October activities

We have been busy as usual. Our family got to participate in a lot of musical activities in October, which I was very happy about.

At the beginning of the month our Stake did a special celebration and commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Dallas Temple. Our bishop's wife and I played a special flute duet for the program, an arrangement of 'I love to see the Temple.' They had a slide show that included some of the pictures we had taken on our primary trip, and it turned out really nice. They had an exhibit of artwork and other neat things, including the gold painted shovel President Hinckley had used at the ground breaking, and a sculpture that is normally housed in the temple lobby (they let us borrow it). It was a nice evening.

The next week we went with a few of our friends to a wonderful, free concert put on by the US Army Jazz ambassadors. It was probably the best free concert I have ever been to - extremely talented musicians. The kids loved it as much as the adults. The theatre where they had it was beautiful.

We had our primary program the last Sunday of October, and our family was asked to sing 'The Family is of God.' It was our first time singing for anything as a family, other than Christmas caroling, and it went pretty well. I really liked the theme and I think the message about families touched a lot of people.

We had a fun stake activity that week where the singles put on a comedy show, with the help of volunteers. The boys ended up being called on as volunteers, and Ethan and Shaun were put into a little vignette with the Stake president, playing his grandsons. It went something like this: "Grandpa, you're old." "Were you on Noah's ark?" "No" "Did you Drown?" haha.
Our stake president is a pretty neat guy, he was game for being made fun of.

The kids had a pretty fun halloween despite my being a halloween grinch. I was just not up for the whole making and finding costumes this year so they had to be creative and do it on their own for the most part. They did pretty well. Shaun was a graduate, Jacob was a cowboy, Jeremy was Anakin Skywalker, Ethan was an Elephant, and Alaina was Alaina. Yeah, once again, she wouldn't get dressed up. She did this last year too (although at least last year she dressed up long enough to take a picture). I always looked forward to dressing up a little girl at halloween, but she won't have anything to do with it. Same with doing her hair. The most she was willing to do was wear a flowered hat. Good enough, I guess.

We had a church trunk or treat the night before halloween, with a chili cook off, bounce house and games. It was actually a sort of chilly evening. It has been really beautiful weather most of the time, though, wonderful for spending time outside. The leaves turn gold and fall off the trees, but it is all sunny and warm, so it just looks like sunbeams falling down in 70-85 degree weather. It's different, but nice. They don't have the reds and bright oranges like they have in Utah, but it is still pretty.

Our actual halloween was spent at the zoo, where we were invited for a birthday party of one of our friends' kids. We got access to all of the zoo so we came early and looked around, then went to the party where we got to see a few of the animals up close. They brought in a penguin, an opossum, a crocodile (that one was a little scary to see 2 feet from my kids), and an owl. It was one of the coolest birthday parties I have been to.

We have also been busy with our new homeschool group. We found a few LDS homeschoolers who were looking for friends, and planned some park days, and in a period of just a few months our group has grown to 12 families. One of the moms is teaching them drama and putting together simple plays for them to perform, and the kids are having a great time with it. We are planning some service projects for the holidays and hoping to start some group classes in January. I have somehow ended up in charge of the group and the website, which I wasn't planning to do, but it is enjoyable and I am excited to be part of helping it grow.