Happy Halloween

It was a fun Halloween day. Hopefully it lived up to all the kids' excitement and expectations. 

They are downstairs eating junk and watching Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets right now. Corey went to pick up Abi. This morning for school, they eagerly got out of bed to get ready. I drew a frog on Lily's face last night (thanks to this idea!) and tried to touch it up a bit.

The markers kept bleeding into the white paint... and the eyes had rubbed off by the end of the school day. 

We'll have to experiment and maybe get real make up supplies for next year. Or maybe we'll do some fun stuff for Christmas. But it lasted through the night and survived the day at school. But Lily was good with that and wore a black hoodie. Lily is also really excited that she's learned the rhythm and beat for how to play the cup game. She said she taught that in one of her classes today. I'm sure it was mostly a party day. I don't think Abi dressed up for school, but she and her friends dressed up like Alvin and the Chipmunks. She was Simon. 

The elementary kids were thrilled that the fun day of days was finally here - Halloween! Here's a cute picture of all the excited kids at the bus stop this morning - 

Free candy and imaginative costumes. The elementary kids were excited for the school parade. This morning we couldn't find the washable markers, though, so I used black permanent marker for Daniel's Incredibles mask! We'll find out tonight if it comes off!

Owen is going to be an astronaut tonight, but I put that he was going to be a Ninjago Lego guy for school, and he changed his mind a few times (he wanted to be a pirate, then a vampire, etc) but I said he had to stay with the Lego Ninja. 

His 2nd grade teachers plan a musical program around all of their costumes. Here he is on the back row, in front of the pumpkin -

He did a cute job in the program. 2nd graders are cute. 

Just Katharine and I stayed for the program, but Corey and Peter came to the parade too, which was before the program. Parade at 9:15, then program at about 10:00. We saw all the kids in the parade.

Daniel has such a fun personality. Most of the kindergarteners seemed nervous and were not smiling, but not Daniel. He came up and gave Katharine a hug and then continued on his way, waving to all his fans ~

It was outside, again, and it was chilly but not too bad. After D, we saw Owen and Natalie, but Sophi's class skipped in order and she came before Natalie, so I was looking for a Jolly Rancher and not Cleopatra, so I missed getting a photo of her but we did wave and give a hug. Here she is with her friends trick or treating tonight ~

Our neighbors did a pizza dinner for the neighborhood and the kids went over there, but I didn't. Corey was in the shower and I was nursing Katharine, cause it started at 5:30 right when we got back from a bike ride. Probably our last one of the season! It was snowy and cold for most of the trail, but it was nice to be up there one last time. 

I got a personal best on the ride up! I did a few parts that I haven't been able to do before, and I really did them this time! I didn't pause or stop to adjust my wheel, I was proud of myself! I listened to this on the ride up (well, I listened to part 1 on Sat, this time I was on part 2 and I loved the things she talked shared about parenting. It is a must listen! Start at 25:00, so good! So, it was good, cold, but good. I miss fall already. I'm going to try and go to Corner Canyon for one more ride tomorrow, and then there's snow coming Wednesday morning and for 8 of the next 10 days. We're going to need to find a new daily hobby for the winter since biking will be mostly out. Unless we get a fat bike! Maybe I'll take up snow shoeing? Corey's thinking of getting a pass to Momentum for rock climbing. He and Wes might go in the morning. Ok, sorry, back to Halloween. So Corey showered, I nursed K, she fell asleep and so he stayed home with her and I went out with kids - Lily borrowed a dinosaur onesie for Wes so he could be twinners with Peter. 

They called themselves "The Dinosaur Brothers". Checking out some of the loot - Pokemon cards!

We have a pretty great neighborhood for kids to trick or treat in. 

Lily as a Christmas Tree, Natalie as a Jolly Rancher. Lily didn't get candy, she was just being festive and walked around with us.

Getting lots of loot!

