A Spooktacular October

For the month of October, I officially fail at this blog stuff. I often harass some of my sisters for not updating their blogs with pictures of their families. A little hypocritical I suppose.

October was quite the eventful month for us. I finally got a job to keep me occupied in the afternoons. I work as a teacher’s aide in a special education classroom in Lindon. Some days are more fun than others, but I love working with the kids and sharing those awesome learning moments when they finally pronounce something right, understand a concept, or are just being obedient. And unlike Romania, all but about 2 of the kids actually understand me when I talk to them (language barrier aside). I definitely have less energy these days but it’s much better than sitting home all day. Oh…the money is kind of nice too I guess! =)

Last year when I flew down to see Mark , we bought a pumpkin to carve but never got around to carving it. This year we carved pumpkins with our downstairs neighbors who are pretty cool people. This was our creation. We’re pretty proud of our little guy.

We also had Halloween in which Mark’s work had a mandatory attendance costume family party. With little time and few do-able ideas, we sent him as Honey Bunches of Oats. My creativity just shines with the ribbon which was looped through the box sliced open by a kitchen knife. Making our Christmas stockings this year should be an interesting craft for me. This is actually Mark at our ward Halloween picture scavenger hunt. We found a spooky house (I think).

We also decided to try our hand at Caramel apples. We waited too long to buy the small baking caramels so we had to just buy a prefab container of caramel and melt it. For a first time attempt, I think we did rather well….the bottoms were a lot of caramel to bite into!

Going forward into November a bit: My parents have season tickets to the BYU football games. They were having a deal where for a limited time, season ticket holders could buy tickets for other games. Figuring I would not beg my husband to spend our money on a frivolous football game, they offered to get us tickets to my last football game as a current cougar. (I'll be graduating in April.) We chose November hoping it would be cool. It was perfect weather! A little warm at first, but by half-time, it was beautiful. We sat 2^nd row from the top underneath the press boxes so this was the view we had of the fall colors:

And since I'm horrible at getting both of us in pictures for the blog, I forced myself to do one at the game. And yes, we are wearing matching BYU football shirts.

We are looking forward to the next month or so of holidays and more adventures. We will celebrate Thanksgiving here in Utah with my family, and Christmas with the Littlefields in California. Mark also promised me a real Christmas tree this year! I can't remember the last time I had a real tree. Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I think that’s because it’s a chance for my huge family to gather, all of our silly differences are put aside, and just be happy and laugh together. I love the dynamics of my family now that we're all adults. There's always something or someone making the holiday eventful/entertaining. Thankfully this Thanksgiving will actually be round two for Mark, and hopefully less traumatizing!