October Miscellaneous 2018

October was the quickest month and was mostly consumed by Halloween activities.  But, we did have a few other moments, and a few memories that are worth preserving. 

Josh has been living his dream and working as a stage manger for a concert tour - Machine gun Kelly.  We were lucky that the tour made a stop in Salt Lake City which meant a chance to see him.  He traveled to a different city nearly every day and had very little free time, but was able to get a break during the set up and show time while they were here.  We all met up for dinner at Market Street Grill and had the best time chatting and learning more about his job. 

The kids and I spent a Saturday afternoon at the Fall Carnival for American Leadership Academy where Ada goes to school.  They had a lot of old school carnival games, and plenty of ways to win candy, but the most popular event was the chance to "walk on water".  Both Luke and Ruby waited in line with Miles for a very long time but had so much fun and said it was totally worth it. 

Just an average day at Wal-Mart.

Adios Erika!!!  Erika has talked about moving to Mexico for a long time and on October 21st, she finally did it.  She and Andreas decided on Merida because of its history, architecture, relative safety, and proximity to the beach and other recreation.  They both really want to learn Spanish and purposely picked somewhere without a lot of Americans so that they would be fully immersed in the language.  We were able to spend a lot of time with her in the weeks before she left and then were lucky to be invited to the airport for a final goodbye.  We were all sad to see her leave, and will definitely miss her.  But honestly, I am just so excited for her and all of the adventures she and Andreas will have.  I'm especially excited for the chance she has to learn to speak Spanish.  Their plan is to be gone for six months...maybe more.  We will just hope they don't stay away too long. 

Luke wrote the sweetest note and drew a picture of

He and Erika together

Ruby and I spent an afternoon at Build a Bear making and meeting a birthday bear.  She named her Lea and loves the fact that it says "Happy Birthday" on the paws.  We really had the best time.

Oh how we love our neighborhood gang.

This wild one plays hard...and then crashes.

Brycen has played in the marching band this year and is awesome at percussion.  Tim and the kids were able to spend the afternoon at the final performance/competition and loved seeing him play.

Both Luke and Ruby absolutely love art and are constantly drawing, painting, or creating some type of art project.  I love seeing what their little minds come up with and am thrilled that many of their best masterpieces end up being presents for me. 

Bless Tim's heart...he said that he would help with dinner and make the turkey meatloaf that I had on the menu.  He ran into a few snags - he browned the turkey before mixing everything together, and used about three times the amount of lentils the recipe called for.  But, it ended up being pretty tasty and the kids loved it, so we will call it a win.