The Grubers: OCTOBER 2018 - Fall Fun and Halloween

October is quickly becoming one of my favorite months! With the ages of the kids, there are just so many fun things to do as a family that are popping up these days! Prepare for a long post with a lot of pictures!

First, we went to the Orem Pumpkin Patch for family night and picked up Swig on the way home.

One Friday evening we were tending Elsa, Greta, and Mya at our house while Max, April, and Alex took George, Nancy, and Glenna Bradshaw (April’s mom) to a BYU football game. We were having a good time, when within the first hour, Elsa fell back and hit the back of her head on our bricks in the backyard by the garden. Luckily the group was very close having dinner at Maria Bonita’s before the game, so Max quickly came back and took her to the urgent care to get some stitches. Before we knew it, Elsa was back with us, and Max met back up with the others at the game. It was a little traumatizing, but Elsa seemed in good spirits as we spent the rest of the evening eating pizza, playing outside, painting pumpkins, playing hide and seek, and watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, PJ Masks, and some AFV.

And then it was General Conference weekend. Another favorite time of year! We listened at home on Saturday. We were filled with such excitement and shock as they announced the change to two hour church! Jason and I were practically jumping and couldn’t stop gaping and smiling! We headed to Draper after the second Saturday session and went to our traditional pumpkin patch. Then we ate pizza and the girls went to the Stake Center for the Women’s session. After the session, everyone made caramel apples together. Those are always a special treat. The next morning, we watched the first session with my family, as well as some of the second session. Before the session ended, we drove to Alpine to finish the session with the Grubers. We had dinner with George, Nancy, and Karl. It was truly an unforgettable Conference weekend!

We ended up celebrating my dad’s birthday at our house again. We had a Cafe Rio dinner, Boston Cream Pie for dessert, presents, and did a scripture marking activity to help prep Bryan for sharing on his mission.

We had an excess of apples this year from our trees, so we really loved making caramel apples!

there were also a lot of apple crisps

Colson was invited to his first friend birthday party. It was for a boy who is a year older from his preschool class named Anson. Colson was so excited after seeing Charlie go to a couple without him. Charlie was extremely jealous, of course.

Jason and I fulfilled the request to take missionary pictures of Bryan for his mission announcements. We did them outside of the Draper Temple. We also got to go to his live temple endowment. That was really cool. The boys were being tended in Alpine and had a ball with Grandma and Grandpa doing a scavenger hunt (which led to many Charlie-led scavenger hunts in the future)!

In Alpine:

Charlie beginning his creations

We got lots of rain in the valley and snow in the mountains. We took a Sunday drive up Provo Canyon and just loved the view! With the snow and yellow, green, orange leaves, the light snowfall just looked magical! We sure do love living so close to the mountains!

Charlie started attending Lego Club after school with the Proctors. They loved it! (Or at least they loved it at first. It was once a week, I believe, and after three weeks they no longer wanted to go...saying it was boring).

Charlie and Colson got to go on a special outing with Bryan and my parents. They picked the boys up Monday afternoon and took them to the Draper Haunted Hollow. Bryan was policing the event. The boys had a ball and dressed up in their costumes. Jason, Jonah, and I joined up with them after Jason was done with work. They had food trucks there, so for dinner we got CupBop for me and Jason, then picked up Little Caesars for the boys on the way to my parent's house. They ate the pizza, then we headed home for a late night.

Jason had the crazy experience of getting wet cement splashed up into his eye! It was on a new construction site and he said it just killed like crazy! He spent 20 minutes trying to rinse it out in not-so-clean water, but it was all he had. It was nuts! His eye was red for days and just hurt so bad! He is lucky his eye eventually recovered without any permanent damage!

For Fall Break we stayed very busy! We went to the local Bricks and Minifigs store to pick up a free Lego mini-fig, thanks to the Lego Club coupon Charlie received. We played at the Orem Park. That was Thursday. On Friday, the boys played America's Got Talent and took turns dancing with their buddies and judging each other. It was hilarious! That afternoon and evening we went to Cornbelly's with the Grubers. This was our second year going with them and it is such a season highlight! The kids just love it! We had dinner at JCW's with them afterwards. Charlie had so much fun, he was crying while brushing his teeth last night saying, “It was such a great day!” The only real downside to the day, Jason jammed his pinky toe pretty bad. On Saturday we were back with Grubers attending Alex’s football game in Tooele! We were a little distracted during the actual game attempting to secure Christmas Concert tickets for the Tabernacle Choir. We were frantically trying to sign up on our phones, but it just wasn’t working out for most of us. While we were all the way out there, we all got to see George’s warehouse full of ore. That was fascinating. We enjoyed lunch at Cafe Rio then split ways. Our little family didn’t stop there though, we went to the Scarecrow Festival at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. Jason had never been so I wanted to show him. He really enjoyed it. There were free bouncy houses, and we bought some goodies: soft serve ice cream cones, frozen hot chocolate, and these huge, delicious, flavored licorice ropes. On Sunday, we had dinner at home. Thanks to Jason, we cooked up some sous vide filet mignon. Amazing! Just melted in your mouth! Bryan and Camry visited later for some caramel apples.

