The Zorio Family: October 2018

October meant more soccer for our family. I have SO enjoyed watching the kids play soccer this fall. It has definitely been a big time commitment, but I've just really enjoyed it. The kids have enjoyed it too. Each one is so different on the soccer field. It's just fun to watch.

Carter

he gets so excited when he scores!

Carter

Carter continuing to celebrate after a score

And the "CARTERwheel"

Carter would get so excited out on the field playing that he would regularly (especially after scoring) do a Cartwheel. We started calling this the Carterwheel because he did it all the time! I love how excited he gets about things!

More Carterwheel

Carter

October also meant Fall Break

YAY!!!

This was the first year in three or 4 years that we haven't gone to the beach on Fall Break which made me want to be at the beach REALLY bad! But since we just went in May and we are mid-construction on our house, we opted to stay put this fall break.

We came up with lots of new things to do on Fall Break to continue exploring our new area!

One day we visited Joe Wheeler Wildlife Refuge in Decatur.

The kids had fun walking the trails, seeing the birds, and exploring.

Can you tell from their hair how windy it was?!

Carter had to read all the info about all the animals and plants at Joe Wheeler.

He loves to learn.

Dawson found the perfect walking stick and had fun exploring.

Nora Kate saw this sign warning of alligators on a trail at Joe Wheeler, and was VERY worried about encountering one...which did not happen.

More Joe Wheeler Wildlife Refuge exploring.

Unfortunately right after taking this picture Dawson got stung on the wrist by a wasp and ended up having a small allergic reaction and having to go to the doctor. He ended up on antibiotics and steroids. He's never been stung before, and the poor boy handled it like a champ...but I felt so bad for him!

(and I'm realizing our pictures are going to be out of order because I took a lot this month on our good camera, and it saves them in a different order....so prepare for a lot of jumping around)

The kids had spirit week at school. One day was team spirit day. They both wanted to wear their Tennessee gear even though they were in the minority here in Alabama.

Clayton's "thing" lately is to ask you to "read me" (translation read to me). He gets books, a blanket, and goes to the chair in our bedroom to cuddle up and read. SO sweet!

Pajama Day Spirit Day

(only Carter wanted to participate in this day...Dawson has never been fond of wearing his pjs to school)

Our friends, the Shanks, were in Huntsville one day and we were so excited to be able to work it out to get together (even though it was brief) for some ice cream! Here are the kids at Brusters Ice Cream where we met up with them! So fun.

Lots more swimming at the Y this month.

We attended the Madison Street Festival this month, and it was SO fun!

So hot, but so fun!

Definitely going to make this festival a yearly tradition.

Madison Street Festival

Dawson's choir sang in church

The wildlife refuge we visited on fall break

Fall Break also meant lots of breakfasts on the patio

The kids were SO excited about this...we all ate lunch with Daddy at his work on Fall Break.

Carter was pretty excited about the safety glasses! HAH!

The kids ready to attend the Fall Festival at Church

Carter doing a fun and hilarious game at the Fall Festival at Church.

The sky was beautiful over the Fall Festival. Photos did not do it justice.

Decorating cookies at the Fall Festival.

Dawson's poor wasp sting after 48 hours.

He was so tough!

This was a highlight of Fall Break.

I took all 4 kids to Let's Play and THEY LOVED IT!

Fun at Let's Play

More fun at Let's Play

We visited the Huntsville Botanical Gardens which are always a favorite outing.

They had all the scarecrow, pumpkin, and fall decorations up. So pretty!

And we did the corn maze there.

The weekend at the end of Fall Break was John's work picnic.

It was SO fun!

Nora Kate and Clayton had fun sitting in this slingshot.

Dawson, Carter, and I rode a ranger on an off road track.

Helments and safety glasses required...yes, that's me in the back...hah!

There were also tons of inflatables!

What's fall break without a few extra times fishing?!

The finished framing our new home and putting in the windows this month so we decided it was time for another pizza party at the construction site! We ate in the "kitchen" this time.

After we all wrote Bible Verses throughout our house on the wood frames.

I hope the kids will always remember doing this.

I have pictures of all the verses, but this was the verse we wrote over our mantle.

It's October in Alabama which means cotton in every direction.

John let Nora Kate pick a piece. She thought this was so neat.

Shopping with these two sweeties...can you tell one loves it and the other tolerates it?!

The cotton fields really are beautiful right now.

Homeschool Pre-K is continuing to go amazing with my sweet girl. She and I both very much look forward to this time each week.

Carter's new favorite sweet treat...Apple slices with peanut butter spread on top and then chocolate chips and oats and granola sprinkled on top! I had to take a picture of him enjoying it one day because he said, "When I'm a grown up I'm gonna feed this to my kids! It's so good!"

Carter wore his skeleton shirt a few times in preparation for Halloween.

