "bro-mance"

Throwing rocks. It was so hard to get them to leave.
We'll have to go again sometime.

Cordelia is a wonderfully content baby. She's eating solids, mostly squash and oatmeal cereal w/ grape juice. I tried rice cereal first, but it gave her a pretty bad case of reflux. She's getting quite mobile -- she scoots and rolls across the room and she's able to hold her rattles and teething rings. She's a pure joy <3 style="text-align: center;">
CoCo is ready to go!

Zoom Zoom! Cora loves her "Jeep" walker!

Emmy is a bundle of fun too :) I'll share a few cute things that Emmy has said recently. Ever morning I comb out the tangles in Emmy's hair. I try to make it as painless as possible, by distracting her with a movie, using detangling spray, and a very wide toothed comb. She still doesn't like it very much. One morning when i was combing away, she turned around, looked me in the eye and putting out her hand said, "Emmy's turn!!!"

I handed her the comb. She lightly fake-brushed the comb down the side of her head, then she chucked it across the room, announcing, "All done!!!"

There are lots of days when Emmy wants to wear her pajamas all day.
On the comb incident day, Emmy threw her comb from about
where she is standing to the pillows on the settee.

We still have a group of really sweet Spanish-speaking ladies come over regularly to clean our house. One of them especially seems to like Emmy a lot. She always smiles at Emmy and waves, saying, "Hi Emmy!" I decided that it might be a fun opportunity for Emmy to learn some Spanish and so I instructed Emmy to say, "ola!" Emmy looked at the lady and said, "Hi Ola!" Now every time Emmy sees her she says, with exuberance, "Hi, Ola!."

One night, while I was making dinner, Emmy asked to take a
bath in the "little tubby." Playing in the kitchen sink
turned out to be a fun playtime.

Just one more story: We were eating dinner and Thomas said, "Please pass the sour cream." Emmy went running to the mud room and came back with the sunscreen :)

We send our love!!!

Erika, Ron, Thomas, Matthew, Emmeline, and Cordelia