October

October. Fall. Beautiful colors. Crisp chilly air. Halloween...HALLOWEEN. Ugh. I really do try to like Halloween. 

Just kidding.

But, first things first. 

For the first winter living in this house, we decided to put the wood fireplace to good use. I'm actually a little embarrassed that it took this long. Anyway, we ventured up in the beautiful wooded wilderness of Idaho and chopped our own wood. Twice. We're so adventurous like that. 

Richard has many memories of getting wood with his family growing up. And, we actually aren't nearly as adventurous as they were, but it was still pretty adventurous for us. 

Here is a picture of the finished product. Well, part of it.

Note: It's now the last week of January and we have used most of the wood we chopped. We will need to get more next summer, but I have LOVED burning wood in our fireplace. It is so cozy! And, there's something quite mesmerizing about being able to watch the flames and listen to the crackling of the wood as it burns.


And then, on October 17, my little baby James somehow turned eight. Eight years old! Don't even get me started on the whole, "Where did the time go?" rant. I can't take it. I can't take how annoying it is to hear that from my own mouth and others, or how stinking TRUE it is! But anyway, he's a cute kid, baby or not. 

He decided it would be fun to open his presents while sitting in a box. Maybe that's an 8-yr-old boy thing???

His cousin and little buddy, Will, came to join in on the festivities. 

James helped decorate his cake with the candy "Legos" that Marianne gave him for his birthday. 

James is such a character: Fun-loving, quite obedient and willing to help, and very cuddly and sweet. He likes to sit on my lap whenever he can. He even asks me to pick him up and hold him at times. Even though he is huge, I usually oblige. It won't be long before I just won't be able to anymore. We love you, James! Happy 8th Birthday!!!

Also in October, Richard and I performed a duet, Navarra by Sarasate, with the Rexburg Tabernacle Orchestra. This is a very difficult, but exciting Spanish piece. We have performed it together before, but never with an orchestra as our accompanist. It was a fun and memorable experience. I don't currently have a good recording or picture, so you'll just have to watch this recording of Gil Shaham and his wife performing it and imagine that we sounded exactly the same. ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enh5zIwmy2k

And, last but not least....actually, it is least if we are going off the fact that it is my least favorite holiday. 

I don't decorate. I don't make my kid's costumes. I don't not eat their Halloween candy. I don't throw fun Halloween parties for my kids and all their friends. I don't dress up. 

I'll tell you what I DO do, however. (Just for the record - So I don't go down in history as the world's WORST MOM EVER.) I DO try to make sure my kids have fun. I try - a little bit - to help them get the costume they want. Sometimes, they even get to be what they want. I make sure they get to go trick-or-treating. I even grow/buy pumpkins and allow them to handle sharp knives and make a huge mess in my kitchen whilst "carving" them. When they botch up their pumpkin face, I come to the rescue with my limited creative skills and "fix" it for them. See? I'm such a good Mom. ;)

It must have been cold this night because I didn't take any pictures of the kids on the front porch with the finished product.

On the Monday before Halloween, our elementary school put on a Halloween Carnival. I supposed since it was an FHE night, they planned it assuming that entire families would come. I was also hopeful that the carnival would be at least half as good as the carnivals used to be when I was young. (They haven't even had one at this school in years.) Well, lets just say that Thomas and Marianne were probably the OLDEST kids there. By a lot. (I felt bad for them.) The games were quite lame, as well as the prizes and homemade root beer - if you could even call it root beer. I feel bad for dissing it because I know it's a total volunteer effort, and there were many well-meaning, wonderful parents and teachers who put in a lot of time and energy to pull it off. I do appreciate their efforts, but we were a little underwhelmed. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time there. 

Just to give you an idea...here is the one picture I took from the carnival. You can tell by the look on his face that he wasn't very happy with my taking this. I would never post this on facebook for fear he would be scarred for life, but I figured I could throw it on the blog and be safe. This was the "Cake" Walk...er... "Hostess Cupcake" Walk. He had to play to get one...what do you do? HAHAHA!

Here are the kids all dressed up on Halloween. Marianne wanted to hand out candy to trick-or-treater's, so she didn't actually go trick-or-treating, but the others did. Marianne is Cinderella, James is a ninja, Sarah is Edith dressed as a ninja from Despicable Me 2, and William is the 10th doctor from Dr. Who. I think Thomas was at his friends house. :) Of course, Richard kept with tradition and hid a speaker outside by the front door. Whenever any unassuming children approached the door, Richard made scary sounds or said something in a freaky voice in a microphone that sounded through the speaker for the entire neighborhood to hear. Luckily, a pretty Cinderella answered the door to lessen the terrifying effect. 

And, that pretty much wraps up October! November 1st might be my favorite day with my least favorite holiday out of the way for another year, and my two favorite holidays right around the corner! Thanksgiving and Christmas coming soon. . .