Today I was driving Spencer to piano and he said, "I hate piano". This is a conversation we end up having every other month or so, so I am always armed and ready with the, "be grateful" speech. You may think I am a mean mom for making Spencer do piano even though he hates it, but the truth is, he doesn't hate it, he just hates
practicing, once he masters a song, he plays it non-stop until everyone in the house cries. This is his third year of piano and right before he started taking lessons we went to a
Jon Schmidt concert, if you've never been, you have to try it sometime. He does all sorts of crazy acrobatics like back flips off the piano bench,
playing songs with his toes, etc. not your grandma's piano concert for sure.
During the concert he played a song upside down and backwards while lying on the piano bench and Spencer thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen. On the FIRST DAY of piano lessons, Spencer came home and mastered "Old McDonald had a song" the right way, then, laid down on the piano bench and taught himself how to play it upside down and backwards just like Jon! His piano teacher Emily
is great to foster Spencer's creative expression and so at his first piano recital (unbeknownst to me) he played his song once the right way and then again upside down and backwards, infact, notice that Jon's hands are crossed and Spencer's aren't! He actually plays it with the hand parts swapped!
It was the highlight of his life, he thought he was the bee's knees I'm telling ya. I'll admit, it was pretty cool and I thought he was the bees knees too. I was impressed then and have continued to be, he really does have a wonderful ability to feel the music, he hardly ever practices with the metronome because he doesn't like the beat being dictated to him, but to be honest, he doesn't really need it so says Emily. Ok, so now you know why I make him take piano, because he really does love it and he's too good this early to let him quit NOT because I'm the meanest mom ever. Now we'll rewind back to in the car on our way to piano, sorry this blog is really two stories in one. So he says, "I hate piano" and I say, "you don't hate piano, you just hate
practicing piano and you hate leaving your friends to
go to piano". Then I proceed to tell him that when I was a little girl we couldn't really afford piano lessons or any of the other cool stuff that he gets to do so he needs to remember that he is lucky to be able to learn and try different things. (I'm such a mother!) It seemed to work, he's lost in thought for a minute, certainly thinking about the joy he feels playing a song he knows and says to me, "yea mom you're right" (the words every mother longs to hear). So then after a minute of some more deep thinking he says, "I am really lucky for another thing too, when you were growing up there wasn't very much electricity." WHAAAAAAAAAAT!? I was so stunned that I couldn't even laugh or speak, how old to my kids think I am!? I remember feeling like my parents were dinosaurs, but me? I'm so young! Don't they know that my life growing up wasn't all that different than theirs!? Don't they know that I CAN relate to what they're experiencing!? All I could say was "wow" softly under my breath, and it was a good thing that at that moment we pulled up in front of Emily's house and it was time for Spencer to exit the car. My parents I'm sure are happy that karma has finally come back to bite me in the behind. Infact, I think this is them getting a good laugh out of it now...
We have been cleaning out our storage closet trying to organize all of the Halloween costumes /dress-ups that we own. This may not seem like a small task but we have about six giant rubbermaid containers down there full of just that and wow, it was so out of control. I found this hat that Eileen knitted for Allie a few years ago while on her mission in Philadelphia. So cute! It was just the right size for little Ethan! I am such a dork because later when I was looking at the Pumpkin Patch pictures, I realized that I should've had him wear this to the patch, think of the pictures! For now, we'll just have to enjoy this one. Waynd & Eileen are serving in Africa right now and we are super excited to be counting down the weeks until they get come home, we're down to FIVE! Ethan was six months old when they left, Daniel was one day old and the twins weren't born yet. Besides the babies, all the kids have done a ton of growing up, they will be so excited to see everyone, we are excited too.
I have to say, Ethan LOVED running around the pumpkins and trying to pick them up. It was a good thing that most were too heavy to lift because the ones he could lift, he threw like baseballs! Oh dear! 
My kids like being able to pick out their own pumpkins, give the little ones wheel barrell rides, (that's Makenna and Ethan in the barrell)
run around the maze, ride the horses (although we did not do that this year) and act silly... 
Some of the pumpkins required some teamwork...
Some just required James' muscles...
I must admit that my favorite part of this annual trip, are all the great opportunities for pictures! (don't pretend to be surprised by this) The light was not great so most of them ended up kind of flat, but that didn't stop me from taking a few hundred. Here are just a few of my favorites. I need to have Patsy show me how to do a slide show, but until then you just have to scroll down...
I love how Spencer is too cool to take out his iPod out for the picture...
but my favorite of the day was this cutie shot of little E holding a little pumpkin...
By the end everyone was tired, and pictured out (imagine that) and had found their pefect pumpkin, so we took our haul home.
No wonder we come back every year, what a great day. Happy Fall!
Ethan and I attended his play this morning and he was GREAT! I did have a hard time getting him to hold still for a picture because all he wanted to do was show Ethan off to his friends and teachers, he loves being a big brother, but eventually I did get a photograph or two, or twenty...
