October was a very busy month full of family and food!
It started with us enjoying lots of peaches, Asian pears and jujubes from Hsiao family friends that bought Daniel and Alice's old house in South Jordan. Daniel planted and cared for the trees there before they moved, and these friends are so generous to share so much of the harvest with us. They just kept bringing more and more fruit for us. We even went to their house to help harvest some. We filled Alice's fridge for when she came home from California.
Not only was the fruit harvest delicious, but it brought lovely memories of Daniel too.
It looks like one dinner we had steak and ramen with fresh white peaches for dessert. It doesn't get much better than that!
I really do love the month of October. I love that it always begins with General Conference!
I really enjoy just being at home with my family listening to the talks from our prophets and leaders. It is one of my favorite weekends during the year!
We ended up having leg wrestling after the Saturday evening session. We missed Alice so much we went and sat in her house that evening.
School continued for me and the boys. By October things were finally starting to feel a little easier. I got my school picture back. Here I am at 40 years old. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the wrinkles and the chubby cheeks are just evidence of all my years of fun outdoors, smiling at my kids, and enjoying many happy moments with family around a table of delicious food.
Mark got the mini excavator from the ranch and did lots of work and repairs on it.
We tried to continue with music practice at our house. This has been another really difficult thing with me starting school. I am so tired after school and urging the boys to practice often takes more energy than I have to give. Brian in particular is so much busier now in high school. Getting him to practice after running has been a major chore. Only sometimes does it happen. I do enjoy hearing him play.
Timmy helped Mark move a huge pile of logs.
Timmy also ran with his cross country team. He really improved this year and made some great goals that he accomplished! I am super proud of him. He doesn't naturally have the running endurance that Brian has, but he worked so hard and he did not give up! He came in first from his whole junior varsity team at the last race. I think the first race he came in last. That is amazing Timmy!
Fall break arrived and with it our time to help Luke and Sunny and their baby! They decided that they wanted to move to Utah to be closer to family. We were so excited about this! Alice was still there with them in their tiny one bedroom apartment. They needed to move all their stuff to Utah and we decided to help them. We hooked up our sturdy horse trailer and set off on Thursday morning (the first day of Fall break) to drive to San Jose to get their stuff. They were so kind to treat us to the most amazing dinner I have ever had after we got there. They took us to a really fancy Brazilian churrasco place. It was amazing! And so nice to be with Sunny and Luke again.
My 40 year birthday just happened to be the next day. That was the best birthday dinner I think I will ever have in my entire life! What a way to celebrate 40 years!
We finally got to meet our sweet baby nephew. He is the cutest baby in the world.
After a good night's sleep in Luke's friend's guest house, we took the one full day we had in California to do some fun things. We drove down to Monterey to see the aquarium they have there and to visit the ocean. It was a lovely birthday for me. I am glad even though we had driven so much already that Mark was willing to drive the extra few hours that day to take us there.
We also walked along cannery row in Monterey and searched for a place to get some good food.
I am so glad we chose this place. I don't even remember the name, but it was perfect! They sat us outside under and roof with heaters. We were sitting over the ocean and we had the best clam chowder in the best bread bowls we will ever eat. The food was so delicious and we could not have asked for a better location.
After lunch we went down to the beach for a bit. It was very cold, but worth it to be at the ocean.
Later after driving back to San Jose area we met Luke and Alice for some pretty epic Taiwanese desserts at Meet Fresh.
Then we got another good sleep and woke up super early to load all of Luke and Sunny's things into the trailer and begin the long drive home to Utah.
We stopped at a fantastic sandwich place on the way. Baby Ten (his codename here) did great on the drive. He was pretty sad for part of it, but everyone survived and we made it safely home very late that night.
So nice to have Luke and Sunny finally in Utah. They got set up to stay at Alice's house while waiting until the beginning of November when our basement renters were moving out and they could move in to our basement.
Alice had a big celebration for her mom's 90th birthday planned for the next weekend. After unloading Luke's stuff we went back to school and work for the week and then helped host some big family gatherings on the following weekend.
Gratefully Mark's brother Tony was able to take Pip while we went to California. It was so nice of him, and Margaret who had to vacuum up all the Pip hair is her house.
Brian had his first high school orchestra concert. It was a fun Halloween concert.
The next weekend we were given tickets to the BYU game. As tired as we were from so much going on, we just can't say no to BYU tickets. It was a fun time, except Brian started coming down with a fever during the game and that was the beginning to several months of really bad sickness going through all of us.
Brian was sick the next day, but gathered enough energy to go to the ranch for a planned airsoft day with friends.
That concludes our October. Every single weekend was full of something or other, but it was certainly a fun month!
