October

 I love October - the changing colors, the cooler weather, Halloween, my birthday.  It's a great month.  Like Anne Shirley says in Anne Of Green Gables, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."  

This October has been full of long runs and walks in the woods - with friends, by myself, with family.  I've gone into the woods with someone 5-6 times/week this month and it's been fantastic.  When Peter has been moody, a bike ride in the woods has been the perfect antidote.

He loves to try to catch leaves as they're falling.

Stake Conference was in a building next to a large wooded area, so we took a post-church walk together.

Kelly and Christian prefer to go through the woods a little faster than I do, so they went up north on election day and rode together.

This past weekend was our busiest all month.  On Halloween we went to see Bella perform with the marching band at Western.  It was so fun to see her out there doing what she loves.  They sounded amazing and the team won which made it extra enjoyable.

Because it was Halloween, they offered the kids in the stands a chance to march around on the field in their costumes.  I knew this would happen and had encouraged Peter to come in costume.  He thought it sounded fun before we got there, but then when the time came, he got really nervous.  He kept insisting he wasn't going to do it.  I had to play the "it's my birthday so do it for me" card and he reluctantly went out on the field.  Glaring a death stare at me the entire time, he dutifully marched around with the other kids.  I told him that there are going to be lots of times when you'll want to do something and know it'll be fun but then get scared when the moment comes.  Doing it anyway, is a great life skill and most of the time you'll be really glad you did it.  He was not convinced, but he didn't hold it against me and I had a great time watching the little cutie.  Plus, I'm so glad he did it, because I stupidly didn't take a single picture on Halloween!!!!!  So this is my only picture of him in his cute Mario costume.

With Election Day came a day off of school and I asked Peter what he wanted to do on his day off since Kelly and Christian would be off motorcycling.  He decided he wanted to go swimming, roller skating, shoe shopping, and get ice cream and go to a playground.  Whew!  It was quite a list.  Challenge accepted.  Of course, I don't have pictures of almost any of it, but we got it all in and had a great day.  Here's what I do have:

Notice the new green shoes?

He's getting to be a really good skater!

It's no thanks to me, though.  Kelly takes him skating far more than I do.  He went with him just a couple weeks earlier on a school skate night with a bunch of his little buddies.

Miscellaneous photos:

Bella came home for fall break and doctor appointments and we made sure to go to early voting together - yay for women suffrage!  Never take that for granted!  And of course, we carved pumpkins together.  Christian was a scrooge and didn't want to participate (you can see him hiding on the side) but the rest of us had fun.

The robotics group with which Christian competed and went to the world championships a couple years ago had an open house and invited Peter's cub scout pack to come.  Peter was excited to get to drive the robots just like Christian had.  It's still many years off for him but maybe he'll do the same thing Christian did.  I loved the robotics program.  I think it teaches so many valuable skills that go way beyond coding and engineering.