Trunk or Treat

Guess who this is, all dressed up for Halloween! Crystal made this costume last year (with a significant amount of help from Judy). I'm sure she is glad her father dusted it off for the ward trunk-or-treat!

It is a Nacho Libre costume. We named him the Denominator. Notice the division sign on his chest!

I dressed up as a banana. We made quite the couple! We had two trick-or-treaters tonight. It was a sad night! But, the good news was that the boys that came to our house knew our dog. They were so excited to be reunited with Coda. They were the family that picked her up when she briefly ran away from home a few weeks ago.

Brother Bloom, in our ward, did a pumpkin head carving of Brother Murdock. It is incredibly lifelike. Brother Bloom (the carver) is a dental student. I'd say that if that doesn't work out for him, he has a definite future in pumpkin heads!



Amanda's Mission Call

Amanda has received a great blessing. She's been called to serve in the Germany Berlin mission and will report to the MTC January 19th! She is overwhelmed by the call. It is exactly what she hoped for but didn't dare to ask for! We are so happy for her!

Thanks for all your votes. It was fun for us seeing where people guessed. She got more votes for Germany than any other country! Twelve people got it right! Coincidentally, I was one of them!

Band Practice

It was nice to have full group at band practice yesterday. Kaylene brought her friend, Lesly to pump up the numbers. We appreciated her singing along. We're hoping if we practice every week we'll have something ready for the Senior Center by the middle of December. I like Mary holding the new Christmas folder up in the picture. If you look carefully you can see Carrie's bandage on the top of her head! She played through the pain!

Who's Been Eating the Hydrangeas?

Remember when I said we never see any deer at our house?. Cancel that! With the onset of fall, they're coming down in droves from the mountains! Well, there really aren't any mountains, but they're branching out from the reservoir. I guess they don't have as much good food by the lake, so they've moved into my garden. I try to tell myself they're just helping me cut back the hydrangeas, but I really wish they would go eat someone else's flowers! We're going to get an invisible fence for the dog and hope she spends enough time outside to frighten the deer off!

Driveway

This is the day we've been waiting for (okay, just one of the days we've been waiting for!) They started realigning our driveway to the new road! We can no longer get out of our house by driving down our driveway! We can always leave by driving on the grass. That seems to be a way of life for people in Maryland, so when in Rome...

We're hoping to have the driveway done by this weekend. Sadly, it's supposed to rain off and on this week. We might be leaving some ruts in the grass!

Three Girls on the Fire Road

Mary and Joanie and I walked the fire road this afternoon. It's so beautiful that it makes you want to pick up every leaf off the ground and bring them all home and press them in a book of forever memories.

I snapped a picture of Joanie sitting on a log. 

Then, she took the camera and took a nice picture of Mary and me in the leaves and trees!

Fall is definitely my favorite time of year!

Coda's Hitchhikers

Ed and I took Coda for a walk on the fire road yesterday. She picked up a bunch of hitchhikers-little gummy plant seeds as we walked through a thicket. This picture doesn't quite do them justice. She was shoulder deep in them! She was so upset that she rolled franticly  in the dirt to get them off. We calmed her down and spent about 10 minutes cleaning her up. Then, to make her really happy, we gave her a bath when we got home!