Our Family History

In Our Family This Week... what a week! I don't even know HOW we were able to fit so much in! We even had the excitement of a breakdown on the Surburban (see how I'm trying to be positive even in a trial! LOL)  John stayed home from work on Monday because he had been feeling sick for a few days and it was just getting worse.  That afternoon, I decided to take advantage of him being home and run to the grocery store. I took Ben with me and we headed out. On the way home, I heard a loud clank and then the suburban started driving like it had a flat tire so I immediately pulled over. At first glance, all seemed fine and I was stumped.  Upon further evaluation, it was determined that all (but 1) of the lugnuts had been snapped off from the passenger rear wheel!  It was undriveable. We had to be towed home. John took Tuesday off and he and the boys had a "Mechanics Class" and worked on it all day...

Don't they look enthused!?

It took until Wednesday night for it to get completely fixed and drivable.  On Monday when we arrived home (from being towed) we were to be at Ben and John's end of the year football party!  We didn't have a way to get there so we had to wait for August and Seth to arrive home from football - we ended up being about 30 minutes late.... not too big of a deal.  All had fun at the party until I got hit with a wave of nausea and spent some time in the Middle School bathroom leaning over throwing up :( 
Both August and Seth each had their last Football game this week!  Yippee!!  They both won so that was a great way to end the season!

Friday I spent the morning at a funeral for Dennis Perry (Stephanie's Father In Law) who passed away of cancer. That night we picked up some pumpkins and carved them as a family! Since we waited until so late in the season we were able to pick them up rather inexpensively!  I beleive the ones we got for the litte ones to carve were only like $0.75!  What a bargain!

 Saturday morning was the day of my Color Run Race!

everything laid out the night before!

I

The members of my Young Women Board and I decided to sign up for a 5K race - The Color Run (where you get colored cornstarch thrown on you at different intervals of the race).  We all rode down together and I'm happy to report that I RAN the entire 3.1 miles!  Well, I suppose that's not entirely true... during the "stations" where you get color thrown on you, it becomes quite a bottle neck so we did walk for short distances while we were getting doused with colors! It was really quite a fun race!  I felt pretty sore afterwards since I hadn't run that far (since June! LOL) but felt thrilled for my accomplishments!  Here are some fun pics from the event:

The YW Board!  Cherilyn Clemente, Brittany Manning, Brittnee Gropp, Amanda Eiband, Jamie Seeley and Me

What a colorful looking group!

Jamie Seeley, Amanda Eiband and myself

A final splash of color for us!

When I got home, John had all of the kids busily working on getting the house all cleaned up!  They had gotten a good jump start and it made me feel soooooo loved and appreciated that they were all working so hard to get things picked up!  They really are the best and I know that they were all doing it {cheerfully} because they love me! I quickly jumped in and spent most of the afternoon getting the house ready for the Sabbath and getting caught up on Laundry. That evening we were having our Ward's Trunk Or Treat at the church.  The Youth were in charge of a mini Halloween Carnival and so we went early to help set up. Then we headed back that night all decked out!  I didn't have a costume so all of the YW leaders decided that we'd just stay in our "running attire" from that morning and that would be our costume.  Here are some pics of the kids! sidenote: The girls and I had stopped at a thrift store about 6 weeks ago and they saw the rack with the Halloween Costumes on it... I let them go through and pick one out (plus with it being the middle of September, the selection was quite good!) and they were able to pick up their costumes for $2/each! SCORE!)

AND then after the Trunk Or Treat... we had a surprise get together dinner for Krista Fletcher (she is my photography assistant :)  Once we returned home, we finalized things for the Sabbath and John did all of the ironing of the church clothes.
Sunday was early church (we meet at 8:30am) and then I had Ward Council afterwards. That evening was our big Young Women In Excellence and it went REALLY WELL!!!  The girls came up with the theme: "A Night in Camelot: A Daughter of a King" and had the whole Relief Society room looking like a castle in  Medieval times!  Here is a group shot of us at the end...

In Our Homeschool This Week.... After posting everything we did in the family - suffice it to say that Homeschooling actually went rather well this week!  The little ones especially loved this new game I picked up (BRAND NEW) at the thrift store for $0.99!  It's called Chocolate Chip Math and you go around the board collecting "chocolate chips" as you answer match questions (we played addition with the little ones and multiplication with Ben).  It was quite the hit!!  We played it several times throughout the week.

 and the little girls got a lesson in some basic cooking/kitchen skills...

Additional photos/thoughts I'd like to remember for this week...

 and this final photo was actually from LAST Saturday's BSU game which was also the BLACKOUT game (hence why everyone is decked out in Black). Seth was the lucky boy who got to attend with dad and all the rest of the gang!