Tuesday was the high school junior varsity tennis tournament.  Sarah got to participate as Springville High School's JV 4th Doubles.  (If you don't understand all that, ask me and I'll explain.  Tennis is a whole new thing!)  Her usual partner couldn't come, so another teammate, Aubrey jumped into the spot.  They had a great day winning both of their first matches and qualifying for the championship match -- which I got to watch!  There they lost, but that still earned them 2nd place.  Awesome!  Go SHS!  Go Sarah!

So, Sarah spent all day outside at that tennis tournament.  I drove her home and we got back around 6.  At seven, we needed to go to Young Women in Excellence!

There, Savannah, Sarah, Megan, and Mariah did a musical number.  Sarah played piano, Megan played violin, and Megan and Mariah sang.  They did "I Am a Child of God."  Don't you wish you were there??  It was really neat to see them work together on that and pull it off so beautifully.  That night Savannah earned two more personal progress ribbons, Sarah earned four ribbons, Megan earned two ribbons, and they even gave a couple of ribbons to me!  Yay!  We are making progress on our Personal Progress!

Actually, Sarah says she didn't mean to and she doesn't know how it happened . . . regardless, Sarah is now the proud owner of her Personal Progress Award.

The necklace she has on is the symbol of her award and she is standing with our Young Women president.

We are so proud of her.  She says she doesn't know how it happened, but what did happen is that she just kept working on it -- doing a little bit at a time but doing it consistently, and then suddenly it was done.  We think she is pretty cool.  We like her a lot.

On Wednesday was Mariah's last soccer game!  They scored in the first few minutes of the game and pretty much had control of the ball the whole rest of the game.  Mariah had this awesome shot on goal that went over everyone's head clustered around the goal and hit the top pole of the goal!  So Close!!!  It was awesome to watch even if it didn't go in.  Her team had a great season and I know Mariah will miss it!

Their team name was "Skittles," suggested by Mariah herself.

I made this cookie for the team at Mariah's request!

On Thursday, because of Mariah's position on student council, she got to attend a Student Council Conference at BYU with hundreds of kids from other student councils across Utah.  It was a cool experience for her.  She came back with some pretty inspiring quotes that she had written down herself.  I was impressed.  Plus, she got to wear her new student council sweatshirt that even has her name on it!  Too cool!

Friday Megan got to participate in the junior high JV tennis tournament.  She played as Springville Jr. High's 2nd JV singles.  Bethany, Benjamin, and I watched the end of one match and all of another one.  It was a beautiful day and she played great.  She played in six matches and won four of them!  This earned her second place!  Yay!  Go SJHS!  Go Megan!

Saturday Savannah ran in her final race for this cross country season in the Regionals Cross Country Race at Kiwanis Park in Provo.  Kevin and I went to watch her race.  In the words of Savannah's coach, their region is "just insane!"  Meaning, the schools in their region (of which their are eight), are insanely good.  The varsity race runs every school's top seven runners and Savannah came in dead last.  We thought, "Wow!  What is going on?"  But, it turned out that she ran her best time of the whole season  22:41!!  It takes umpah to keep pushing yourself when everyone's ahead of you, and Savannah's got it!  We think she is so cool!  Yay!  Go SHS!  Go Savannah!

Cheering with her team before the race!

The exciting beginning!

Go Savannah!!

The twins still live here as do Ben and Beth.  Cali and Cheyenne are both doing well.  Chey can do an amazing lot of things one-handed.  In fact, she still does everything she used to do, I only notice now and then that she is doing these things with one hand.  She practices piano in the bass cleff.  She does her homework with her left hand.  She hauls things and opens and manages everything just fine.  Sometimes it is awkward, but she does it all without complaint.  She has been a model of enjoying life no matter how it comes.  Still, we are all looking forward to when she gets the cast off because we are excited for her to be done!

Calianne is super excited for Halloween and has drawn some twenty pictures and taped them up in our front windows.  We have ghosts and pumpkins and haunted houses.  She also got out our plastic pumpkins and decorated our porch.  We look very festive thanks to Calianne's industriousness!  She loves a good holiday!

Bethany had preschool (pumpkins!) and dance class and invited friends over as much as she possibly could for dress-up and tea parties and make-believe.  After preschool on Monday, she wanted to go to the library to get Halloween books.  We found a whole bunch and she loves them, even reading them to herself when no one is available.

Ben wants to be doing what everyone else is doing, sitting in laps, climbing into the car, inserting himself into every situation he finds of interest around him!  He chases Beth and her friends, "ROAR!" and then when they're scared and lock themselves into a room, he cries and comes to get me because they won't let him play.  Silly kid.  He loves popcorn and carries it around in it's microwave bag from room to room, chomping as he goes.  We no longer keep the knobs on our stovetop.  They're safely out of reach.

We were given a large box of Granny Smith apples from a neighbor.  She recommended them for apple pie filling rather than applesauce, so I decided to give that a go.  They turned out really pretty!

Hopefully, we'll like them, because I made a lot!  I finished out the box by mixing them with some other apples and making some applesauce.  That means this season, I've done tomatoes, peaches, apple pie filling, and applesauce.  Yay for a good harvest (from my neighbors who share!)!!  Yay!