goodbye october

november is here and i can feel wonderful autumn turning into winter already. it's getting chilly in missouri and i'm excited for sweatshirts and snuggle season.

some of our october highlights...

my birthday:

we went down to famous branson and enjoyed the "must see" dolly parton's dixie stampede, dinner and show. the food was good and so home-styled no utensils were allowed. the show itself was too cheesy for caleb and i to take seriously, but we're glad we went. we're also glad we sat in the 2nd, not 1st row, because the horses definitely flipped arena sand up into those peoples' meals. my favorite parts of the show were the pig races and being part of the south. the confederacy lives on!

halloween:

this year we went to our ward's trunk-or-treat and passed out candy to the crazy children. even though we didn't decorate our trunk, we were a big hit with the pixie stixs. "wow, sugar sticks!!!" there's some pretty intense women in the ward and a definite divide between the homeschool and public parenting styles. i know many of those kids never get candy, let alone sugar sticks.

 i also threw my first big party at work on halloween night and it turned out well. crazy, but they enjoyed it. they ate food (which is the most important and overwhelming part), played a candy cake walk, had a costume contest with awesome prizes, and enjoyed a staff member's professional karaoke machine and lights. these people love their karaoke, it cracks me up. we have some real crazy dancers too.

i'm settling in at work. it's much different than what i've done before. this is a very unique and challenging group of people, and there's so many of them! it will take some time to really make it work and every day will be a crazy adventure.

school and work are pretty much our life right now. caleb is getting a little overwhelmed with school, but he's determined to fight through. he's such a hard worker and i'm very proud of him. work is pretty intense and sometimes the environment gets to me, but i know it's a great learning experience.

now we're just counting down the days until we go back to washington for christmas!!!

missouri walks are nice. and i represent!