October. All of it.

All about efficiency here, because it's after midnight and I'm withholding sleep from myself until this post is done haha. So here's a million pictures of cute Carma from October! She slept! And climbed trees! And fixed bikes!

Jack and Carma are pretty cute little best friends. 

Jack continued to loooove kindergarten. Both Park Ridge boys got awards for attendance AND Jackers received the 'kindness' character trait certificate for his class:

The assembly fell on Chuck's day off so we alllll got to attend!

Jack was disinclined to come closer for pictures at the school, so these couple I got as he rode up to the house that afternoon will have to suffice ;).

 Pretty proud of our kind little boy. For as worried as we were about how he would transition to kindergarten, we love that he's doing so well and being kind and helping classmates too.

I love this more than I probably should haha:

E'ery time.

Will was on real homophone/homonym kick there for a while; he spent a couple general conference sessions brainstorming as many as possible and hitting up Grandma Pam for a few more, then he created this amazing story: 

We're generally hit and miss for dress up days at school, but y'all know we were in for Sunglasses Day.

 Favorite Disney princess, favorite level of kids' screaming ;) (besides none of course....)

hahahahahahaha. I debated about including some of these, but Clyde's feedback re: the blog lately has been that these are his favorite part, so here's some more!

 Hopefully he'll think this one is funny....

I literally might make this sign for the laundry room.

GIRLS NIGHT. The best. Tonight we were all about the apps: we all did the family search relative finder - I was thrilled to discover each of these crazies are my cousins! I mean, generally between 8th and 10th cousins, but that's still pretty close. Also, Marco Polo. Total game changer. Kara gets allll the credit for getting us all on there. Amazing.

What's that? More pictures of Carma? Okay, here you go! Cute little preschool girlie waiting for the bus.

Okay so Stephanie is pretty much the glue that keeps workout class running and I loooove her. She NEVER gets on stage even though she freaking knows all the choreography. I don't know how Lorraine got her up there on this random day but I had to get photographic evidence:

Oh man, so October was the month of my drastic, impulsive haircut because I'm dumb. I (of course) ended up with triangle hair, which necessitated me recruiting Karlina to straighten my hair for me until Nicole could do it chemically. THANK YOU KARLINA!!!! Carma brushing your hair was a good trade-off, right? ;) 

Jack got mail from Texas and he was sooooo excited! (cc: Dan Swenson. There, you're mentioned!)

Sundays can be rough sometimes.... luckily Clyde's pretty good about coming up with random things to do with his siblings. This day they baked cakes in the morning and then decorated them after church - I think the general policy regarding frosting and sprinkles was the more, the merrier ;).

The awesome Kelee put together a super fun game night at her house and we had such a great time. It was a fun mixture of people she knew from different places, but THS alumni had a good representation so we took a picture (Ally, me, Andrew, Kelee). Tons of awesome laughs that night!!

Chuck and I find it's important to get out and about to keep our relationship strong - our 8th cousin once removed relationship, that is. Our marriage is pretty solid ;). 

We were so excited to get the boys back into piano this fall after the summer break and (blessedly) they were excited too, especially to be reunited with Ashlee - we have a strict 'Thueson sisters only' policy for piano teachers ;). Ashlee is so great with the boys, and I love that she recognizes their individual strengths/weaknesses and tailors their lessons and her teaching accordingly. She shared this with me one day about Will and then I had to screenshot her post because most of it went over my non-musical head so I knew I'd get it wrong trying to say it in my own words haha:

 Speaking of Will though.....

BOOKS! New bookshelf via craigslist that Chuck was not thrilled about but still patiently paid for/transported/set up and I looooooove it! 

Oh my gosh, this was literally a day where Clyde and I had realllllly struggled over his unwillingness to do his math homework and my unwillingness to nag him all night so he legit went to bed and read. Between this tweet and looking at my new shiny bookcase with millions of books and memories of pretty much never doing homework... I resolved to be nicer to Clyde in the morning. BUT ALSO JUST GET THE MATH HOMEWORK DONE AND THEN MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE.

 Carma shenanigans. Instagram caption: Thrilled to announce Carma's new business venture: paper shredding! For a very reasonable fee, your documents will be conscientiously destroyed one small triangle at a time by this emerging new talent in the scissor-using world 👧🏻(I retain the right to peruse said documents prior to the shredding if they appear to have interesting personal or financial details😎). As it takes about an hour per regular sized sheet of paper, we expect to book quickly so don't wait! ✂️📄✂️📄

 Fun fact: Carma no longer needs an adult to help her climb the tree. She does need help getting down though haha.

Seriously though. Screeching is only for blood people!

 I put all my political screenshots in one collage, so it's easily scroll-by-able if that's your thing. 

