October 2012 - Carving of the Pumpkins

Now, after we've brought the pumpkins home, we wait a week-ish before we let the kids color the pumpkins with sharpies. We let them color them, but apparently I told them we would carve them as well.

One Tuesday, while Eric was at bishopric meeting, we got out bowls and knives and carved. They didn't stay with what they had drawn and that was okay. We all had fun getting pumpkined and letting their lights shine.

Mommy's in a picture!

Making faces of our own!

Aurora's pumpkin

Graigry going at it

Neta, Mommy & Xela worked together for a pretty pumpkin.

Xela's masterpiece.
The hand is hers too.

Five kids & five glowing pumpkins

Pumpkins glowing in the dark.

This also motivated me to get some of the fleshed microwaved and stored for later pumpkin usage (pumpkin pie, cookies, bread, etc). I needed a night like that to help me feel like I'm a fun part of the kids' lives. Sometimes, working five days a week, I feel like I get home, it's dinner, clean up, pjs, scriptures, bed and little time to have fun. I need an fun mommy activity every once in a while.

October tradition - PUMPKIN PATCH

The kids had fall break the first week of October, so I decided we were going to go to Waterman's Pumpkin Patch during that week. I found a $1 off coupon online and we went on October 4th. Even though the kids are getting older, they still seem to enjoy it and so do I. We've been going since we first moved to Indiana, 10 years ago. We can't stop now, right?

1, 2, 3, 4, and ...

FIVE Scotts at Waterman's, 10 years running!!

Find 5 monkeys in the corn.

 10th anniversary wagon ride

As soon as I can get the pumpkin "How Tall This Fall?" pictures to turn around, then I'll post those here. It's amazing how much they grow in one year!

July - 2012 School Year Begins & Drought

This is the first year that all five kids are in school. Of course, I wanted to take pictures before we left.

Neta's first day of school

5 monkeys ready for school

5 monkeys standing in a row

I can't believe Neta is in kindergarten. My baby girl is growing up too quickly. They all are. Why don't they just listen and obey when we tell them to STOP GROWING! Year and a half and Xela will be in high school. YIKES!

Then there was the rainless months. It was not a good year to NOT have a swimming pool. Temperatures reached into the 100s and there was very little rain for three months, maybe four. Most of the country was suffer some stage of a drought. When it did rain, even if it was just a five minute cloud burst, was very much celebrated by me. If I was home, I'd call the kids and we would go outside and do a rain dance.

Girl in the Gutter

Rain Dance!!!

These two pictures are from the cloud burst that was enough to keep the road wet for more than five minutes and made the gutter dirt soft enough I was motivated to pull weeds.

Boy do I have catching up to do...June 2012

I thought I'd blogged since June, but my blog shows otherwise. So, I will try to do some quick posts to catch us up to the upcoming end of 2012. So here are the last photos of June.

The neighborhood has some trees that were planted on a stretch of Tuxedo. As we went through a drought, the Scott family dedicated ourselves to watering them three times a week. It was usually one of the first things we would do on Saturday morning. There are 20 trees and each needs 3-5 gallons three times a week. Kids sometimes enjoyed watering. Most times, they enjoyed being done and on Saturdays, sometimes, we would let them play in the unused water. As we didn't put up our pool this year (didn't have the money to replace the liner) this activity was a short lived water activity.

Xela running for water & cover.

Nate in the water can.

Xela trying to hide.

Kids arming and disarming themselves with water.

Aside from watering trees, we spent a lot of the summer (the kids and Eric more than I) demo-ing a duplex that we are turning single home dwelling. There were two large trees that Eric wanted down, so much of the back yard got dug up and limbs got chopped in effort to get them down. Luckily for us, one morning as they were trimming down one of the trees, a trash truck that picks up "heavy trash" came down the alley. The kids and Eric got to watch while the boone truck picked up the heavy limbs and lifted them into the truck bed to haul away.