I hope he continues to enjoy the stage, it so fits him!
Boy do we love this man! And I love this picture of him, you know me and close ups! Look at how much story is in that face and the sparkle in his eyes, wow, he makes me feel overwhelming love. I especially enjoyed Henry B's talk on making a record of the ways that God touches our lives and the lives of our children. I'm going to reflect on the best way to do that but I felt very strongly that he was speaking directly to ME, I love how conference always feels like that, like the messages were prepared special just for my ears. It is a testimony to me that God loves me and that he knows my concerns.
As a side note, I need to mention that ever since I first met Patsy and Brett, they were our neighbors and the nicest people you would ever want to know. They have such NICE kids too, so you know they are doing something right in their house! Patsy is always someone I've looked up to because she is so honest about life and motherhood and how challenging it can be. She is very genuine and she makes me feel like a normal, real person when ever I am around her and hear her stories. I appreciate that so much! Ok, so Brian is getting ready to leave on his mission and so we took a few missionary pictures just for fun, and Brian puts the fun in just for fun.
I was having hard time taking the photo because I was laughing so hard! What a cool guy, I told Patsy that their family won't be as funny w/o Brian home because he is comedy central for sure. It was definitely one of the funnest photo shoots I've been able to do! Thanks guys
The waiter took her's away to get her a new one and then April and I both pulled wrappers out of ours, butter wrappers to be exact. The manager came back with a new one for Leah but April and I told him we were fine with ours, it wasn't that big of a deal, and then the thing that tipped us over the histeria cliff was that Leah pulled out another butter wrapper from the new one that the manager had just brought her! Seriously, I guess you had to be there, but we all about died laughing! We got our desserts for free, I guess that's to be expected, but we left the waiter a great tip because he was a good sport! And he took a picture for us to remember the event.
Alisa's in town for the week, so hopefully more good stories are on their way...
Love this girl...
Ethan was in heaven with the monkeys, he loved being able to go right up to the glass to "touch" them.
You can't tell from this picture because of the reflection of the glass, but there is a small monkey just on the other side of Ethan's hands and he is squealing with laughter because he thinks the monkey is just so funny. 
I tried to turn the flash off but then the pictures just got blurry, I've said before that this blog is to help me let go of the feeling that every picture I take has to be portait perfect, some pictures are just bad but worth posting because they still tell the story. There, I said it. We also found a few other "monkeys" hanging around the monkey cage!
Anyway, the elephant display has this huge elephant outside that the boys sat on for picture but the sun shone only on the spot where the boys were sitting on his trunk, making for lame photographs of over exposed faces and squinty eyes. 
A few minutes later the elephant played a little song and blew water out of his trunk and let's just say that it was a good thing that Ethan was already wearing a diaper because he was so startled, I'm sure he lost bladder control for a moment! Ethan and I stayed for a few more minutes to play at the cool little park after everyone else had to go. 
He loved this super-steep slide and wanted to go down it over and over and over, even after he flew down it and landed on his back in the bark. No biggie, just brush yourself off and get back on the horse, or slide, which ever the case may be.
He also loved this croc but only after I sat on it with him for a few minutes, he was nervous and kept pointing at his teeth, smart boy. I am loving being able to hang with the sister-in-laws for a little while once a week and see how everyone is doing. It's so nice to connect and especially for Ethan to have some interaction with the other little kids. Drew always gets so excited and says to him, "hi Efin"! I love it!
She is a special girl and we're glad to have her in our family. Josh came with Sydney and the twins BY HIMSELF! He's crazy, we all agreed but we all sure enjoyed holding those babies and telling him to enjoy the break. Matt said it's a Moore thing not to want to accept help from anyone, he may be right but we did our best to break Josh of the guilt. I can't believe how big the twins are getting, I should've snapped a few pictures of them, but Allie was in charge of the camera for most the day so all of the pictures look like this.
Nice Allie, very reverent feeling! :) We came home after the baptism to change into warm slippers and spend a nice rainy Saturday in doors doing things around the house and eating soup for lunch. I love cold rainy days like this, it's such a good excuse to not have to go anywhwere...In fact, I spent the afternoon working on some thank you notes that I have been meaning to send, just look at all that GOOD MAIL!
And notice my super-cute return address labels that I ordered from 
Anyway, I passed by one of our windows and was SHOCKED to see SNOW!
Holy crap! Snow? I've lived here for 14 plus years now, and I can't remember it ever snowing in September! None of it stuck and it turned back into rain a little later on, but for like a solid hour, we had giant white flakes that couldn't be mistaken for sleet or slush or anything but the fluffy white stuff. This picture of our backyard doesn't do it justice, it was really coming down heavy, I just couldn't believe it! What do you do? Later we did brave the weather to do dinner at Lonestar with the Merrill's which was just what the doctor ordered, yummy steak and mashed potatoes. Mmmmm...no picture because both of our husbands, and probably Lauri, would've rolled their eyes. People are getting tired of posing for blog pictures!