Loving October

October is just flying by!  It's my favorite month of the whole year and it always seems to move along the fastest.  It doesn't help that we have had a bunch of stuff going on in October.  Here is some of it:

Charlotte and Marissa (Charlotte's friend from 2nd ward) have birthdays that fall within a week of each other.  We decided to throw them both a sleepover party/camp unit reunion at the La Quinta Inn.  This picture is five of the seven girls that were in their Girl's camp unit.  They seemed to have really bonded at camp and now, they just love to hang out together.

Our first activity was a round of laser tag at the local indoor golf course.  It was so much fun but also exhausting.  We were glad that we only signed up for a 30 minute game.

After laser tag, we went to the hotel where Marissa's mom had reserved the entire conference room for us.  We had a huge meal of Cafe' Rio taco salad/burritos...followed by these adorable cupcakes

Marissa got sports cupcakes, Charlotte got musical cupcakes.  Their interests couldn't be more far apart and yet, they get along great.  Following dinner, the girls swam in the pool, did puzzles and watched movies.  Surprisingly, the highlight of the night was not the pool, nor the puzzles, nor the movies.  The games that we brought to play remained unopened on the floor.  No, their activity of choice was this:

We had two cots moved into the room for the two adults to sleep on while the other girls slept on the floor.  Within minutes of finishing dinner, the girls had moved the beds together in the middle of the room and they each took turns "hurdling" the beds.  I set my camera to my "sports" setting and got some hilarious shots.  Needless to say, the girls were sound asleep by midnight...totally worn out.

The next morning, I shuttled all of them out to the coast for a two day Youth Conference.  

At youth conference, they did some rock wall climbing

They did a service project where they put together hundreds of bags filled with toys, toiletries, towels, etc. for Womenspace.  It is a crisis center for women at risk that need to get away from a dangerous relationship.

They also danced!

The following week, some of the kids (including Charlotte) dropped off the bags to the center.  They were totally overwhelmed with the gift.

In preparation for our complete bathroom remodels starting in November, I decided to practice my refinishing skills on this old side table that my parents gave to us years ago.  It was in my childhood home for years too so as you an imagine, it was pretty trashed.

So, I set out to restore it to its' former glory by first sanding it down...making sure to get rid of all of the water rings and permanent marker stains (nothing stays nice in a houseful of kids).

With a little bit of work, the table came out like this:

It looks almost as good as new!  I let it dry and put it back into our bedroom.

Finally, this last weekend was our Stake Temple day.  (As Stake Conference is this weekend)  Casey had to conduct the chapel session as a member of the Stake Presidency so we got up to the temple extra early.  It was a gorgeous fall day and being in the temple was the icing on the cake!  It is strange how wonderful it is to see all of your friends in the temple.  Even though you see them all the time at home, seeing them in the temple is just so much more sweet.  We had over 100 of our Stake friends in the chapel.  It was awesome!

Check out that beautiful blue sky!  

After our session, Casey and I went to Claim Jumpers for dinner.  Though we weren't all that thrilled with the food...it was good, just nothing special, we LOVED the dessert!  Here it is:

Yes, that is one giant piece of cake.  We happen to be on our two week diet "break" so we allowed ourselves this little (or rather big) indulgence.  Our next round of dieting starts next week!  I have got to be careful not to undo all the good work we have been doing.  (I've lost 32 pounds on a program called Game On.  If any of you that read this blog are interested, let me know...we start again on Wednesday Oct. 30.)

So, with most of October over, you can see that it has been a busy one.  We still have two birthdays coming up so I will blog about that next!

Here is week 42