Abundant Recompense Copy

One more highlight from October. Bryn decided out of the blue that she wanted to enter the Martin Luther King Jr. speech contest! This came as a shock to me, because Bryn does not enjoy the spotlight, especially in a school or church setting. So the fact that she would volunteer to stand up in front of everyone and recite a memorized speech was quite a surprise, but also totally awesome! Go Brynny! With Nate's help, she chose an excerpt from one of Dr. King's speeches that resonated with her, and then she practiced and practiced. Here she is in all her glory!

This past fall was beautiful and seemed nice and long. Here are a few of our highlights. We took a trip to the Corn Maize. It's great bang for your buck. They've got a great maze, and lots of other activities - a corn pit, "train" ride, bounce house, zipline, slides, etc. This thing was Nate's favorite. He could've watched it all day. We made jack-o-lantern cookies. Asa made a graham cracker ghost snack for everyone as part of his preschool one day. Also, we made a witch hat. Shoulda gone out and bought the real supplies. But he was so darn cute anyway. Leaves! We had so many of them! I didn't remember having so many last year, but man. We raked so much. I love this part of our yard. It's a little wild, and so pretty. We filled our garden boxes with leaves. Hopefully the earthworms are hard at work on 'em. One of those magical afternoons. Our black cat, giraffe, owl, and knight dressed to impress for the trunk-or-treat. We had some friends over one...

Over our little fall break, we went to Salt Lake City to see Daddy at work. We decided that while we were there, we ought to tour one of the buildings in the vicinity, because our kids have never done any tours, or even really been inside most of them. So we rode the elevator up to Daddy's office and then headed across the street to the Conference Center. All but Asa really enjoyed the tour. And once we were on the roof, he was fine. Inside the building, he and Daddy spent some quality time with the escalators while the rest of us oohed and aahed over the art, etc. that our senior missionary tour guide pointed out to us. This fountain/sculpture was a favorite. Elder Hales was notably absent. We left with the kids begging for more. We'll have to go back and visit another building soon.

In October, I got the chance to go to Ohio with all my sisters and my Mom for a conference of our own making. Beck hosted this time, and did a fabulous job. Each of us did a presentation, some of which included cooking, growth mindsets, communication, parenting, makeup tips, exercise, etc. We even learned a choreographed dance! It was a really, really great time. It was wonderful to reconnect and realize that we're all in a pretty similar boat, just trying to do our best. And I've got to say, these girls are hilarious and so much fun to be around. They're all positive, kind, upbeat, and willing to do anything, as long as we could do it together. We had fun shopping, doing puzzles, playing games, singing and playing the piano, and just sitting around talking. I, for one, came away from it feeling refreshed and like I just might make it. You think going to Target is dangerous alone? Try it with your 8 besties. That's us taking up every single self-checkout and forming a l...