Charlie's America's Got Talent judging sheet

Cornbelly's

Rat Maze (a favorite):

Morning in Tooele:

Scarecrow Festival:

Thanks to all of the pumpkin patch inspiration, the boys built their own pumpkin patch festival/patch in our yard. It was pretty cute. (I’m not totally sure if their vision for the festival was met, however.)

Jason started playing Ward volleyball on Thursday nights for a bit. He really enjoyed it.

Colson took a preschool field trip to the Wilkerson Farm Pumpkin Patch. Kim tended Jonah so I could go with Colson. It was adorable and Colson loved it. That patch definitely catered to his age group.

Colson's pal, Luke

Charlie had his special Spanish Dance Festival. This was a first-time experience for all of us and we were new to the Spanish Immersion Program, but it was a big event and just so much fun. What made it extra fun is we ended up having several surprise visitors! Grandma and Grandpa A and Gruber were there, as well as Karl, but Alli and Amy had just gotten into town for Great Grandma Gruber’s 98th Birthday Party, so they were able to come as well. Everyone had a ball and loved all of the music. After the performance, the Gruber side came to our house for Apple Crisp.

Rehearsal:

Amy surprising us before the festival

The Festival:

Find Charlie! The boy looking longingly to the side while grasping the handrail

Next on the agenda was Great Grandma Gruber’s 98th Birthday Party! It was a lunch and dinner with lots of family in town. Carolyn, Stacie and her son Wyatt, Jim, Patience, Randy, Luke, Jean, Loyd, Hymas’s, Amy, Alli, and the rest of us Utah gang were at the party. It was a great celebration of Lois and family. Jason stayed late that night with Jonah visiting and watching the World Series Dodgers Game while I left and took the boys back to the Ward Halloween Party (pictures of that near the end of the post).

Lois and her five children: Carolyn, George, Jim, Jean, Randy

keeping Grandma warm:

We were busy this month, and the months prior, with prep for the Primary Program. We had our practice on Saturday. That afternoon was spent soaking in more Gruber time since Amy was still in town. We went mini golfing and batting at Mulligans and then had dinner at Geckos.

treats for the program practice participants

Such a beautiful night!

The next day was the Primary Program. Those who came to support were Grandpa Gruber (Grandma was at the Riverton program at the same time), Grandma and Grandpa A, Bryan, Camry, and Tyson. We had to head straight to Draper after the program for Bryan’s Farewell. We had a Farewell Party afterwards at my parents with lots of family. Bryan opted to give his farewell talk about a month before his departure date, so we were happy to still have some good time ahead before Bryan left.

We had fun carving pumpkins as a family.

And finally the day of Halloween arrived! Charlie had his school costume parade, and Colson had his preschool program. As usual, we had a party at our house with Arbons and Grandma and Grandpa Gruber. We ate my "famous" BBQ chili, cornbread, salad, bean dip, homemade root beer, apples and caramel, and zombie cupcakes. Charlie was a storm trooper, Colson was an Ewok (and sometimes a ghost), and I made Jonah a Beaker costume (from Muppets...since that is his nickname with the squeaks he makes and beak-like nose he has). We took the boys around the circle for trick or treating, and then Jason took the two older boys to some other neighborhoods. I took Jonah back to the house where the rest of the family and I had to deal with the Beaker hat that was brutally stuck on Jonah’s head. It was seriously on there! The hat had been pushed down hard to cover his face for a second as a joke, which must have changed the shape of the poster board that I had built to fit snugly on the top of his head. I dramatically ended up having to cut and rip the dang hat apart to get it off of him! Once all of that was over, we were able to enjoy dinner. After dinner, Camry and I took the two boys for more trick-or-treating on the nearby streets. They were just eating it up and getting the thirst for it for the very first time. Finally it was time for cupcakes, playing with the family, and bedtime. Once the boys were in bed, the rest of us (Arbons at this point) watched our scary movie choice of the year, A Quiet Place.

Cute Halloween boys:

Homemade Beaker costume:

party prepping

you can see a bit of the imprint aftermath

And here are some more pictures from the month:

I love this picture! And here is the story behind it:

Karl had been subbing that day at the Middle School that neighbors Charlie's Elementary School. Charlie walks home with his friends, and just as they were passing the middle school, Karl was walking to his car. Charlie yelled, "Karl!" Karl was surprised to hear a little voice shouting for him and was so pleased to see Charlie! I love that our shy little Charlie had the courage to call our to Karl for a hello!