 Gratuitous selfies are apparently my thing, who knew?? ;) 

Oh yeah, everyone. That's okay, I think it's a good thing that I like my face haha.

Halloween Zumba, woooo! We celebrated twice because we're awesome like that. Friday I was a pirate:

and Monday (actually Halloween) I was Cookie Monster... I miiiiight have a reputation at workout class for really liking cookies haha. Also I volunteered Chuck to come and do nursery with another husband so all the women could be in the gym, so that's his picture of holding Cora and watching the movie :).

Suzanne (in the bumblebee costume) recruited her daughter (in the Wonder Woman costume) to come and take amazing pictures of our zumba-in-costume fun - here's the whole group who dressed up:

I pretty much died laughing when I scrolled through the posted pictures and found these; I've been told my facial expressions at workout are pretty entertaining and now I see why!

There's a chance that Jack's and Carma's dentist appointments feel on Halloween day. Might as well start off with super clean teeth before exposing them to all that sugar, right??

Carma got Grandma Pam allll to herself that afternoon, lucky girlie! Grandma got her all ready in her Rapunzel costume, complete with darling flower hair AND makeup AND a manicure from Pamela's cute daughter.

All four Izatt kids - Clyde's a missionary, Will is the Sun, Jack is Captain America, and Carma is Rapunzel!

Trunk-or-Treat was way fun as usual. Clyde won a costume award and tracted into a nun who accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon!

And we'll wrap up October with some Adrienne Hedger Halloween hilarity:

Nothing worse than reaching for a Reese's only to discover it's empty, grrrrrrr.

October: fall activities outside

Let the record show that two Izatts were responsible for those nice, neat piles of leaves: Chuck and Carma. Jack rolled up from school just in time to start jumping in the piles (note the bike helmet still on his head haha) and I joined in for bagging the leaves and taking them to the city drop off locale for them to be recycled and mulched.

Carma is currently is that darling, cooperative, wants to help with allll the chores stage. Why can't that stage make a reappearance when children are 10-12? You know, when they have some height and strength and can actually get things done? 

Carma also discovered some leaves after church and was DELIGHTED.

Carma appeared delighted when we met up at Grandma Pam's one day for a bike ride along the greenbelt. 

That was a ruse, however. She promptly cried and freaked out and refused to ride her bike for the first half mile or so.

We stopped for a random water and snack break and I guess she was just hangry, because after that she hopped back on her bike and was allll smiles. MOOD SWINGS ARE SUPER FUN.

The boys liked finding little spots to detour off the trail a bit.

We love bike rides with Grammy Pammy! 

I'm not saying we make helmets look gooooood.... but I'm definitely thinking it. You too, right? And as always, quick shout out to Chuck for keeping our family rolling. He heads up the bicycle maintenance and slimes tires and fixes tires and reminds me that money spent on bike stuff is a worthwhile investment and I'm so so glad. I love the mobility/freedom/exercise/joy that riding bikes gives my kiddos. Also Carma is helping me blog and this is her caption for this picture: "I love Daddy! Oh, and Mom." 

One random Saturday my friend Jenn posted about having extra tickets to Farmstead so you'd better believed we snagged those ASAP... along with Jenn's daughter Bridget! Bridget is a total babe and an amazing helper and she's right in between Clyde and Will age-wise so she just fits in perfectly with our yahoo crowd:

It was a whirlwind couple hours there, but we tried to hit up as much of the fun as possible:

I just love that crazy slide. I yelp every time but I could go on it all day haha.

Picture as we walked out turned out amazing as always ;).

Also - look what I found in the car later that day. Bridget kills me! SO sweet. Definitely need to kidnap her again sometime soon...

Family jaunt over to the bike park one day:

Clyde had a little fall festival one day after school. I was (weirdly) not invited to attend the whole thing but he generously allowed me to take this picture as I picked him up. 

And last but not least, we ventured over to a different park in Boise than usual for some fun with Grandpa one October afternoon. My dad always has fun toys and gadgets and snacks - this bubble gun was a definite hit, as were the ninja lessons ;).

 Cutest kids!

The playground was lots of fun too:

and I quickly realized that this was the park where we met with friends wayyyy back in the day to take Quinn's senior pictures! That rock wall that Clyde is perched on looked very familiar. 

Carma's favorite are the little helicopter spinner toys that Grandpa has; she loves watching those fly into the air! We also enjoyed getting to know some other park attendees. One of the things I really admire about my dad is how at ease he is chatting with people and learning more about them and their lives. He frequently strikes up friendships and if the person's native language isn't English, he can often say a few words in whatever language they primarily speak. This time it was a grandma and grandpa there with their grandkids and we learned all about their lives in Nairobi before they moved here to be closer to a couple of their kids.

 Ahhhh October weather is the best! I love remembering all the random fun we had enjoying it last fall.