A Mix of Things

 Chloe asked for some purple cabbage for a snack.

I like to get an ornament to represent each year.  I forgot last year and so when I found this customizable one, it was perfect.

Chloe cooking dinner with Daddy. 

Some of my furniture got really scuffed up in the move down here. This is one of a set of bookshelves that I'm sanding and repainting. This is after coat one. I'm super happy to have them looking new again. And I'm going to put a back on it when I finish painting it. 

A paint by number I'm working on for Bill. 

First snow. Or maybe second. We enjoyed it. 

This is the other table that got some chunks knocked out of it. I sanded down the scratchy parts and restrained them and put a coat of tung oil on to seal them and it's basically like new. 

Playing Apples to Apples with cousins. I love living close to them!

Happy Halloween

 We had the best Halloween this year. I'd say the best we've had in years. Spencer wanted to go with his friends, and so we sent Bill's old cellphone with him and let him go alone for the first time ever. He was so thrilled. 

My two nieces and brother-in-law came up and we made pizza and then went trick or treating together and we also picked up our neighbor friends as we headed out, so we had about ten of us. So fun. The neighborhood we're in is just the right size for trick or treating. The houses are close enough together that it's not all walking. The weather was lovely. The kids didn't even wear coats, though they were freezing by the time they got home. We had caramel apples to finish off the night and it was awesome. 

Chloe could keep up. That was one of the best parts. She was practically leading out and they all knew how to say trick or treat and thank you and it just was so easy and pleasant. There were lots of houses that had unique ways of passing out candy to be safer. It really was just nice all around. I loved just going through our neighborhood instead of doing a downtown businesses sort of trick or treating like we have done in recent years. Nice to just be simple and easy and fun.

Grandpa helped us carve pumpkins to start the day. 

Twinners with their hot chocolate and books and English muffins. 

Cousins. I love living close to these cuties. 

Ginny Weasley, a ninja, Wonder Woman, a Sith Trooper, and Bill was a cowboy of sorts. 

Fall Break and New Job

 I posted a whole ton of pictures from our Fall Break trip down to Las Vegas to see Bill's grandpa and then camping through Valley of Fire, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park on Instagram yesterday. It was truly a delightful week. And while we were gone we decided to accept a job offer we received in Salt Lake City at Reaveley, so that's a nice step forward in our life. We had been courting going into the Navy into their officer program, but there are some hiccups in that process that we didn't expect and the timelines got stretched out longer than we already had taken, which was a long time, so we went with the SLC option instead. We'll see if we come back to Navy or Space Force in the future. For now we're going to thoroughly enjoy Utah and the benefits of living near family and the amazing outdoor world here. I kind of feel like I have whiplash from the sudden change in life plan, but hey, this is a good path too, just not the one I expected we'd take. So here's to new adventures and reaching goals and letting go of some dead weight that has dragged us down in the past. 

And here's a few pictures from the week, just because. They're all mixed up between Valley of Fire, Bryce Canyon, and Zion, but I'm just going to let that be and not worry about it. 

We found these cool sand drawings at Emerald Pools and the kids carved out a few more of their own.

Valley of Fire had the best rocks to scramble all over. 

On Saturday we headed out here in SLC to get some pumpkins and had fun at the pumpkin patch. 

Small slot canyon in Valley of Fire. 

The deer were not shy at all in Zion. 

Our campsite in Valley of Fire was pristine. 

Chloe found Grandpa's very old Navy issued glasses.  So cute. 

It was pretty chilly in the morning when we first got to Zion and the windows were open on the bus. 

Right in our campsite this big-horned sheep was just chilling, drinking water from the campsite faucets. 

The kids scrambled all over that big rock the two days we were in Valley of Fire.