Trips starting up, family visiting, sewing lizards...

October was when our trips officially started back up around here. If you want to read more specifics on the trip, feel free to check out the post Dallas did on our Out-Island Explorers blog. It was a fantastic trip to start our season, and now that we are technically wrapping up our season, we had a GREAT season all around!

 Sticky note (not really sure where I've gotten to on these, so I apologize if these are repeats): Reverse psychology WORKS! When the boys get mad and say things like "I hate this part of the day, I'm bored, I'm mad now and its because of you mommy." I'll say things back to them sometimes like, "I know, I'm the worst mom in the whole world, and I'm sorry I am asking you to..." They don't skip a beat, and will quickly yell back at me things like "No you're the BEST mom. No, it's not your fault! WE LOVE YOU!" Most days it works like a charm :) 

 A few shots of our church and some of the folks coming pretty regularly. Another sticky note: I did a Sunday School lesson with the kids one week on being humble. So now, occasionally they will do something nice and put someone else's need above theirs and they will say things like, "Look mom, I'm humbling!" 

 We had some of Dallas' Aunts and Uncle come down for a weekend in October. His Uncle Bruce, Aunt Lisa, Aunt Sherry and her fiance, Chris. It was a quick visit and short trip, but we had a great time showing them around the harbour and chilling on the boat. 

 We were out swimming one day and said to the boys, "Look at that school of fish!" I believe it was Emit that asked, "where's the teacher?" :) The best part was that it took Dallas a little while to catch on to the question!

These boys love their lizards, crabs, spiders, snakes...anything that crawls. One day Joss was out in the yard playing. The other boys were over next door in their yard and Joss started calling out in a really official voice saying "{attention}a lizard has been caught" and "calling all ninjas, calling all ninjas".  

Below they are training and racing Hermit crabs. And in the rain, they are racing leaves down the run-off ditch. They also wanted to do school on the porch while it rained this day. Notice how Joss has his hermit crabs beside him 'watching' him do school work. 

 I made my first dollhouse. It's not perfect at all, I made it out of a bunch of scraps and for a little girl's birthday, but it is tall enough for Barbie to have 3 levels of fun and two slides :)

I tried stairs and ran out of time and patience, so maybe next one I'll get the stairs to work. The boys loved it, and had their toys all over it. They wanted one really bad. You'll see the modified version I made them for Christmas soon. 

 They are so funny with the building stuff. In their eyes, I can build anything. I love it, but don't want to set them up for disappointment either, so I try to explain that I can't, but I like to try really hard to make things. Although, I love that they think I can :)  

I was given this amazing sewing machine from some friends around here, Sandy & Mike Minns. They were storing this for a friend that used to do a lot of work for them on the houseboat business that was down here years ago. She left it and said they could do what they wanted to with it. I have some heavy duty fabric waiting for me to find some time to get to work. If I can find a way to get the fabric we need at an affordable price, I'll be able to work on our bimini tops, cushions, truck upholstery, sails, etc. SO EXCITED!!!!!! It is intimidating to me for sure, but going to save us a ton of money if I can figure it out. 

While we were going through all the amazing accessories they gave us, we found this whole set of lizard eggs and baby lizards in the bag. It was pretty cool, but the poor little things did not last long after the boys got their hands on them. Literally!