October recap

Here's a bit of a recap of what has been going on in our lives over the past month. See the previous post for a rundown on my new job.

For starters, we have been thoroughly enjoying autumn this year. The leaves have been so brilliant. It was sunny for a long time and it seems that the rain has finally returned and we are now experiencing a typical northwest fall. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed every single leaf because I know that once they are gone, winter in this region will seem long. I am trying my best to embrace the cold that has arrived. It's been in the lower 40's but it's been wet and has felt more like the 30s. Bring on the hot chocolate and apple cider!

The kids decided on their Halloween costumes pretty easily this year. Ethan wanted to be Harry Potter and Evan was a ninja. I found a ninja costume for only $10 so I bought it. Harry Potter was a little harder. The costumes were expensive so I had to get creative. I found "glasses" at the dollar store (yay!). We had a wand already (driftwood from camping last year that was the shape of a wand and has been sitting on my Harry Potter shrine all year). We needed a robe, shirt, and tie. I found a free pattern online for the robe and found my fabric at JoAnn's on clearance (and with a coupon) for just $10. Then I set to work:

I have to say, it was fun making this and I think it came out cute. I wish I had made the sleeves longer, but oh well. Ethan liked it and that's really all that mattered. He uses it as a bathrobe now and is ALWAYS wearing it!

Here are some pictures from the night they went to their school's harvest festival. I was glad to be able to go with them. I had to work on Halloween. Mike took them out to Port Orchard to go to Mary & Jay's ward trunk-or-treat activity and also so they could spend the evening with their cousins. I am not sure if Mike took any pictures. If he did, I'll add them later. (In the last picture below, Ethan is wearing a hat he won in a hat walk game.)

Of course we got pumpkins and did pumpkin carving! What would Halloween be without pumpkin carving?

We also had student-led parent teacher conferences at the end of the month. I'm happy to say that both kids did very well. Yay! We took them out to dinner to celebrate... something we only do rarely anymore.

Well I think that about wraps up October. We really didn't do much more than this. There simply wasn't any time! But we are happy and our lives are richly blessed!