On Monday of this week, we had a special visitor come to our house.

This is Wei Chin or Eric as he is known in the United States.  About 20 years ago he was a university student in Taiwan when his friend invited him to a meeting with a certain Elder Skinner.   Today he is married, has three children, and is a stake president in Taiwan.  What a thrill for Kevin and for all of us to see some of the fruits of his missionary labors!  He is here with some exchange students.  We made him some fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and then had a family home evening where he told of his conversion and bore testimony.  It was wonderful!  Hurrah for Elder Skinner!  Hurrah for Wei Chin!

 

I neglected to mention last week that Calianne got her hairs cut!  Isn’t she cute?  She has been growing out her bangs for quite awhile and with her new haircut she feels that they are officially gone!  Cheyenne has kept her bangs short and her hair long.  Now they are much easier for other people to tell apart, but I didn’t have anything to do with it!  I just let them be who they want to be. . .

 

Well, it was the week of Halloween!!  So, we finally harvested the only thing we managed to grow in our garden this year.  We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, mini watermelons, cantaloupe, spaghetti squash, zucchini, yellow squash, and . . . pumpkins.  I did get one or two zucchini and squash.  I got maybe ten tomatoes.  (Hello???)  Thank goodness for the pumpkins.  We got ten in our tiny garden.  They made us feel better! 

And they saved us money on jack o’ lanterns!

I love carving jack ‘o lanterns.  It is such a fun tradition – creative, inexpensive, involves nature.  Wonderful!

Okay, enough pumpkin pictures.  On to costumes!

Savannah and Sarah actually got to dress up to multiple themes over at the junior high.  They dressed up as their teachers for one of the days.

Yes, Savannah is wearing make-up, heels, and has her hair pulled back.  She was mistaken for a student teacher more than once – which she loved.  The heels?  Not so much!

I didn’t get Savannah dressed for “freestyle day” but here is Sarah in all her free-loving crazy style!  Yes, she is wearing a skirt on her shoulders.

My four elementary students got to dress up on Thursday.  There was no school on Friday because of parent-teacher conferences.  Fun times.  Devil, Vampire, Cowgirl, and yes, a Crescent Moon (she came up with that all on her own!)

  On Saturday, everyone dressed up again to go trick or treating, of course.  This time Bethany got to get in on the act.  She dressed up multiple times throughout the week and was so excited to finally go!  Everyone who was treated to her little voice crying, “Trick or Treat!” was instantly enchanted.  No matter how cute the older ones dress, there is nothing like the two-year-old trick or treater!

Benjamin didn’t get dressed up.  He stayed home with Dad and Savannah passed out candy to all the trick or treaters.  His sisters shared their costumes with him, regardless.

 

Benjamin has mastered rolling from his back to his stomach.  He already had the roll from his stomach to back.  So that means he kind of gets around.  The boy can log roll!  He also puts everything . . . EVERYTHING into his mouth.  These are not good combinations to have happening right at leaf time.  The fallen leaves from autumn get tracked into our home and guess what I end up digging out of the back of Ben’s throat?  Poor guy.  Poor me.  I figure we have a week, maybe two before he starts to crawl.  Hopefully, he’ll grow out of putting everything in his mouth by then.  :)  I crack myself up.