October: Garden, Cornmaze, Alexa's Baby Shower, Halloween, Vid Angel Contests, Fall Photoshoots

October is truly the month of heavy harvest for us, since we can't get our plants in until June.  Our garden did well and we were able to share some with our neighbors, especially carrots!

Our jalapenos really liked the miracle grow we gave them every 10 days.  The plants didn't ever get tall, and there was a time I thought they were about to all die, but even our smallest plants gave us 10 peppers, and our larger ones gave us close to 30 each.  All in all we had enough jalapenos to make 2 batches of jalapeno jelly and a batch of candied jalapenos.

The biggest and smallest comparison.

Every Thursday the Relief Society presidency has a meeting and goes out for visits.  We visit every sister in our ward for her birthday, as well as any new sisters, mothers who recently gave birth, and others, so we are often gone from 3-4 hours each Thursday.

Kelly (the RS president) and I going out for visits.  I snapped this pic because my mom texted me that she was testing her phone and needed me to send her a picture message.

I talked to a friend up the street and asked her if she'd help me finish sewing Lily's nightgown since the lady that was helping us moved away.  She agreed, so Lily finally got her finished gown (it was a Christmas gift) in October.

The donuts at Walmart were too festively fun to pass up!

The girls and I went to a new cornmaze this year in LaPoint with a homeschool group in our ward.  We had the entire place to ourselves and it was a lot of fun and a beautiful day!

We went on a nice drive to take fall photos.  Many of the leaves had already lost their leaves, but the colors were really pretty this year.

Amara bought her own candy corn.  She loves sugar!

Steve made this cookie of his boss.  I guess the faculty at their school were celebrating boss day or something.

When we made a trip down to the Wasatch Front, we got to see the new view from Steve's parent's deck.  A new subdivision is going in right beyond their fence.  It's going to be a subsidized community for the elderly.  Now, it's just a parking lot.

The view from the parking lot

The view from their deck.  There's me and Steve's mom out for a walk.

The baby shower for baby Alexa was in October at Dad and Deb's house.  It was really cute and fun and filled with adorable gifts for Micah and Mandy's little girl!  The food was really yummy too!

My dad just got his braces on!  I still have a permanent retainer, so I thought we should do a daddy daughter selfie with our oral appliances.

Mandy's mom put together a fun game of memory that earned the winner some cute prizes that matched the cards.  For example, I got fruit-by-the-foot for finding the match to "baby booties."

The luncheon was so good!  Gourmet grilled cheese or BLTs with tomato soup, spinach pasta salad, and watermelon.

grilled cheese with candied bacon

BLTs

Spinach pasta salad

Micah and Mandy's family was on the front page of the newspaper!

Our gift we got creative and took out the diapers and stuffed the outfit we bought with them, and made a bitty doll out of diapers!

dessert

When we got back to Roosevelt, Halloween festivities were in full swing.  The Roosevelt homeschoolers got together at the park for a costume party and soup lunch.

Amara wanted to be a pig for this party.  Lily was a pirate.

I was surprised no one knew what I was.  I'm a yellow crayon.

Even the healthy snacks got the Halloween treatment.

Soup buffet!

The kids played with balloons with ghost faces on them and tried to see how long they could keep them in the air.

There's a house in Roosevelt that goes all out for Halloween and they decorate heavily and allow people to come over and walk through their yard.  It's really cool.

There's a guy in that big creepy costume, but he was very friendly and invited us to take a picture with him.

Our ward trunk or treat was fun.  I was a crayon again.  Both Lily and Amara were pirates and Steve was what a school teacher feels like inside.

My mom's interpretive costume was "Queen I'm-a-dollar," a play on Queen Amidala from Star Wars

Amara decorated our van all by herself.

Lily in her pajamas and her grandma Christensen in front of their flowering plum tree.

We did our best to support VidAngel by entering their contests.  We love VidAngel.  If we had won, we could've had free movies for a year.  Unfortunately, Hollywood took them to court and shut them down earlier this year indefinitely, so even those who did win didn't get movies for very long.

Lily decorated this cake

Amara decorated this cake

On Halloween, we all were kinda Halloween-ed out because of all the parties already, but we did go out for a bit anyway.  We weren't in a hurry.  We waited forever to get cotton candy at this one house up by the golf course.  It took 45 minutes in a line just for that house alone.  Then the girls trick or treated at a few homes and decided to be done for the night.

More vid-Angel stuff.  Amara made this sign.

Carved a pumpkin for Vid Angel.

I dressed up as a VidAngel

Fall is a great time for photoshoots!  Here is some Steve did of Amara and of Hayley and Scott's family.

A Woman Who Has Nurtured My Faith

In church this past Sunday, I taught the Relief Society lesson.  It was about being a daughter of God and the marvelous the power of women of faith.  I had the ladies bring a picture or trinket or anything to share about a woman that has nurtured their faith, then I gave them time during class to share with their neighbor about the woman they chose.  We ran low on time, so I never got to share about the woman I decided to speak on, so I  thought I'd share here.

Her name is Sister Leslie Taylor.  She was my neighbor growing up.  She was a tall, thin woman with big eyes and a pretty smile.  She taught my young women's class when I was a teenager.  Every lesson, she brought her scriptures and a picture of Jesus (the same picture every week) which she hung up on the strip above the chalkboard.  She always bore her testimony at the end of every lesson and she often would hold up her scriptures which were well worn, the pages having been searched many times, and tell us how much she loved the scriptures and how true they were.  She told us to read them every day.  Her testimony alone spoke volumes about how much the scriptures meant to her and how they helped her in her life.  She also held up the For The Strength of Youth pamphlet and told us that she read a section of it every night.  She told us we should do the same.  I decided I would try to do that.  I would read a section of the pamphlet every night and a few verses of scripture every night.  This I did for years.


Soon, the words from that pamphlet I could quote.  Because I put into practice the things she taught me, I felt the added strength of the Lord in my life.  I also avoided a lot of the drama and messes that I saw my friends go through.  That's not to say that I didn't have drama or messes either, they certainly came from immature choices I made, but I knew where to turn when I messed up or when I needed help or when my friends needed advice.  My faith grew during my teenage years because I fed that fire nightly (even if it was only a few verses, many which I didn't understand, but the habit kept the flame of faith alive).