We have been too blessed by the warm weather lately.  October has been great.  I am sure that cold winter is around the corner, though.  It seems to me that the longer time marches on, summer seems to last later into the year, and winter lasts longer into the spring.  I guess I will have to look back and appreciate a week in the 70's in the spring, when it is still snowing.
     The kids have been extremely involved with stuff this week.  I took Mo and Chlo grocery shopping early in the week because Jams and Sags had one of their friends get into a horrible car accident, and they invited some friends over to make cookies for her.  This meant that I had to actually take kids to the store to be prepared.  They actually really enjoyed the outing.  I purchased them a Halloween bucket, and they drug those things around all week.  Moroni's was a fluorescent green with black spiders and the word EEK on it.  He got all excited, and called the spiders "puppies."  He is really confused about this puppy stuff.  Chlo also informed me that she would like to be a "flower ghost" for Halloween.  I am not sure how to make her into a flower ghost, and Jerusha desires to be "Mama" from the latest horror film.  Rooshkie is my picky kid when it comes to her costumes too.  Mama has hair that blows in the wind, glowing blue eyes that are crooked, and she is built like a crazy mop...yeah, good luck with that one.  Mama also does crazy acrobatics and eats bugs.  Thank goodness that I can probably stick everyone else in something simple. 
     Oak had a good time this week pretending that he was deer hunting with my glue gun.  He even stuck .bb's down the "barrel" and was afraid to pull the trigger.  He was sure that if he shot at the mounted deer on the wall with his loaded "gun" that it would fall off, and his Dad would be mad.  I just hope that I will be able to get the .bb's out of the glue gun.  Mo took the same glue gun and pretended it was a phone for a long while. 
     Speaking of Moroni, we have entered undesirable "dumping" territory with him and I expect it is going to be one long and messy ordeal with him.  He took my box of "Frankenberry" and dumped it on the living room floor in and amongst his large legos.  He then proceeded to pick every marshmallow out of the bunch so that he could eat them.  We were left with a pile of blocks and a bunch of undesirable marshmallow-less red ghosts.  Needless to say, that he dumped a bag of chips twice that day too.  I got after him about it, but at his age, discipline is pretty complicated.  He just doesn't get it.  I instructed the kids not to let him have anything he can dump.  This has worked to a small degree.  We have still had a few dumping mishaps, but nothing too bad.
     Moroni also got really upset the other day, and Chloee was trying desperately to make him happy.  She went in and got him a lid off of a bin, and expected this to lift his spirits.  Well, it didn't work, but hey, she is trying to be thoughtful, and that is what makes me happy.
     Oak is also going through an odd phase of moving the couches around when he desires to be impressive.  I am kind of sick of it though, because sometimes things get messy behind the couches.  It isn't cool to reveal Chlo's family of toothbrushes to the neighbors when they come to visit.  There is usually wrappers, and other various crayons, and papers too.  I think he just wants to prove that he is a man with muscles.
     The school did their International Day on Fridee.  International day, is a day that they want the kids to learn about their ancestors.  They are supposed to find out about some of the people from their family tree, and dress up like the people from that country, and bring some food samples from that country if possible.  Well, Sager for some reason, had to have a cake shaped like a fort that day, and it was Jazzerz day to bring sharing and treats for her class.  Not to mention that Ryan had stayed up late and  had just helped Jams complete her  roller coaster the day before.  Anyhow, it was about more school stuff than I could take.  Luckily Oak was way against participating in international day, so I didn't have to dress him up, I just kept him home.  Jamie didn't want to dress up and I felt like kissing her for this.  She is always low maintenance.  Of course Jerusha was the one who wanted to go all out for international day.  She wanted me to run her to town, and purchase her a genuine costume from Spain.  Spain???? As far as I know, we have no ancestors from Spain.  This didn't stop her from wanting to dress up like a Spanish Maiden.  I told her no.  She would have to come up with a costume from our existing dress up box.  She stayed up really late creating herself a Native American costume.  She claimed that she was related thanks to her Uncle Jesse.  OK.  Anyhow, we braided her hair, put war paint on her, and she had glued brown looking fringe onto a pair of her boots.  Jazzerz dressed up like a pioneer, and Sags dressed up like a lady from England.  We rolled out fondant to cover Sags cake, and her fort turned out pretty snazzy too.  Jazz just took a box of fish crackers, and a fossil to share with her class.  It all turned out ok.  In fact, everyone loved Saggers fort cake, and they found my fondant delish too.  Thankfully, Jamie was able to cover it smoothly, and Sage used nutella to give it the muddy look that she desired.  We make a pretty good team.  The band, orchestra, and choir also performed for the studentbody that day.  Sags was not looking forward to this, because she claims that the band sounds like a "herd of honking geese with asthma."  I have faith that the band will improve, but Sage is a little disgruntled over that situation.
