Miscellaneous Fall Festivities

CARTER

He's my organizer and likes to make lines of cars across the floor (or lines of books, or movies, or other toys).

He makes a pretty princess to his Dad's dismay.

He's supposed to spend 2 hours of every day in this eye patch to try to strengthen his weaker R eye that he is starting to ignore which makes his lazy eye harder and harder to ignore.

He's still our most mischievous little devil- I had to climb up on top of the car to get him down from here and he has become a bit of an exhibitionist lately particularly when Liv has friends over and loves to chase the girls around naked threatening to pee on them (sometimes Camden joins in with that), he gets into my sugar container or the powdered chocolate milk eating it freely with a spoon when no one is watching and making a mess along the way, he spilled the entire dog food container all over the garage the other day, and he was so kind to come get me to proudly display the little potion he had made in my kitchen sink when he plugged it up filled it and dumped Christmas tree feed and an array of spices.  Just yesterday on the way home from church our next door neighbors said they got a kick out of watching Carter chase London over to their front yard yesterday, watch her pee on their grass, and then pull his own pants down and pee on their grass too.  Ugh- how do you teach a kid that it's ok for dogs to pee on the grass but not them?
And this just in...when we picked him up from school today, his teacher informed us that they had a little incident with Carter biting someone's face.  It was hard to get a clear story because Camden was interjecting the whole time about how this kids wasn't being nice and deserved it.

CAMDEN

This kid loves the car wash and begs to go almost every time we are driving around town.

 Also, he generally insisted on bringing his stuffed animals (or pets as he refers to them) everywhere with him.  He keeps sneaking them into his school bag and his teacher finally talked to me about how they would prefer they left them at home.

I'm lacking in Camden pictures so I will throw in a few joint ones with his.
The boys took some great school pictures this year.  This is my version.  The actual school pics came back is slightly more disheveled hair.

We discovered the coolest swing at a new park that all 3 kids can ride on while Liv pumps which requires no effort on my part.  Love it!

One day I took the kids to the park and rather than play most of the time they preferred to cuddle with me on our picnic blanket.

OLIVIA

Loves to hang with friends and I captured this cute picture of her and Chelsea walking down the street holding hands.

Her favorite friend she has made in kindergarten is the most adorable little down syndrome boy she sits next to named Leo.  They have been having regular Friday play dates alternating between each others houses and her writing journal for school is filled with entries about Leo.  This is from one day when we had Leo and also Cooper from our neighborhood who is also in their class over.  They are working together coloring pages of a book.

Liv has been really into doing her own hair lately.

This was Liv on the Hippie themed day of school during spirit week, kind of a hippie vampire cross.

 And Liv's latest favorite past time seems to be cutting out paper costumes and then taping them to herself.  and we have a papers and tape shortage over here to prove it.  Here she is a flying unicorn.

And I love this picture.  Most of the time Liv seems to be way too grown up to me, but one day she fell asleep in my bed during the middle of the day which almost never happens and this picture reminds me that she is still little in some ways.

ME

I finally got around to canning salsa and took this embarrassing picture while I was trying to survive all the onion chopping.

And the big news for me is that I have a big job change coming up.  Dr. Preston decided to cut back his schedule and hire a new full time PA which also required him to cut my time down to just one morning a week to accommodate.   I had just got what I thought was the perfect schedule working 9-12 M/W/F while all my kids were in school, and I didn't have to pay for daycare for the first time.  The worst part of it all was that he notified me in a typed note addressed to the entire staff informing them of the new hire.  I spent a couple days crying and yelling out of sadness and anger. I had 4 different interviews and have finally committed to continue Wednesday morning with Dr. Preston and have accepted a job with Dr. Gill in general surgery on Monday and Friday morning.  And amazingly, he's going to try to have me off by 11:30 both days so I get home to my kids after school.  I have always hoped that I could somehow find a way to do surgery and family practice both because I honestly loved scrubbing in and miss it often.  But, the family practice schedule seemed a little better when we were starting our family, and I was too afraid to get into a specialty out of school in fear that I would forget all I had learned.  So, looking back I sort of wonder if this was a blessing in disguise...Dr. Preston decreasing my hours right when a very nice general surgeon willing to train someone who has spent the last 8 years in family practice is looking to hire someone so part time.  I am currently just waiting on hospital privileges which will take 90-120 days, so I probably won't start until February or March of next year.  I'm getting kind of excited though and just want to be scrubbing in already.

DEREK

Same ol' same ol'.  Working hard trying to make partner and serving as president of various clubs and in the elders quorum.  Watching and attending endless sporting events...the usual.