This was a hectic week, especially at home with various kids coming over for J.J. to watch when she wasn't working. ( This all added up to a big melt down for me this week. I watched a boy I don't usually watch one morning for a few hours and longer than I expected and I watched Logan for a little longer than I expected one day also and in the same day got Katey off the bus. Plus I was tired, feeling big, etc, etc, boo hoo, but I lost it and thankfully Logan's mom recognized my stress before I burst into tears and offered to take the girls to the park for an hour or so - that's when I burst into tears.) It was also a busy week at work for me, with continued discussion about our proposed revision of the first-year composition course from all parts of the university. It became much more political than I expected, and furthermore, lots of people suddenly have an opinion about how to teach writing, and how we aren't doing it right. Meanwhile, I have plenty of ideas how to better teach economics, biology, art and all the other courses on campus.
We had a near freeze two nights this week, so there were a couple of cold mornings when I went running, but then by the weekend it warmed up to a nice Indian Summer, I guess one could call it. That made a great Halloween, so we barely needed a sweatshirt to walk around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. Claire and Katey wore themselves out going house to house, and Rachel caught on very quickly that people were handing out candy. She wasn't shy about going up and grabbing something from the bowl. At one house the lady held the bowl out for kids to choose something, and amazingly both Claire and Rachel chose apples. But no other house had that choice. After the candy walk, we all went to our neighbors, Bob and Esther's house, and visited with them for awhile. (Apparently we were their only trick-or treater's besides the two kids across the street. Our street is not busy on Halloween unlike in Flagstaff where our neighborhood was the one everyone drove to) Then Claire slept over at Katey's house, where they had a little party with two other girls as well, and J.J. and I got Thai takeout and had a quiet evening. (Claire and Katey both were begging to go home after going just 1/2 way around a circle of houses near here. Bridget, Paul and I had to talk them into "just a few more houses". There was no stopping Rachel though. She got the hang of it very quickly and was not going to let anyone touch her candy bag. If we wouldn't open a piece of candy for her, she just chewed on the wrappers until she got through to something. It was a very pleasant evening. Claire went to Katey's for a slumber party and Bridget went all out. There was tons of food, snacks, candy, they played Twister, Musical chairs, pin the nose on the pumpkin and watched movies. Claire was the youngest one and the only one to make it through the night - one girl went home about 11:30 and another girl went home about 4:30am because they couldn't get hold of her mom until then. All the girls were wiped out!)
The Halloween evening was just the conclusion of an extended Halloween day. Claire dressed up for the ward party, for the library storytime twice -- once for Rachel's on Tuesday and once for hers on Wednesday, and then dressed up for her dance class on Friday before changing into another costume for trick-or-treating. But it was fun for Claire especially. (Claire had been planning for weeks on what she wanted to be for each dress up - here was the line-up: ward party - Minnie Mouse, storytime x2 - Unicorn, dance class - Belle, and trick or treating - Minnie Mouse again. Rachel was a bumble bee for everything.)
Saturday morning I ran 12+ miles in the morning, and then I finished a job I had begun on Friday afternoon. I had the piles of tree limbs from our downed trees still sitting on our front lawn because the garbage service wouldn't pick them up and because to burn them I had to wait until Bob's tomatoes were done. So he said he was ready to burn this week, so I worked a rope through part of the pile -- not too easy -- and then tied the rope to my lawn mower and dragged it over to Bob's garden to pile up and burn. I made about 6 trips, and two of my piles were just little too much for the lawn mower once I got to the grassy area that had a little more resistance. So when I finished it up, I had to move some branches about 10 yards to the pile a few at a time, and then Bob hooked up his lawn mower with a bit more power to drag the other pile, but I had to help pull as well for that to move that pile. We got the pile all made and made a big bonfire and in an hour or so they were all gone. What a relief! I was really happy to get those piles off the front yard. (I took pictures of them burning, so if there was a burn ban still in place, I was sure to have evidence that it wasn't me :) It was pretty cool bonfires, but they sure burned quickly)
I had an hour or so to relax, and then I went with my friend Trevor to the Stake Priesthood leadership meeting in Paducah, an hour drive, at 3:00. It was an especially good meeting because Elder Spencer Jones from the seventy was there along with Elder David L. Cook -- area authority I think -- to reorganize the stake presidency. They both gave good talks and it was good. After the meeting, J.J. and Shara and the kids met us and we all went to eat at a hamburger place, and then I took the girls home and J.J. went to the adult meeting. When we got home I gave the girls baths and got them into bed. I took advantage of the extra hour and watched the end of the Texas Tech - Texas game.
Today, we had the general session of Stake Conference and the new stake president was the 1st counselor in the former stake presidency, and the new 1st counselor is our bishop. So we will get a new bishop soon, which should be interesting. I had a feeling he would be in the presidency. The girls weren't on their best behavior during the meeting, so we were up and down a lot, but I was able to hear some good counsel from all the speakers, which consisted of the new and old presidency, the mission president, temple president, and general authorities. (I heard about the first 15 minutes - long enough to hear most of the changes and then was up and down, in and out the rest of the time. It makes it really hard for me to want to go to Stake Conference 1 hour away when I spend the whole time stressing about the girls making noise, and pacing the halls chasing Rachel or reprimanding Claire for being a bit naughty and don't hear anything. And it is only going to get worse.) We came home and had dinner and then Rachel and J.J. took naps while Claire and I played outside in the nice weather for a couple of hours and then were inside when it got dark a lot earlier because of the time change.
We hope all of you had a great Halloween! We love you!
We had two families from church join us who also did not have any family close by and they have kids pretty close to our girls' ages. It was sure a fun day eating, visiting and playing.
And the adult table - with a lot of food!!
Class always begins with stretching.
Then Hannah Montana songs get everyone in the mood.
A bit of "Follow the Leader" with pom poms can't be beat.
And once again, patiently waiting for your turn.
Claire is getting really good at right foot, left foot dances. 
A little bit of wheelbarrow fun.
Somersaults on the "piece of cheese".
A bit of crab walking.
And some cool down stretching.
Playing in the leaves makes for some dirty hair!
When I came home from work, I heard her voice outside and began looking around for her and seriously couldn't find her until I finally looked in the pile of leaves and found this.
Later, another face appeared in the leaves also. Katey came to enjoy the fun also.
It was quite a bonfire and boy did it burn quick.
Clarie and Katey who were still having fun at Katey's the morning after the big slumber party wanted to come see the big fire. They went ahead and dressed up for the occasion.
