I am once again way behind. I have given up on catching up. Last month we did hit a milestone. We now have a 16 year old.  This also means that Chris was able to get his learners permit. AHHHHHH!!! They do things a little different here as far as drivers licenses. You can’t get your permit until you are 16 then you have to drive with an adult and take a driving course before you can get your license at 17. There are so many kids here that don’t even get their license until they are 18. It is not the right of passage for some as it was where I grew up. I got my license right when I turned 16 and I was out on the roads. (Sounds scary now that I have my own 16 year old.) I am also learning why parents shouldn’t teach their kids to drive. I let Chris drive home last night. (My hands still hurt from gripping the handle on the dash) Alex thought she was going to die. We are looking in to driving schools. I told him that I will let him drive more after he takes a driving course. I don’t think I was prepared for this stage of life and it only goes down hill from here. Mason just had to inform me that it will be his turn in 2 years. All I can say is AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Stephanie is making me write this. She is also making me write that I have only one more year until I am over the hill. Yay.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, we had some Halloween fun outside of making fun of my age. We only carved 8 pumpkins this year, they seemed to be hard to come by, and expensive (thanks, Adam Smith). We did get one free thanks to Sarah’s fine performance in the 5th grade pumpkin run (she got 2nd place). But the kids had fun nonetheless. Everyone but Chris and Claire went out trick-or-treating.

Chris sat motionless on the front porch with a bucket of candy in his lap and waited for unsuspecting suckers. They would come up in groups and he’d let a couple of them get candy, then scare them. They would all debate if he was real or a dummy (we have our own opinion some days), and some even poked him. In the end, he was the winner and scared everyone. One lady wouldn’t even come back up on the porch to get candy for her kid. She made her husband go up.  (Click the photo to embiggen)

Kate had a blast. She walked the whole way, and everyone loves to give more candy to a cute little witch. So it worked out good for me. And she is Daddy’s girl, so she likes Reese’s as much as I do. They all came home with tons of candy, and Mason had a fit when we had everyone put their candy into the community bucket. Now he can explain socialism to his social studies class.

I treated everyone to a birthday prime rib that I grilled, along with some twice-baked potatoes and Gulliver’s creamed corn. Stephanie even made me my favorite 12-layer cookie cake. I scared the kids with my hillbilly costume. Mainly with the teeth. Kate wouldn’t let me kiss her with them in. We had a fun Halloween.

Click here for the whole set of Halloween and birthday pictures up on our Flickr site.

Sarah turned 11 (almost a teen) and had a happy birthday. She got the vest she has been asking for since last year, a hoodie, and a set of Legos, since the boys are not very sharing with theirs. She also got a watch and some games (both board and electronic) so she was thrilled.

Click here to see a set of her birthday photos on our Flickr page.

Since she is our last I have not encouraged this. She is just as independant as Kate so there is no holder her back. The kids think it is the cutest thing when she gets on her hand and knees and rocks. They try to help her crawl, only she falls forward on her face. I try to keep them from teaching her to crawl. She will do it soon enough on her own. She already rolls all over the place. Chris and I have also decided it is time she learns to comfort herself. It has been hard to leave her in her bed crying. I would sit and hold her all night. I know I will be better off in a few months if she learns to go to sleep on her own now. I just snuggle her all day long to make up for not holding her all evening. She also has two teeth. I tried to get a picture but the camera was too close, she kept trying to grab it. She likes to use them too. I am not to fond of that, but she is very cute.  To see more pictures of Claire crawling click here.

It came too quick for me. I wasn’t ready to send them back yet. They were excited to go back (that is, everyone but Mason). They all had a good day and are already getting back into the school routine. Allie even told me she is loving 3rd grade, which I find funny since it has only been one day. Kate was excited to start her first day of school. She drew the funniest self portraits. I will try and post it on another day. Now I have to look forward to early morning seminary starting next week. It will take me a few weeks to adjust to getting up at 5:30.

