Too Many Pictures for a Friday and Saturday

Friday morning Maverick had a biopsy done, so the vet can figure out what is wrong with his skin.  His skin problems have gotten progressively worse over the past year and a half and hopefully we will find something that actually works long term!  I should mention this funny/embarrassing/sad story about Maverick's skin condition.  On Saturday evening, I took the kids to Great Country Farms (pics below) while Erik watched the BYU game (after he cleaned all our carpets I should add!).  I saw that I had a voicemail on my phone and when I checked it, I heard a man (not sounding very nice) say, "I have your dog."  So, I called Erik and gave him the number.  When Erik called him the guy wouldn't tell Erik where he was, and just said Erik would have to contact Animal Control.  So Erik did, Animal Control told Erik where the dog was which on the other side of our double cul-de-sac (sadly we don't know all of our neighbors over there like we should).  Anyway, there was a group of neighbors (that we don't really know other than waving hi each time we pass) congregated around Maverick with a police officer.  They all were throwing daggers with their eyes when Erik walked up to them, and the lady that was holding on to Maverick was saying she would not give Maverick back to Erik, because Maverick's skin looked so bad we were obviously horrible pet owners and we were not even taking care of him.  Erik explained to them that we have been in and out of the vet's office, and he just had a biopsy to figure out the problem and they didn't believe him!  They thought he stuck a cone on Maverick's head himself to try and see if the problem would just go away . . . uh no.  Anyway, they finally gave Maverick to Erik and it was just super uncomfortable.  So the next day on his way home from church, Erik stopped by the lady's house to show her the vet discharge papers and just nicely explain we are taking care of Maverick and Erik didn't want there to be bad feelings between us.  Soooo, anyway hopefully our neighbors don't think we are dog abusers now!  It's interesting though, because we do love Maverick an awful lot, but we are definitely not the kind of people that treat our pet like our children.  Pets are pets.  I will go as far to say that for the year after I have a baby, I don't even really like Maverick all that much.  Sad I know, but there's just only so many helpless creatures I can give my time and energy to, and my kids will always take up pretty much my entire heart and head space.  However, luckily for Maverick we don't have babies all that often so most of the time he's in my good graces and I love playing fetch him and taking him for runs.  Anyway, that was a long story.

Friday afternoon the Staker kids came over so we could watch them while Brittany and Derek went to the temple.  All of the kids played so well together, and I had a really great time playing with them too!

Anna really needed a bath, so she and Maiya had a great time playing together among the warm bubbles!

Dry and cozy, and ready to watch some "George"

On Saturday morning after watching half of Jackson's game, I ran the Berryville park (where the soccer games are) trail.  I thought it would be super boring to repeat the trail so often (it's about a 2 1/2 mile trail) to get to 11 miles, but it wasn't! It was actually a pretty nice run.  I am as slow as molasses, but I'm still proud of myself for doing it :)

At lunch time, Wyatt invited Aidan to Monkey Joe's for his birthday activity (what we do on the off years of no friends parties).  Monkey Joe's on a Saturday is bedlam!  I was just happy we got alive :)

My soon-to-be-five-year-old!

So like I mentioned, we drove out to Great Country Farms that evening, so Jackson could pick out his pumpkin.  This was probably the best pumpkin patch out of the three (!) we ended up going to this year. :)

Because we got to pick out any size pumpkin for our CSA box, Jackson wanted a big one!  We actually couldn't really roll this one (it was too heavy), so he ended up with a slightly smaller, misshapen one.  He was pretty pleased with it!

Rolling the chosen pumpkin to the side of the dirt road.

We were all very impressed that the tractor picked it up with the plow and carried it the whole way as it pulled our wagon ride back to the market!

Safely in the wheel barrow, ready to be carried to the van.

More shots of us at the patch, looking for the perfect pumpkin.

We were fascinated by this bumpy one!

After I took this picture of Anna, I read the sign that said "please no climbing on pumpkins" oops.

And that night, I made Wyatt's birthday cake.  I'm pretty sure my cakes get less and less impressive each year, but this one was actually specifically commissioned by Wyatt to look just like this.   He was very happy that his cake vision was realized. :)

He insisted that I keep a silly picture of him :)