One neighbor was dressed as "Your Fairy Godmother" and the kids lined up to talk with her, like they would for a Mall Santa, and she granted them wishes and gave them candy and some kids (like my 3 girls) got jewelry! 

Running from house to house. 

A neighbor Dave has a tradition of making flat bread - 

And some neighbors next to him had hot dogs to roast and smores!

Another neighbor was serving up hot cocoa and apple cider. It's just a pretty amazing neighborhood and place to live. We love it here. 

Tonight as Owen was trick or treating, he nostalgically said "I'm going to miss Halloween tomorrow..." I'm sure he will. Corey's back with Abi - time for scriptures. We're still going to make it to bed by 10! It's our new modus operandi for survival, and it is working wonders. We've only done it for like the past 6-9 months I think, but it's great. It's still a school night, so party is over - Bye Halloween! We'll see you next year!

Slipping Away

I know that autumn has really only just started a month ago, but I feel like it's already over. I went on a quick ride today after Lily was home from school and able to watch Katharine for me. There were still colorful leaves to enjoy ~

And the trail wasn't too bad at first...

...but each of the three bridges on the trail were covered in snow, and after this last bridge, I knew my ride was almost over. 

Snow was melting off of the trees and getting my helmet wet. I had mud all up the back of my pants and shirt when I was back. We're in a drought, so I'll pray for more snow, but I'm still sad the fall is ending. I'm always left wishing for more. 

The kids are super excited for Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mostly Halloween, since it is one of the two days of the year where you get candy. Here is the other costume I got for Katharine. 

This one seems to big, so we'll save it for next year. Lily had changed her into the lady bug one while I was on my ride. 

She's super cute!!

When we sat down for dinner tonight, most of the kids were dressed in costumes. 

Just another night around the Wride household - Daniel as Mr. Incredible (I'd say he was Dash, but his costume is padded with big muscles, so I think he's supposed to be Mr. Incredible. And we've got a dinosaur and is that a ghost? Or a kid in a dunce hat? No, you can't tell from this pic, but Natalie is a candy corn.

Peter the dinosaur, of course!

The kids were wearing costumes that they borrowed from a neighbor. Lily got a Christmas tree costume that she's going to wear to school on Monday, and she picked up a big dinosaur onesie for Wesley, so Peter and Wes are going to be twinners when Wes takes him around the neighborhood, aww. They took off Katharine's ladybug costume and she was just in the black shirt, and we got this treasure of a photo of her - 

ISN'T SHE JUST THE MOST ADORABLE THING EVER!?!?!?!

Oh my goodness, she is sooo cute. She made a big mess of herself right after that photo, so then she went and took a bath. Another cute pic of our little angel, with a pink bow on her head~

All clean and ready for bed in new cupcake pajamies. 

Things are going pretty good even though I'm on my own this week. We even had a sit down dinner, so that is impressive of me, let me pat myself on the back. Good job, self. Abi was gone at her flute lesson. I'm glad that Corey taught Abi and Lily how to use the UTA bus system so that I don't have to take them to their lessons or chamber class or anything. Good job Corey, and Abi and Lily too. Way to take another step towards learning how to survive on your own. 

Helpers & Pet Jerry

It's nice having Mel and Ethan around for a few more days before they take off to BYU this week (on Wed). Mel with Katharine yesterday - 

Since she's still here to help, this morning I asked her to get the kids out the door to school and I tried to catch up to Corey and join him on his ride. I was following him on life 360, he left like 10 min before me and was just a little bit ahead of me the whole time. Eventually I gave up trying to catch him and headed back home. He rides ALL THE WAY up the canyon to Lisa Falls. I went until I felt done, then texted him that I had almost caught up (probably not really) and then I went down to the quarry and stretched as I listened to the creek. 

We really live in such a lovely place!