I think I can see his funny bone...can you?!

We went to Lyon Families Farm this month. This was such a fun time!

All the kids liked the giant jump pad!

The ziplines were a huge hit!

All 6 of us enjoyed the big slides!

Clayton would always flip over and slide down on his tummy about 1/3 of the way down. Silly boy!

We did the corn maze at Lyon Families Farm

and surprise...Carter found corn! Ha!

Corn maze!

Carter took this picture

Cow car ride!

Pumpkin pickin'

That's Carter way out there in search of the perfect pumpkin!

On the hay ride

We had an awesome time and can't wait to go back next fall!

Nora Kate was thrilled to go to a yoga class this month at the Y.

I couldn't get over how cute she looked with her yoga mat and clothes.

Carving our pumpkin.

Clayton thought the inside was "NASTY!" and "GROSS!"

The big kids picked out a pretty intricate design they wanted carved in the pumpkin.

It was slow, but fun!

And I was SO pleased with how it turned out...the kids-especially the boys-LOVED it. They had wanted a scary jack-o-lantern this year, and they were thrilled!

More fishing...I think Dawson would fish every day.

We love having a lake in our neighborhood we can walk to for fishing.

Oh, here's one more picture of that jack-o-lantern we carved!

A rainy day trip to the space and rocket center.

We even decided to see a 3d imax movie while we were there. Check out our cool glasses!

Clayton really liked the robotics exhibit this time. He had fun with the controlers.

Carter came home from school one day and informed me he wanted to make his own after school snack.

I came back in to find him having spread peanut butter on graham crackers and then topping it with chocolate syrup!

Clayton was a gnome for Halloween!

The boys both got awesome report cards for the first 9 weeks of school!

Dawson now gets letter/number grades and he got all A's.

Carter gets 1's, 2's, or 3's based on level of comprehension and mastery, and he got all 3's! (That's the best.)

So that evening we went to the arcade to celebrate! Dawson was the big winner as you can see from the picture, but he was kind to share with his siblings.

The last week of the month soccer and basketball overlapped. We were in the final bit of soccer with the end of season tournament and basketball practices started for the big boys. Here is Carter ready for his first practice. (He's been into kind of wild socks lately and bonus points for if he can pull them up high on his little legs-he loves it!)

Nora Kate's soccer team was ranked 2nd for the season after all ten games. Then when it was tournament time her team lost, but they played really well. I enjoyed watching her and her team play this season. There were lots of sweet girls on her team, and she really enjoyed being part of a team. Here her coach is handing out trophies and medals.

She had a great team and great coaches for which we were very thankful. This was the perfect introduction to a team sport for our sweet girl!

Nora Kate and her coach!

Nora Kate's first ever trophy! She's so excited that "I have a trophy like the boys now!"

And her team got a medal for their 2nd place season!

John took this picture of the boys outside Target one day, and I just thought it was too cute not to save on here.

Beautiful sky driving home one evening.

Three of the kids by the beautiful wildflowers near the neighborhood lake.

At the end of October John went to Minneapolis for work. He flew, of course, and so the kids and I took him to the airport which the kids thought was so cool! While he was there he also attended a Minnesota Vikings football game.

And played Whirly Ball

Meanwhile we were back in Alabama finishing out the soccer season with lots of tournament games.

On this particular night Carter's team ended their season. This boy LOVES soccer and was so excited to get trophies! Here his coach is awarding him his trophy and saying a little bit about him. Carter also had a good coach!

This group of boys sure liked to have fun!

We had a Halloween playdate at the park on the morning before Halloween complete with caramel sprinkle apples, jack-o-lantern oranges, and brownies.

The night before Halloween we finished up our soccer season. We had 35 games over the course of 6.5 weeks. We really did enjoy it...by the very last game, though, I did feel a little like we all deserved a trophy!

Our Halloween dinner. Mummy dogs, carrots, skeleton cheese puffs, and a jack-o-lantern orange.

John also went to the Mall of America while he was in Minnesota.

John flew back home on Halloween which worked out so perfect to be able to go trick or treating as a family. We had originally planned to go trick or treating in our neighborhood where we are building, but we saw so much activity in our current neighborhood that we stayed here, and it was perfect! SO many houses decorated for Halloween which made it really fun. Clayton said all of them were, "pookie pookie!" (Spooky spooky) haha! The weather was also perfect.

This year we had a gnome, a unicorn, a storm trooper, and a lego police man!

I always want to coordinate their costumes, but they always want to be such different things that it's always kind of fun seeing what an interesting mix of people and things we are!

Even though these Halloween pictures were technically the end of the month, there are some more pics from October from our good camera that I just can't get in the right order. So here they are...

I didn't realize it had cooled off one day, and it got breezy and cool at soccer. All I had was an extra cardigan for Nora Kate, so Clayton had to wear that. He looked pretty cute though!