Tappana Times: October

Whew! We have been a bit busy around here this month!

So far, in October we have played a lot of dress up!

Despite my gentle suggestions otherwise, Ammon prefers high heels, dresses, and princess crowns. He has his own gender-appropriate armor and capes, but he wants to be like his sister.

He keeps it real always wearing the crown backwards, though. That's what the cool kids do.

Ammon also likes to view his toys up close and personal.

Ammon is a mini-me of his father, but I'm afraid he's got more than Brigham's looks if he already needs binoculars to see.

After Ammon's done playing and down for a nap, Lydia likes to spend her afternoons home from Kindergarten dreaming.

I wasn't sure if she was writing a story or a song, and I wondered what she was thinking about, but I wasn't about to ruin the moment by asking. Instead, I snapped a beautiful shot and marveled at this girl of mine.

And then, of course, she noticed me and I got a smile as well :)

We've had Family Home Evenings learning about the General Authorities, preparing for General Conference.

And we celebrated Kayleen's ninth birthday!

October brings early, cold mornings, but snuggling with these two makes it somewhat bearable.

After bogging through the mornings, I've managed to get moving on this year's Halloween costumes. Keeping it cheap, I've done lots of sewing to get the job done.

I bought this bed-skirt at Goodwill for four dollars, and used it to sew multiple parts of our costumes. This is a sneak-preview of one of the costumes. Any guesses as to what we'll be?

Unfortunately, I had a small hang up as I was putting it all together. I cut out a piece of the bed-skirt - it was measured perfectly - and only needed to iron it before sewing everything together. I set the iron on and it instantly burned a perfect iron-shaped hole in the material.

Gah! I was so worried I wouldn't have enough white material left from the bed-skirt to complete both costumes, but luckily I had plenty and it ended up fine....well fine if you are ok with cleaning weird, melty material off a hot iron, and remeasuring and cutting all over again. Luckily, I was able to avoid an extra Goodwill trip.

Speaking of shopping at Goodwill...the last time Ammon and I went, he excitedly stopped me in the parking lot to look at a car parked nearby.

"Mom! That car is just like Aunt Caitlin's car!"

And low and behold, it is! I knew Ammon was good with cars, but this shocked me. The last time we were around Sam and Caitlin's car was this past summer, while we visited with them on vacation in Utah. The fact that he remembered they have a silver Honda Accord, and that he can see another car like it in the parking lot, remember and make the connection, just boggles my mind. And to think I've been comparing him to his sister and assuming his memory isn't as good. He just cares about different things! Who cares about letters? It's the cars that matter...to Ammon anyway.

Now our family is off to celebrate Halloween with four various celebrations scheduled in the next couple of weeks, so there will be plenty more to share!