Our front door was looking pretty sad. The paint was chipped, it was pretty stained, and people putting tape on it for flyers has made it sticky. I decided to buy paint and make it look better. The knob wouldn't come off and I didn't want to wrestle with it but I took everything else off so I could paint it. It wasn't hard and it turned out really well.
Hopefully it will stay looking nice. We will see.
The joint activity this month was a Halloween party. They wore costumes (Courtney went as a soccer player), played games (Courtney drank apple cider vinegar without knowing she was going to be drinking it), and had chili for dinner (which Courtney didn't eat). We have a fun ward with some good youth leaders. I am grateful for the time they put into the activities.
Courtney mentioned the other day that she was sad that we didn't have a countdown for Ethan's mission. So we found one with stickers and it came in the mail. She is now keeping track. It's a fun way to keep track of things.
The honeysuckle is trying to green up again. I was amazed to see the little leaves on it. I have high hopes that it will look nice in the spring when things warm up again.
We took a quick trip to Arvada to Grandma and Grandpa Pack's mission farewell. We left our house at 4:20 am so we would have time to spend with them before bedtime. We got there around 1 pm (if I remember correctly). We weren't there even 24 hours but we were glad we had taken the time. The drive was uneventful and we had good roads. I was supposed to take pictures to show Ethan but we only took this one.
Courtney went with Julie and her kids to Elitch Gardens in Denver. It's an amusement park. It is only open until the end of the month so there were A LOT of people there. They were there for 5 hours and only rode 2 rides. They would get close to the front and the ride would break down. It was a bummer.
Sunday was nice. They gave wonderful talks. We ate lunch and then were off for home. We are excited to hear about their adventures in the New Mexico, Albuquerque mission.
A new Ace Hardware opened just down the street from us. Courtney and I decided to check it out on opening day. It's a nice store and they have a wide variety of items for sale. We went to the toy department and began playing around.
I told Courtney that jack-in-the-boxes are scary and I didn't like them when I was young. Courtney wasn't listening to me and started turning the handle. It didn't take long before the thing popped out and Courtney hit the floor! It was hilarious!! She was so scared and began giggling so hard that she was crying. It was the best thing I have been in a long time!
At Success Academy, the sophomores and juniors share the computers. There is one set in each classroom and they log into them. The sophomores really need to make sure they log off the computers. If they don't, the juniors like to change the sophomore's background picture. This is what they did to one sophomore this week....
Haha! I wish they could watch when a sophomore sees their new background picture. That would be hilarious to see their confusion!
The Young Women combined with the Relief Society for an activity. We made "mug rugs" which are kind of like hot pads that you can put your mug of hot chocolate on. We were given a piece of fabric to decorate and then we sewed a liner and another piece on the back so it made a cute little mug rug. Courtney and I had fun while making our project. I didn't have a lot of creativity so I had Courtney write our name on mine then I decorated it.
Courtney's is the one on the left (she loves dinosaurs) and mine is on the right.
Courtney isn't a morning person. She warms up but sometimes she is just kind of grumpy. When we talk to Ethan on Tuesday mornings, she is sometimes grumpy because it throws her schedule off and we try to get her to talk before she is fully woken up. The other day Ethan took this picture of her "annoyed face" while she was talking to him. We had a good laugh when he sent it to us.
She loves her brother and does love to talk to him, she just wishes it wasn't first thing in the morning. ;)
We wanted to reward Courtney for having a good attitude during the soccer season. BYU soccer was playing at South Field and Courtney had been dropping hints that she wanted to go (they were NOT subtle hints, haha). She was at school on Friday and texted me to say that she would like to go to Provo even if we didn't go to the soccer game. I laughed because I had already purchased soccer tickets. So I sent her a picture of the tickets and she went nuts!
We didn't leave until midmorning but the drive was beautiful and we had a great time. We went window shopping, walked around BYU campus, and got to the game in time to watch them warm-up. Our tickets were almost mid-field on the 3rd row. It was cold but we had blankets and coats so it wasn't bad.
One of the refs had huge quads and Courtney couldn't get over how huge they were. It was hilarious.
The Giants were playing the Dodgers and we wanted them to win so Courtney got her Buster Posey jersey on. Unfortunately, it didn't help and the Giants lost and were out of the World Series run. It was a good season and we had fun watching them but now Bryan will be sad until the next baseball season.
The Varsity team made the playoffs and their first game was against Desert Hills. They had 1-1 against Desert Hills so they were hoping to have a good game. It didn't go their way, however, and Desert Hills won.
It was a challenging season with new coaches, a new system to learn, a high ankle sprain, and a new number. But Courtney did a great job keeping her head up during all the challenges and made the best of things.
Now we get to focus on the club soccer season and track. It never ends.
"Who wears shin guards during practice?" That's what Courtney asked me after she showed me her bruise. One of her teammates kicked her in the shins. Here is how her bruise has progressed.
I told her the purpose of having shin guards is to avoid something like this but she just rolled her eyes. Oh well.
Bryan has been hired as the Mesquite, NV City Attorney! We are really excited about this new opportunity. One concern was the commute down. We didn't have a car that wouldn't cost a lot for gas to go down and back. Bryan did a lot of research and found an electric car to buy. It's a Hyundai Ionix and is fully electric. It has a range of about 125 miles, which works because the round trip to Mesquite is 82 miles. Since we have solar panels, and we aren't using all the electricity we produce, it won't be much of a cost to drive the car there and back.
It was delivered and Bryan began trying to figure out how to drive it the most efficient way he could.
It has been a rainy start to October. I saw this double rainbow as I was running errands. I didn't get a very good picture of it, but you get the idea. It's cool to see the beauty in the world.
We have honeysuckle next to our front steps at our house. I love the smell of the honeysuckle when the flowers are in bloom. This year, we didn't have very many flowers and it wasn't as green as it has been in past years. I realized one day that I hadn't trimmed it in a couple of years. So I took the clippers and went to town. It was disgusting! There were molded leaves and all kinds of insects. I didn't get it all the way cleaned like I wanted to but after 2 hours, I thought I had made a big enough dent that I was ok with stopping.
Ethan likes to talk to us while he is cuddled under his blanket in his bed. ;) He took these pictures as we were chatting with him. It's fun to have family pictures when we are talking to him. haha!
