Oct 31 - Nov 13

2 weeks worth.  Again.  Last week was daylight savings, and we have REALLY struggled with it.  Not that that is a good excuse.  I was also lazy.  

So, what did we do?  We went trick-or-treating.  To about 10 houses.  And the grocery store.  But we had fun handing candy out to people.  I think it was the weather - we had a ton of trick-or-treaters stop at our house.  It was not expected!!

K was a horse this year.

O was a pink flower.

S was Laura Ingalls.

A was a fairy.

E was a sunflower.

Here's all the kids.

Other happenings:
We did some more canning - soup stock and apple pie filling this time.  YUMMY stuff!!

O had an appointment with an audiologist this week.  She has been a few times already - originally I took her to a speech screening to see if she could get into a preschool that is at our elementary school for kids who need help with speech.  She passed her speech screening, but they tested her hearing, and she failed it.  So we've taken her a few times.  This time she had completely different results that the past few times.  Usually its only her left ear that has issues (not bad enough for hearing aids, but it is not improving at all.  that's the main concern is to not let it get any worse.)  but this time her right ear was giving her trouble too.  So we get to back sooner rather than later and make sure things are not getting worse.

Gordon #2 was baptized at the first of the month, and we were very happy to be able to go and support her in this decision she made in her life.

We also had a special day for my mom that day (since everyone was in town for the baptism). She was nominated this year (unbeknownst to her) for the John Hughes Parent/Booster Volunteer Award.  She was not selected to win, but we wanted HER to know that she was nominated and show her the things that went into the nomination process.  My sister Denison also arranged "All Creatures of Our God and King" for us all to play/sing for her.  My 2 brothers-in-law that DON'T play musical instruments "led" the music (and helped with the littlest ones) and the grandkids all sang.  The 8 kids, 5 of the in-laws, and grandpa all played our instruments.  (my hubby couldn't come, he had to work, but the rest of them were there for at least one time through the song!)  It was a neat day. A lot of work went into it, especially into the nominating.  We read her the nomination letters and we all cried as they were read.  My mom is such a neat person.  She gives all she can, then gives a bit more.  She has been giving to the band program here for 28 years. Yes, she has done a lot.  I appreciate all she does!!

Here's the song, my sister had the lens cap on, so it's just black, but we sure do SOUND good!!

We had a birthday dinner for Aunt Slack at grandma's house.

I also went to book club this week.  One of the girls there was saying how nice someone else's lawn looked on Google Maps.  Evidently they had updated the satellite view.  I was curious to how my yard looked with the update, so me and O went looking. Our lawn looked horrible!  Very dead. Really motivates me to get to work this next year making it look better. But that is besides the point. Our van wasn't in the driveway, so we went looking for it. We scanned over Grandma's, Aunt Gordon's, Aunt Denison's, Aunt Bigleman's, Aunt Slack's houses, but there were no cars anywhere!!  Even Grandma's truck and trailer were missing. So I wondered if by some chance we were together camping. So I headed up to the campsite we went to for our family reunion, and this is what I found:

Yup, that's us.  All of us.  Including Aunt Thomas' family that was only up for 4 days all summer.  I thought it was SOO funny!! (and what a messy campsite we had!!)

On a side note, E really likes to play with the hubby's iPod touch.  Especially at church.  I thought it would be funny one day to turn on the camera function.  I realized after she had it for a few minutes that she had turned on the video mode and was taking video of herself.  This (and another one) is what we found when we got home and looked at the iPod. I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. She's a silly goose!!