October

10/1 - my parents came to visit, and my dad helped us add an outlet to a room that only had an outlet near the ceiling.  Now I have the computer plugged in near the floor and no extension cord hanging down the wall!  It looks SO much better.  Thanks Dad, Jason & Josiah!  

Later that day we walked around the Japanese gardens in Springfield.  It was really pretty!  Then we took my parents out to dinner for my mom's (belated) birthday.

10/2 - Josiah gets baptized!  Such an exciting day!!  My parents, Jason's parents, and Jason's grandparents all got to be there to celebrate with us.  We stayed after church and had a pizza party.  I'm so proud of this guy!

10/4 - Levi climbing around on the hay bales while Paw Paw (Jason's dad) fixes our tractor tires (which split open in a couple of spots).  This fix saves us about $2,000 in new tires.  Thank you!!

10/5 - a friend and I do another cooking day at school, feeding about 65 students & teachers.  It turned out well!

10/6 - Levi starts swim lessons!  He was very afraid of getting water in his face, to the point of tears, so he's learning to get comfortable and safe while swimming.  He ended up being the only one in his lesson, so he had one-on-one attention which was fantastic.

10/7 - my friend Piper came to visit!  She and the kids stopped by on their way from Michigan to Texas and got to spend the night with us on the 6th.  We hadn't seen each other in 10 years and had never met each other's kids.  It was so great to see them, and I loved that our kids were instant friends (even though poor McKenzie wasn't feeling well).

10/8 - I drove up to KC for a day trip to go to the funeral of Karen's father.  So sorry for their loss but thankful for no more suffering and that he gets to be with Jesus!

10/11 - Levi and a friend get to go explore at a farmstead/park in Springfield on a beautiful fall day.

10/22 - I did a fun 5K evening race wearing glow sticks called Light Up the Vern.  Jason and the kids were there to cheer me on.  Josiah even ran the last 1/8 mile with me.  There were fireworks and custard afterwards which we all enjoyed.

10/24 - Pumpkin carving fun.  Levi carved this freehand all by himself.  Hahaha, just kidding.  It was a traced pattern that I did by myself because he had no interest.  It was very intricate and took me way too long!  So enjoy it, you must.

10/25 - Josiah carved his the next day because he had boy scouts the night before.  His was a pattern too, but he actually did help me carve it (see!  I have proof!).  They both turned out really cool.

10/29 - Jason and I had a date night out - just because we hadn't done that in a while.  We had a really nice and yummy dinner.  We really didn't think through the fact that it was Halloween weekend when we planned it.  Most people at the restaurant were dressed up (apparently we picked a Halloween hot spot).  The restaurant even had a haunted maze in the back which was actually kind of cool.  So we spend most of our dinner trying to figure out costumes, admiring the good ones, and laughing at some of the crazy ones.  Did you know that you can turn big bird into a slutty costume?  Then we stopped by a karaoke club for a couple of minutes just to check it out.  There we saw Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (both amazingly well done costumes) sing a duet.  Hilarious.  I had so much fun hanging out with my husband!

10/31 - Halloween!  Didn't you know that Kylo Ren wears Nikes?

Chewbacca was so adorable.  I even got him the talking Chewbacca mask which is hilarious.

We had a church event at a friend's house where we handed out full sized candy bars.  It was really fun!  I made costumes for Jason and I because I didn't want to spend $40+ apiece on them.  They turned out pretty good, although there were a couple of g-rated wardrobe malfunctions by the end of the night.  I made Han Solo's belt buckle out of clay based upon a super helpful online tutorial, but the part that connects to the holster broke off by the end of the night.  Oh well, it looked cool for a while!  Unfortunately for Jason, it was an unseasonably warm evening, so the Han Solo polyester shirt, tall boots, jeans and insulated vest were a bit stifling!

Enjoying some s'mores.

Fully in character.  Thankfully he didn't murder his dad.

AND...you guessed it!  Month 3 of still waiting on the guy in Nebraska to buy the red poll cattle.  There were a couple of times that he said he was coming down to pick them up, but then had to turn around because of truck or trailer problems.  By this point, I'm thinking that this deal is not going to work out.  More on this to come!