     After school on Friday, I told the kids that I would take them to the Cedar Livestock and Heritage Festival for their fun day.  I told everyone to put on their best Western wear, and meet me in the car.  I helped Mo, and everyone came out looking pretty good except for Chlo.  She came to the car in her owl pajamas.  I must give her credit, that her owl pajamas had a top and bottom that matched, but I just wasn't willing to take her to the fest dressed like an owl going to bed.  Thankfully her big sister Jams came to the rescue and went and dressed her up. 
     The "sheep fest" is always a good time.  We purchased everyone a dutch oven cinnamon roll, and there was a dental center giving balloons away.  This proved to be a great blessing.  They had actually attached a bracelet to the balloon which anchored the balloon, and the kids could wear them on their wrist.  If they came off, they didn't float to the ceiling because the bracelet keep it on the ground.  Well, Oak and Chlo kept taking off to run and skid around amongst the vendors.  It was easy to spot them because of the balloons.  Oak had a blue one, and Chlo's was yellow.  We would just look around for the blue, and yellow balloon that was zipping to and fro, and there they would be!  It worked out great.  Mo hauled his balloon everywhere for the rest of the week until it popped.  Literally everywhere.  We took it truck shopping on Saturday, and boot shopping, and he slept with his balloon.  When it popped, he shrugged it off and got all excited about a "horsie."
     On Saturday, Ryan took Jams and Mo to work.  Mo got all tuckered out from his help, and slept for quite awhile.  He was so excited that he got to go to work with Dad.  Jams ended up painting a garage floor.  She seemed to enjoy it.
     We took the kids to the Livestock and Heritage festival's live band and dance on Saturday night.  The girls were way disgruntled because there were no boys their age to swing with.  Ryan purchased them an old fashioned soda and we went home.  Ryan and I have to teach the Panguitch stake the swing dance this week and we were hoping to get some good practice in.  We did get a little of that done.
     I learned today that I need to teach the kids about the law of the fast.  I had been asked to fill in for a Relief Society teacher and needed to plan the lesson.  Ryan volunteered to make the kids omlettes for breakfast so that I could prepare.  Well, he spent most of the morning making all of the kids an omlette.  The only complaint that I heard was that he put too many onions on them.  Ryan explained that he was just doing unto others as he would have others do to him, and he desired many onions on his omlette.  Oak kind of slept in, but several of the kids had left half of their omlettes.  When he woke up, Ryan instructed him to finish one of them.  Normally Oak is fine with this kind of a situation, but I could tell this morning that a cold, half-eaten omlette was not appealing to him.  He finally decided that rather than eat the leftovers, he would fast.  Chlo had eaten two eggs, but claimed that she was fasting too.  She fasted for about ten minutes and then announced that she needed a "yogut"  Oak lasted a few hours and then claimed that he could not survive any longer without a cup of chocolate milk.  In fact, as I type this, Chlo came and told me that she had resumed her fast, and wanted me to cook her an egg.  Yep, we need a lesson on the fast.
    Moroni had some pants that were a little too big today.  I was pretty busy fretting over my lesson, and I couldn't locate a belt.  When we got to shrsh I noticed that Ryan had used a zip-tie to hold up his pants.  I love that man of mine, and his fixes.  The zip-tie worked great.  My lesson went ok, and the home teachers came over.  Oak got rastling with one of the home teachers and actually gave him a bloody nose.  I cannot say that this made me smile.  We definitely need to keep working on our people skills.