September - Busy but Gone in the Blink of an Eye

Our 3 beautiful trees out front needed a good trimming - I guess the mailman didn't like having the branches scratch his mail truck every day - ha.  Matt is way up in there if you can find him - lots of work

Potty Training Time!!  Double the "fun"  It's been great to train 2 at once because I can play them off each other.  If no one wants to go potty I just have to say "who's first?" and they both race off to the toilet!  They are doing GREAT!  We enjoy being diaper free after so so SO many diapers over the years!

 Crazy Hair Day at School!  Lots of kids went all out for the fun day - Carly came up with this funny creation for their hair.

 My phone died completely at the beginning of September and I lost pictures of the tractor we rented to dig out a fire pit area in our backyard, the first day of school and Alissa's fun birthday party.  :(  We had to recreate what we could - this one of the first day of school just happened to be after they'd taken out their crazy hair day hairdos - funny.

 Matt's sister Sandy loves to plan BIG parties so she had fun planning her own 30th Birthday Party and had a great Mustache Bash.  She had bounce houses, hundreds of balloons (that I blew up), lots of gourmet popcorn (that I made 3 kinds of), yummy food, dance instructors, performances (the best being a hula hoop and dance routine to Katy Perry's Firework song done by my Alissa and Carly and their cousin Clarissa) and so much more fun stuff - it was quite the party!

 When we dug the aforementioned fire pit area into the hillside in our backyard, we uncovered a pipe that was dripping water - Matt figured it was the school's sprinkler system so he cut into it to reroute it - until he discovered the main Comcast cable line in the middle of it that he had sliced right through - oops!  A crew came a few days later and patched it then forgot to tell anyone the job wasn't done yet so it took a month and Matt's many calls and actual visits to get someone to figure out the problem and they sent 4 trucks the next day! 

 I've discovered the nifty little trick of having the kiddos watch scriptur videos off the awesome Gospel Library before bed on any nights we actuall get to bed on time.  They love it and so do I.

 I babysit a 5 month old Kaison on the right and my nephew Kurtis will come for the day now and then - he is just one month older so it's so fun to get a picture of th 2 little baby boys together.

 Nasty...Matt and I were putting a tarp over the mud pit in our backyard waiting to be a fire pit one night before a storm came - the school's sprinklers came one and they hit our yard where we were working - Matt tried to run down the hill to get away but tripped and fell hard with a hammer on his finger.  Hurt him SO bad.  The nail is almost completely coming off and it took a big chunk of skin at the base of the nail.  He had me drill into it with a razor blade edge to release some of the painful pressure.  Holy Ouch Batman.

 One of our happiest happenings in September was an impromptu trip to Idaho for Lizzie's Baptism!!  My sister Taletha decided to go and had room for 4 so me and my 3 girls hopped in - it was a there and back in one day trip but all went well and we were so glad to go.  Everyone was happily surprised by our arrival.  We got to see my brother Merrill's new house and meet his new baby Benson in the NICU.  What fun.

Probably the worst part of September (even more so than Matt's finger accident) was hearing that my older brother Bryce has cancer.  :(  Boo.  He had a growth in his neck making it hard to swallow so he had surgery to remove his thyroid.  The surgery took 4 hours instead of 2 because they had to be super careful not to damage his vocal nerve.  Skilled doctors and many prayers and fasts helped all go well.  It turns out that he has Diffuse B cell Lymphoma - a cancer in his white blood cells that responds quite well to chemotherapy.  So he will have 3 months of chemo and be practically cured - what a blessing.  Here is a picture of him and his wife...who just happened to have a similar surgery years ago so they both have matching scars on their necks. 

 Here is our newest nephew - sweet baby Benson Clifford Judy.  He had to be in the NICU for a whole week but they were happy to tell us all that he came home the day after we were all there.  Great news.

 My cute 2 year old twins still have problems with sucking their fingers at bedtime.  It's messing up their teeth so we're trying to get them to stop still.  Our dentist and doctor recommended Mavala Stop - a nail polish - I found Jacie sucking her middle finger or pinkie instead of the usual finger that I'd put the polish on - the smart little stinker!

 My two school girls recently had their school pictures taken so I did a little home photo shoot of my 3 little kids to have recent pictures of all my darling kidlets.  Here is our photo fun...I even made it to the results!

There's our September Fun - see you in a month!