When I got home we watched a few butterflies emerge - two to be exact. And then as I went about the day's tasks, I was up in the laundry room and found a butterfly flapping around on the floor. It had really messed up wings, all of them bent to one side at like 90 degrees. It was a male. It must have wandered off the milkweed and made it's chrysalis in a place where there wasn't room for it's wings to hang and straighten out! I was so sad for him! He kept trying to fly but couldn't. I decided to clip it's wings at the bend, thinking that maybe we could get it some replacement wings? 

This video gave me that idea. And true... that butterfly had one bad wing, whereas ours had 4, but I still thought it looked easy enough and we'd give it a go. Unfortunately, we don't have any spare monarch wings lying around. Mel and I tried to size up the wings from a printed pic of a monarch that looked about the right size. 

I found some thin plastic, that was the stiff, yet thin and light (from some wrapping around vellum stationary thing), thinking that that would work best, cause it wouldn't get ruined if it rains. With the plastic wings sized up the best we could, we were ready to operate. 

He did not cooperate but we did all 4 wings and they are each free and not stuck together, so we felt we had done pretty good! They even almost lined up perfectly when he closed his wings... Well, they're a little off I guess... Hm, darn.

We took him outside to see how he did. I was actually super impressed, he was able to hold himself up, but didn't get enough lift to get up in a tree or anything and soon he was on the grass again. It made a good noise though, which will be helpful for us being able to find him when he is inside. I ran upstairs into the laundry room for more supplies, and there was ANOTHER butterfly on the chair!! This one looked absolutely perfect. It surprised me so much though - I came in, saw it, and I imagined it sitting there waiting... ready to surprise me, and I walked in it shouted "TA-DA!!!! Look at ME!! I did it!!!" So I laughed and we took that one outside along with our messed up one. The good one did like 5 little victory laps over the trampoline and around the yard, it was so cute! It was like it was saying to the other "SEE! This is how you do it! It's easy!!!" And our poor guy was sad, not feeling understood or really encouraged by their showing off. So... it looks like we might have a pet butterfly. 

I called thanksgiving point to see if they have any monarch wings we could have, but I wasn't able to talk to anyone to ask... I thought maybe we'll go down there. We googled how to feed a butterfly and found two helpful videos, so we fed out pet, we've named him Jerry...

...and then I got ready to run errands and maybe go to the butterfly biosphere. I go out to the car, and noticed I had a flat tire. Blah, another thing that I wasn't planning on that it going to steal my time today - first a busted butterfly, now a flat tire. I was glad to have kids at home to help. Melodie watched Katharine while Ethan and I changed the tire. I was trying to get the bolts loose, then Ethan gave it a go, and I told him he should step on it to use his body weight instead of trying to turn it with his arms. He said "I bowl with 14 lbs, Mom..." Haha, letting me know he's got plenty of upper arm strength. And he got them all off

And then I went to Burt Bros to get the tire fixed. I left K home with Mel, but Peter saw me leave and he came long and they gave him a toy car, so that was nice. Peter was happy. They were able to patch it, we had run over a nail. And then it was time to take Owen to his trumpet lesson. I'm glad that we discovered the flat tire when I went to try and run errands rather than when I went out to go to trumpet, or else we would have missed his lesson. So, yeah, busy day with things that I wasn't planning on, but we handled it well, I think starting off the morning right with some sunshine and fresh air helped. We have a pet now, Jerry the Butterfly, and since this is one of the "super" monarchs that is larger and lives longer (like up to 6 months) we might have this guy through Christmas! It old the kids that they need to take him on walks to the neighbors flowers. He's a sweet butterfly, and it's so cool when he turns his head. He kinda looks like/reminds me of Larry the Lobster from Spongebob. He just looks really strong and cool, it's fun, so yeah, we have a pet! 

