November Moments

 Earlier in the month I took the older two kids to a "night at the museum". The Natural History museum opened up after hours so families could camp beneath the dinosaur bones and watch "The Good Dinosaur".

A few weeks later, we had a family movie night at home. When we bought this couch for our TV room, we only had Brooke. It's so fun to have our kids getting bigger and snuggling up with us on it!

 Porter and Brooke made Turkey crafts at their schools

 Then the kids made turkey hats at storytime at the library.

 And we've gotten to the point where all three kids are getting sent to time out at once. This incident happened right after we got home from church last Sunday. We need another corner!

The Grant-a-lope

 Even though the "terrible 2's" are hard, they are also so fun! I love how sweet, fun, and curious Grant is about everything. He loves to tease and to make us laugh. He loves to be helpful. It's so fun to see him experience and interact with life around him. I love watching him when he doesn't know I'm looking to see his facial expressions and how he interacts with his siblings and toys.

I love the little noises he makes when he can't talk. I love the excited grunt he makes when we drive by Christmas lights. I love when he tries to sing a song, when he folds his arms and tries as hard as he can to keep his eyes closed during the prayer (and yes I peek to watch this!), and all the little things that grab his attention. I said to Blake the other day "What are we going to do when we don't have a little one running around the house anymore making all these cute noises?"

 Grant was entertaining us one day by trying to do a handstand.

 I can tell by his face in this pic that he's telling Blake "no".

He loves stuffed animals!

Happy Birthday Blake!

 On November 2 Blake turned 33 years old. He spent the day elk hunting (with no luck) and got home late, but that didn't stop us from having a party!

Blake is such a great husband and father. He works so hard for our family and is always putting our needs above his own. He helps me to put things in perspective when I get uptight and start stressing about things. He makes our whole family laugh and isn't afraid to wrestle and be silly with the kids. We love him so much!

Brooke's Dance Recital

 Brooke finished up her fall semester of dance and had a performance on October 27. As a mom, I love that the semester ends just before the busy holiday season and starts back up in January. Her performance was also a little tender because usually both of Blake's parents comes to these kinds of things and this was the first time his dad wasn't there. I remember at the last recital how John said to me, teasingly that Brooke's favorite part of dance was getting to wear makeup at the performance (which is probably also true).  This performance came after a crazy and emotional week and I was so proud of Brooke for helping to give us a little bit of "normal" back. I always love watching my kids' confidence soar when they perform for an audience.

Other October Happenings

 A couple more things happened in October:
Brooke lost her first tooth! After it being wiggly for about a month, Brooke was finally brave enough to have dad help her pull it out. She lost the tooth next to it only a few weeks later, she pulled it out herself while she was at school!

We took advantage of some warm fall evenings and had one last cookout at the land.

 The kids played cowboys over by this tree

 Porter is such a good big brother, helping Grant across the field to where the kids were playing. I have a picture of Brooke when she was Porter's age and Porter was Grant's age, holding his hand and Porter was even wearing that same brown jacket.

 Blake and Porter went hunting  shot a cow elk. We use the meat from the elk all year as the main meat we use in our dinners. I never realized how much I love using it and rely on it until we ran out this summer. I guess since our family is getting bigger and older, we're eating more of it and the elk from last year didn't quite last us a year. The few months that I had to buy burger from the store, I had total sticker shock at how much ground beef costs! I'm so grateful for this animal and its sacrifice to feed our family.

 Blake's mom came to help us and Brooke is a pro at running the hamburger grinder!