There is just no way I can catch up on our blog now that I am so far behind.  We took hundreds of pictures and had a million exciting things this summer but I will save all that for a future photo album.  We did have a great summer.  It was not long enough.  We were tired and so glad to come home yet we were also very sad to leave our family.  The kids had so much fun with their cousins and grandparents.  I was also  able to catch up with some old friends that I haven’t seen in years.  It makes me homesick for family and friends out west.  Claire started rolling over and moving all over the place. There will be no holding her back. Our kids are growing up too fast. So now I am going to start over with what is up with our family today. We celebrated Kate’s 3rd birthday. It is hard to imagine where the time has gone. We try to spend every moment enjoying them, still the time seems to go quicker and quicker. We had a fun day with her.  She got a special lunch with us and special time with her brothers and sisters. Thanks to technology and my husband both grandparent’s got to join in on the festivities. Kate loved opening her gifts and finally getting to eat her teddy bear cake. When it came time to pick which part of the cake she wanted, she chose the entire head.  After biting each ear and the nose off she just laughed wickedly and hacked it to pieces.  We spent the remainder of the evening entertaining her with some of her gifts.  She is such a cutie, and we can’t imagine life without her.  Next week the kids go back to school, I am going to do school with Kate twice a week and hopefully we will be able to settle into a routine. (Ha Ha I think it gets crazy once again.) If you would like to see more picks from Kate’s birthday click here.

Every year since we moved to New York we have gone to see the Independence Day concert and fireworks at the Trophy Point Amphitheater at West Point. This year it happen to fall on the 4th of July. It has taken us two years to learn were you want to sit and we didn’t want to end up watching the fireworks through the trees again so we went to the concert 5 hours early. It was very busy this year so we ended up on a rather steep hill. (We learned that you need to go spread a blanket the night before.) We still had a great view of the concert and fireworks. It was a little hard on the kids so the girls played in a little spot in front of us until the concert started.  They put on another great concert followed by a fantastic fireworks display over the Hudson.  We got two for one this year because in the background across the river we got to watch another fireworks display. It was a fitting backdrop for the West Point Concert and fireworks display.  The kids had fun picnicking, sliding down the hill and eating too much food (which they paid for later). Kate drove us crazy being the busy 2 year old.  She had fun being chased around, and digging in the dirt until the fireworks started.  She is not fond of the loud booms (I have to admit that is my favorite part of fireworks.  The louder the better).  She spent most of the display with her hands on her ears or hiding under the blanket. She refused to watch any of them even the ones across the river. Chris had fun playing with our new camera. I think he took over 200 pictures. Claire slept through the whole thing after a long day and when it was finally over  we quickly walked to our car and were able to  escape the traffic.   After a few u turns, one bloody nose, and 2 car sick girls we made it home in time to clean up and go to bed. I am not sure it was a restful holiday weekend but we had a good time.

We wish we could have slept in but today but  we had to get up and take the boys to Scout camp.   So this morning we took the whole family up to Ten Mile Rive and hang out for a little while before leaving the boys and returning home.   They were not sad to see us leave though I am happy Mason will still give us a hug goodbye.   It will be strange to only have four kids at home for a week.  There will be no time for rest this week as we get ready for our trip to Utah. I decided to make dresses for the girls. (What was I thinking! I remember you cant find any cute dresses out here.) We also have to take Chris’s bass in for some work, pick up the boys from camp and a million other things. But life wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t have my family to keep me busy. If you want to see some more of Chris’s shots from the fourth click here.

Sarah decided earlier this school year to try out for the school play. She’s never tried anything like this before, including singing or acting in front of anyone, so we were surprised but encouraged her. She made it through all of the auditions and callbacks to find out she had won one of the lead parts in the play! Very exciting.

This was at the first part of the school year. She had weekly rehearsals and she spent a lot of time learning her lines and songs. Well, last week it all paid off. She performed for two nights and did a great job. She played the part of Gillian, who is supposed to marry the prince. This meant she had to sing a solo in addition to lines and singing with the rest of the group. She did a great job (and that’s not even a biased Dad’s-eye view!) and it was very exciting to see this side of Sarah. She is a talented girl and we’re very proud of her.

Unfortunately, this also reinforces the fact that she’s growing up. I may have to get my rocking chair for the front porch, and the companion shotgun, earlier than I thought.

Click here to see a set of photos from the play.

The full video of the play is still uploading – I will update this post with a link in the morning. Unfortunately the HD was too large to put online, so we made it as big as we could.

UPDATED:  Here’s the video.  It’s about 35 minutes long, so grab some popcorn! You can also click here to go to the Vimeo page for more options.  Also, the Vimeo page has larger video, and the correct aspect ratio.