Autumn

      As bad as I was about blogging this fall, I was even worse at taking pictures to document any of it!  We had a very busy couple of months after school started and I felt like I was doing good just to keep up with everyone.    

We participated again in the Festival of the Forks even though this year it was very wet and very chilly!  We watched the parade in which Taylor and Kendall played with the marching band and Lynnsey and Spencer walked with their school.  Then we made a quick pass up and down the street to check out various vendors.  After some elephant ears and butterfly fries, we decided to call it a day and went home to warm up.                          

                                  

The fall colors were beautiful again this year, in spite of the warnings that it may not be spectacular because of the dry summer we had.  We enjoyed lots of time hanging out in the back yard and going on walks around the neighborhood.

Mommy and her girls:)

Probably the thing that kept me the busiest was babysitting full time.  And by that I mean FULL TIME.  I have kids five days a week from around 7:15 to 5:15.  I'm watching the same two that I had last year--a little boy who is 3 (and who is dying to go with Kaya to preschool.  If only...) and his little sister who is one and who has become a destructive force to rival Kaya's toddler years.  (I may document this in pictures in a future post--it's pretty unbelievable the things she manages to destroy in literally seconds!)  And as if I weren't crazy enough, I decided to take on two more kids too.  I have a little baby boy (who was 6 months old when I started; now he's 9 months) who is here all day and his big sister who is 6 comes  after school and on no-school days.  I'm pretty exhausted most days.  And beyond exhausted on the others.  But this is helping tremendously to pay down our car and medical expenses from the surgeries we've had this year and then we are hoping to start actually saving once we get the debts cleared so we might be able to help our kids go on missions and to college.  I just wish we could do that on Kalen's salary alone so I could just be a mom who could actually help out in my kids classrooms and go on field trips and help with the parent teacher organization.  Oh well.  The sad thing is, I actually turned down four other people needing childcare this year!  Our local daycare closed and people were scrambling to find sitters.  I felt terrible turning people away, but my hands are way more full than I can manage now; I can't imagine adding that many more to the mix. 

The kids have enjoyed having a baby in the house again and he is very popular around here.