Merry Christmas Traditions

Merry Christmas. It's been a Christmas of all the usual Christmas traditions: Tradition 1 - Last night the kids all slept slept under the tree -

Joseph got a blow up mattress (that had folded in on him like a burrito by morning) - Owen next him, then Natalie and Sophi -

and on the right side of the tree, we've got Wes up top, D below with his face in his pillow, Lily with her pink blanket over her head, and Abi on the loveseat.

I woke up at 4:20 to set out presents. Tradition 2 - The kids had set out a treat for Santa: cookies, an orange, and water. 

I was grateful for the p.s. reminder to be careful with the tree (it needs a new base). Corey was feeling sick so I did it by myself, which is also becoming a tradition! It was fine though - took me an hour, which was also when Peter woke up, so good timing there. Tradition 3 - Corey did most of the wrapping and did a beautiful job.

Just past 5 am and we're ready to go. I woke up later that I do most years, but the kids were up really late playing the Wii and I begged them to go to sleep but they wanted to play and then clean up. I said fine, but absolutely NO setting alarms for 3 am! Cause I won't be done by then, they agreed.

Corey had bought eggo waffles and nutella for breakfast. I didn't have any, and I don't think the kids did either since they were already full from Tradition 4 - going to town on the chocolate goodies that were in their stockings. Tradition 5 - talking to our missionaries! We've got three this year! We were on the phone for a bit and then hooked them up to the side room big screen. They said it doesn't really feel like Christmas where they are, and that they had a semi normal missionary day of street contacting and proselytizing. 

Joseph laughed as he remembered in 2019 when they wanted to be done talking to him so they could get back to playing Smash Brothers. Some of the little kids were like that today, but the big kids are learning and we barely outnumber the little ones, so it was good and they sat patiently while we visited. Mel only had 30 minutes, so we were glad they could all call at the same time. After Mel had to go, we said goodbye for a bit (we talked to E and H again later) and we went to open family gifts. This was funny, as usual. Owen had taken any random thing and wrapped it for people. With his limited resources, he really has the spirit of Christmas. He gave Joseph a Book of Mormon, which is one of the greatest gifts anyone can receive! He gave Sophi a small turtle that he took off of Abi's desk. He took a black cat of Lily's, that was in her room, and wrapped it and gave that to her. It was pretty funny. Owen used up a lot of wrapping paper this past month. He'd wrap things, then unwrap them cause he couldn't contain his excitement at seeing all those gifts under the tree, and then go get something else to wrap. We had to lock up the wrapping paper and tape to try to conserve resources before they used it all! Wes bought Peter some little dinosaur cars that he looked up on the computer just for fun, and once Peter saw them he couldn't stop talking about them, and when Wes was at this computer, Peter would come up and ask to see the Dinosaur Cars. Peter was very happy. 

He got a lot of dinosaurs and a lot of cars today, but Wes came through with the hybrid of both! 

After the family gifts, we went over to the white tree for gifts from "Santa". Owen was the only one that got legos, so that was new. Lily was kinda in a transition year, against her will, and Corey got her mostly clothes and jewelry. Plus he gave her a early gift of a new saxophone clarinet case a few months ago that was expensive and he told her it was part of her Christmas, so it was ok, but she was a little disappointed.

Daniel opening a remote control car.

Peter was very content with his Dinosaur cars.

Abi was very happy with the Chacos that Corey found her. 

Wes was easy to shop for since he has discovered hockey. He probably go the biggest haul this year. 

We felt justified with him though, since we kinda needed to make up for 2019 when he got a block of wood. Abi was happy, Sophi and Natalie too.  After gifts, they played a little bit of the Wii, and then around 1:30 we headed out to go to Wrides. Hyrum called again while we were on our way there. We had lunch over there and opened presents.

Ethan called tonight after we got home. I called my mom after we got home around 6 for a visit. I was feeling a bit tired and so I went to lay down for a bit, now I'm on duty and it's Corey's turn to take a break, and we'll see if I have any luck trying to get them to go to bed tonight! We have church early tomorrow, so hopefully they'll cooperate.