Surviving

My brother entered two pumpkins in the giant pumpkin contest. They were only half the size of his last pumpkin, but they were still gigantic! Our kids mostly liked the free samples from the vendors.

Spencer was offered a job in Roosevelt (no one ever knows where that is so in case you don't it's 30 minutes away from Vernal). It's pretty much the middle of nowhere but have no worries Grandma Pace set Rhett up with his own pair of cowboy boots so he is ready to live in cowboy country. Spencer has been living in Roosevelt during the week and comes back on the weekends. On Monday the kids and I will move to our new place. In the meantime we have been hanging out with my family.

One weekend we took our kids to the zoo. We were at just the right places at just the right time. As we were looking at the giraffes, the zookeepers came over and let all the kids feed them. Most kids held the branch of leaves over the fence and let the giraffe take it from them. All the kids except mine. Rhett decided to hold on to the branch a little longer than he should and the giraffe ended up licking his entire arm. Then as we were looking at the elephants, the workers started to give one elephant a mud bath.

Last week I learned what it would be like to be a single mom with 8 kids, with the youngest two being 4 months apart. My brother and his wife went to Hawaii for a week, and I volunteered to watch their 6 kids. We were doing great and then the stomach flu hit the youngest which then hit 3 more of us including myself. For a split moment I didn't know if we or maybe just I would survive but my brother is home now so apparently we all survived. Now I just need to wait a few more days until my two kids are completely better. Rhett has had the stomach flu for over a week now! Even though that week was really crazy we had fun playing tons of games, playing basketball at the church, going to see witches and running around at the park.

And then Halloween happened. Hope has been obsessed with anything to do with Mickey Mouse. She told me she wanted to be Mickey Mouse for Halloween but instead I had her be Minnie. Rhett had told me for months that he wanted to be Batman. Poor Rhett has been so sick and even today on Halloween he threw up and spent most of the day on the couch. He really wanted to go out in his costume, so we took him trick or treating and let him eat candy even though we knew at any moment there could be a disaster. Luckily he did great. When we got in the car to go to the trunk or treat he told the people walking their dog, "Hey, we're getting candy!"

Moments before that cookie came right back up