jack {the artist}

During the month of October, Jack was selected as one of the few art students to display a piece of art at the school district building. We were super excited as only a handful of students are picked from the whole school each month for this honor.

Jack and I were able to go down to the building and check it out. He was so excited to see his work up on the wall and recognized it from down the hall.

The description of his piece simply says "Sharpie and Crayon". Jack really has a knack for drawing and I love seeing his work come home. I need to come up with a better way to display it, though.

mother nature's farm

Gosh, so much has happened since school started, I am going to try to update a little of what has been happening around here.

Garrett and Grace had gone to the pumpkin farm with a friend earlier. Of course, I promised Jack that I would take him as well. We went on the first day of fall break early in the morning and it was perfect. It wasn't crowded at all and he had the pick of the patch for pumpkins.

We went on a trailer ride around the farm and got to see the farm animals. We fed the goats and saw a turkey and rooster just wandering around the farm.

In previous years when we have visited this farm, the stickers for the pumpkins were all in plastic tubs on the tables. It seemed like a lot of them were getting dropped on the ground and ruined. This year they got smart and gave each kid their own baggie full of stickers for their pumpkin. I would say it was a great day for us!

halloween festivities - 2010

Princess Grace

Jack was Fred from Scooby-Doo

Garrett was Shaggy from Scooby-Doo

This year we went to Erika's house for a Halloween party. We had pizza and treats and then the moms took the kids trick-or-treating while the dads stayed back and handed out the candy to everyone else. It was a lot of fun, we will definitely be doing the same thing next year!

These are all the kids - 12 of them!

It is so funny that we all grew up on the same street in Utah and now we all live in the same city in Arizona! It is so great when we get together and our kids are just as good of friends as we are!

carving pumpkins-2010

Three pumpkins that match three personalities.

Grace wanted hers to be girly with hearts and kissy lips.

Garrett wanted his to be scary!

And Jack just wanted his pumpkin to be happy!

The seeds in Jack's pumpkin were actually sprouting! I have never seen such a thing before.

It is so great to be able to carve pumpkins outside on the back porch. It makes it so much easier to clean up the mess!

playtime at the park

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Just another overcast day at the park. Jack just loves swinging and digging in the sand. You can see how dirty his feet are when he is on the swing.

10 minutes later...

Our neighbors tree fell on the trunk of their car.

This park is where all the water from our street drained into.

One of our other neighbors had their shed blow over the fence!

This is only one of many trees that were knocked over! This storm reminds me of the micro burst storms we get in Utah.

what a storm!

Well, today we got our first big fall storm! I was driving home and the hail got to be so big that I had to pull over. I really thought that my windshield was going to break. It was raining so hard and the wind was so hard that the rain was coming down sideways and tree branches were falling all over the place. When we got home this is what our yard and street looked like!

Our front yard/sidewalk/street/river

Our mailbox is on the house side of the sidewalk, you can't even see the sidewalk in this picture.

Jack in the front yard

The street in front of our house

My back porch

The backyard

It destroyed our little watermelon patch :(