I knew October was coming and with it bringing a slue of all sorts of busy! And I feared my poor body wouldn’t have the energy level to sustain it al! Thankfully we made it through and all is well. In fact, we not only made it through, but enjoyed the journey along the way!
October is one of my very favorite months. LOVE all the festivities, parties, Halloween, Fall music and smells. This October was no exception. At the beginning of the month, our family enjoyed a quiet peaceful weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s house to watch General Conference, eat yummy food, swim and have our family pictures taken. The pictures turned out darling and it was a fun afternoon down in San Juan Capistrano strolling about and eating at Ruby’s Diner. Dane and Grandma left early to visit the Mission for 4th grade extra credit. We celebrated Stacy’s, Grant’s and my birthday. I was especially spoiled by Grandma with a big bag of 40 AMAZING gifts! It was mostly awesome hair and skin products that I was badly in need of. That, on top of cute holiday pillow/cases, and treats. It was such a surprise and seriously, so kind. And of course the Nothing Bundt Cakes were delicious and so thoughtful. Great, great weekend.
The following week/weekend was one full of friends and fun! First, we were thrilled to have the Calls in town visiting from Arizona. Loved having them over for the day and seeing their new baby Gavin! ADORABLE. All of the kids had grown so much in just one year. It was an awesome day and we were so grateful for their visit. We put on a really fun Halloween night- as we usually do this time of year. Friends came over for dinner and then we put on a pumpkin egg hunt and watched a spooky movie and made caramel apple nachos! It was a blast. The following night, our good friend Carolina performed in a Flamenco Dance show! She’d only been taking for one year so I was proud of her performance! We celebrated our great friend Dallas Jones’s 40th birthday at the Original Pancake House. It was so cute because Blake had told the hostess to announce three times loudly: Table for Old Man Jones. It was cute. We love these friends and were so excited to spend Dallas’s birthday together.
And speaking of 40th birthdays. Blake and I were lucky enough to get away again to Las Vegas to be with the Rustands and other friends (the Taylors and Nieborgs) celebrating Garrett’s 40th birthday. It was so fun to eat out at fancy restaurants, race go-carts, shop, walk the strip, go to an Elton John Concert and just be together! Grandma managed to hold the fort down at home. Not an easy task!!! She got all the kids ready for church, took the boys to their soccer games, handled bedtimes and bath routines. We were so so so thankful!!!! We’ve leaned on Grandma a TON the past month! She might feel like moving to Hawaii one of these days to escape our constant needs- ha!
Towards the end of the month, I was excited to have Cathy in town! It was short but sweet, as it always is! But we stayed up till the wee hours of the morning chit chatting and catching up. Love that we only live 3 hours away from each other. The night after Cathy’s visit…. Ev and I drove up to LA to be with Stacy, shopping and doing Universal Studios— an early birthday present for Evelyn. Grandma watched Anna. It was a super fun weekend.
For Activity Days this month, I relied on an old lesson plan I had put together for the elementary school guidance. We discussed Charlotte’s Web and the meaning of a true friend. The girls were then each given a spider web with their names at the top. They passed the web around and their friends wrote kind words about them in their webs. So cute. Then we created donut spiders!! It was a fun night. Can’t believe Evelyn will be moving on up to YW soon and not a part of our group. BOO!
Remember the mention of busy, busy busy this month? Well… because of this, the kids didn’t get to do nearly the amount of Halloween crafting we normally do! That last week before Halloween, I was gone entirely, managing tech week for Evelyn’s Wizard of Oz play. We needed some Halloween shortcuts and thankfully, we found them at Target! Instead of carving pumpkins, we decorated pumpkins. Dane with nails and yarn and Anna and Grant with wooden facial features. I’m hoping this doesn’t come back to haunt me. Grant really wanted to carve a pumpkin and it never happened- ack! Hope he doesn’t remember and bring it up in a day or two!! So fun to put on Anna’s preschool Halloween party along with the Activity Day/YW Halloween party! Anna absolutely adores preschool and all of her little buddies in her class. She had a blast making jack o lanterns, decorating cupcakes and making donut spiders! I’m REALLY going to miss preschool parties next year!!
