October 2016 little things

This is how Lucy’s texts always look:

Where does she come up with some of this stuff?

For Fall Break we got to soak in the grandeur of Lake Powell:

 (Back HERE)

We got there earlier than the other families and had a little “scum” tournament before they arrived.

And had a little hiking/closet-cleaning aftermath that I wrote all about back HERE.

That is a campfire on a beach in case you were wondering…

We watched some serious soccer.  School soccer wrapped up (back HERE), and club is still going strong:

We also got to go to a few football games to watch our cheerleader.

Lucy brought her traditional reading material:

This particular game was homecoming.

Each class had their own huge poster and did a dance at half time.

It was so weird to be there amidst that throng of kids (not so many on the other side) and reminisce about my own high school days so long ago.

Man alive high school is fun.

And these Junior High kids had stars in their eyes about getting there some day:

More about that over HERE.

Meanwhile over in Hawaii:

(More about Elle’s first semester over HERE.)

…and meanwhile over in Taiwan:

Max was an office Elder for a couple months.  He was the “Operations Manager” and missed being out in the field like crazy (although he was out teaching every night and found a really awesome guy who was able to get baptized).  He learned a ton and I have to get busy doing some kind of an update on him soon.  His letters are hard to organize because some are audio files of him talking (which we LOVE) and some are just answers to a list of questions, so I am trying to find a good way to organize it all.

Family FHE at Costco…

 …those are some of my favorite nights.  Get the shopping done at the same time as quality bonding and no dishes.  Win/win in my book!

 She looks extremely excited to meet my girls don’t you think?

Ha!

Dave got a new stake calling and this is the only picture of him I got that day…

Still posting though cause it’ll help me remember!

Shadow-your-student day that we were pretty excited about:

FaceTime with our sweet baby Moses over in London:

…accompanied by trying to figure out how to move over there so we can snuggle him in person!

Date night with Lucy:

The founder of Rising Star came to the desert and did a little presentation at my friend’s house:

 Oh man it made me miss our time over there SO much.  (Posts about that are back HERE, HERE and HERE and HERE).

Some day we will go back!

Claire and Elle sending pics back and forth of what we were each doing:

 These girls are scaring me turning into teenagers before my very eyes.

My best practicer:

Another game:

One weekend in the middle of October we helped with my friend’s daughter’s wedding.

Our job was to clip branches and make arbors for the reception:

 (That’s what I made the salad for that I shared the recipe back HERE.)

But there was some sort of mix-up of communication and we were suddenly in charge of decorating this whole thing for the reception:

It was the craziest night because Homecoming and our neighborhood Halloween party and a few other things were all the same night so we were all kind of scrambling.

But it all turned out pretty beautifully:

That’s the second of good friends’ daughters to tie the knot.

Sure makes me think about when that’s coming for me.  Hoping not for a good long while!

Grace sent off all her friends to go Homecoming.  She won’t be 16 until June.

I thought she might be sad to miss out but she came home that evening and breathed a huge sigh of relief that she wasn’t going.  All that hair and make-up and prepping made her tired.  I’m sure she’ll change her mind about all that some day…

And so was this Halloween neighborhood party:

 (That I talked about back HERE.)

Lu and I finished Prince Caspian:

This is what she came up with:

Dave’s nephew and his wife moved here recently from Milwaukee.  Remember their wedding back HERE?  We got to have them over for dinner and some FHE games:

All of Dave’s in-town family headed over to help them move into their new place:

So happy to have them join the desert crew here!

Book Club came and went.  (We read “The Aviator’s Wife” which I wrote about back HERE.)

But I didn’t write about the cookies Kara made for us, which is very important:

…because they were Levain copy-cats, and they were SO GOOD!

I’ll share the recipe this Thursday so get excited!

Watched a couple of my Young Women play volleyball in “Max’s old gym” 🙂

Taught Art Masterpiece on perspective:

Wish I had more pictures from that because those kids did awesome!

Worked with Lucy on her Halloween outfit…

Grace opened her first real bank account:

She has officially graduated from our family bank account (back HERE and money system is HERE) and is doing so great with it!

That girl is really shining as the oldest one home these days!  Love having her rule the roost.

Lucy finally got her birthday gift at the end of the month (kind of a fiasco getting it figured out):

It’s a “gizmo” watch.  Her friend had one and we figured it would be a good independence thing for her.

Little did we know it would be so great and helping her get her exercise in.  Here she is one day on her way home from the bus moving her arms around like crazy since she realized that thing would count her arm movements as steps:

Ha!

Reading time together with my girls is sadly getting more sparse these days (they are growing out of it all) but I love when we can squeeze it in:

Random pic. of Max since he needs to be more accounted for in this post:

A paddle-board exercise morning with these women:

And a pretty funny group message/text/ pic with some friends:

One Sunday when I had so much to catch up on in planning and thinking I assigned these girls to do the whole Sunday dinner without me.  (We always cook together on Sundays.)

They were the BEST at whipping up that meal.

Made me so happy!

Lucy is not pictured but she did her regular awesome job setting the table with notes to each of us.  Here’s my brother’s which made us all laugh:

(He was living with us at the time between houses.)

We do “huddles” for family prayers sometimes.

I took a picture after one just so we can remember:

My little girl ready to be a red-lipsticked “robber” on Halloween:

Elle and crew in Hawaii:

More soccer:

(That coach there on the right was new for us in October because of a few different reasons and he kind of rocks.  These girls love him.)

Sunday dinner prep with Elle on Face Time (see that phone propped up against the hairspray bottle?  I know, hairspray in the kitchen?  What the what the??)

Another football game:

I experimented with making pesto since we have such a huge basil bush:

I want to do pesto and fresh bread for our neighbor Christmas gifts but I need to find a fabulous recipe first.  If you have a great one send it on over!

We had three different occasions for pumpkin carving in October (HERE are the first couple along with some Halloween prep).

Then it was HALLOWEEN (back HERE…our “official” pumpkin carving party is at the end of that post).

Phew.  I thought this was going to be short!  But there we go, October 2016 wrapped up.