Potty Training, Soccer, Donut Pirates, and Nasty Cookies. September was awesome.

Kade and Rhett and their 2 headed monster on random Tuesday.  I love watching Kade play with his younger brothers even with 7 years between them. It makes my heart smile.

Max picked up on Potty training SOOOOOO well.  We were so proud of him!  With treats and little apps that let them play 10 second games for each success he found every way to make it to the toilet. Here he is washing his hands after one such success.  So glad for friends and their tips to have them eat a lot of salty things and drink a lot of water or juice during potty training. It made this so much simpler and more efficient then my other three.
(also...since I'm typing this months after the fact...we've regressed....blah. I think all my boys have had to be potty trained twice.  So...that's fun. :)  Still love him and his smiley face.)

Playing in the dirt at Aunt Jessica's house with Beckam.

For Scouts, Luke's fellow wolves were bringing collections to show to each other.  One of the boys  brought his dice collection (or possibly his dads collection of dice).  After the activity, while playing outside, he dropped them......when he was standing on the grate! YIKES!  I watched as they tried to fish as many as they could out of the grate--with some success.

Then Luke had an idea.  I drove him home and he grabbed a stick he'd had  stashed--cause I'm sure it was an awesome stick :), and taped a spoon onto the end of it. Boom!  Ran back down and they got every last one of them....that they could see.

Mom celebrated the big 60 this year!  Dad drove up to Salt Lake and got her her favorite cake--Rum Torte from Leslie's bakery.  But also bought a different one that the kids might like.

For her birthday, since mom LOVES game (something she's passed down to all of her kids) me and Scott gave her the gift of a monthly scheduled game night.  It's pretty excited and intense.  We even earn tally marks on our sleeves for the winners of the game nights which is determined by a strict system.  AND WE LOVE IT!  YAY FOR GAME NIGHTS.  Jess only sometimes likes games, but he loves t-shirts. So I made him one--without the dice, and told him he could earn his dice by actually attending said game nights.  He came the first night, and won the whole game of rummy (which takes HOURS--hours of fun :)--thus earning his dice.  So excitement is had by all :)

Scott just playing and beating up on all the boys.  We LOVE that he had to live at home during his accounting program at BYU.  Our boys love him so so so much!

One night for Family Home Evening the boys were supposed to make cookies without a recipe and see how they turned out.

Luke makes cookies a lot and was so close to being right. But...turns out, when you add a cup of milk, and a bajillion marshmallows, and omit eggs and baking soda--they turn out more like...taffy.  HA!  It was so fun to watch them try though.  (lesson--God has a plan for us and we should follow the path His Son has laid out!  Read scriptures, Pray, be Obedient to the commandments....)

Turns out every year at Krispy Kreme they give away a free dozen donuts to anyone who dresses up as a pirate! WHAT?  That's awesome.  A friend told me about it mid day and the kids got some of their friends together to make this happen.  BUT--turns out that while there was no line at 10:00 a.m., the line at 5:00 is an hour and a half!  Good thing the drive-up was open and the kids could watch a movie.  

And who's carload ended up with 7 dozen free donuts?  YUP!  We did!  It was awesome.

Kade had such a fun year with soccer. He was on an awesome team with an amazing coach and one of his best friends Adam.  They were so disciplined and did drills before each game and had to do push-ups when they were late (ack! only happened once--Kade made sure)  Their end of the season party was INCREDIBLE.  Their coaches picked all the kids up in a limousine--took them to a giant house where they played games and some soccer, then out for ice cream, all the kids got a new soccer ball, and back home in the limo!  Who does that?

This was Rhett's first year doing soccer and he was sooo cute!  We put him on a team with 2 of his best friends and that's, turns out, what makes a good season for kids.  It was everything I'd hoped it would be with daisy picking, running hard, excitement (mostly over what was going to be the treats at half-time and the end) and so many smiles.

 While waiting to get their picture taken, they all decided to do a group hug-type thing...and of course fell down. But everyone was laughing so apparently it was awesome :)

One of my favorite memories of the season was during one of Kade's games.  There was a playground close by and so Max, Rhett and Luke were playing on it while I was watching the game. Jess was on his way.  Max, of course, was potty training and didn't want to have a wet pull up so with his bum facing the field, and about 100 yards away form me, he just dropped his pants and started peeing! HA!! AHH!!  So funny! I was sitting next to Adams mom when she started laughing so hard and I jumped up and ran to him (drawing way more attention then he previously had I'm sure) laughing.  By the time I got there he was done and pulling up his pants anyway.  Good times.