Halloween 2024.

The girls attended multiple Halloween parties this year.

Sid an her friends dressed up as Alvin and The Chipmunks for youth group.

Kendall and Bentley made pizzas and handed out candy on Halloween night.

In their onesies, of course.

The Dance Studio had their annual creature crawl.  Senior Company did a pseudo Disney princess theme.  They wore the colors, but not the full costumes, of the princesses.  Kendall chose Anna.

Bentley and Kendall dressed as sailors for a 'post' Halloween party.

Sidney had her friends over to our house on Halloween night.  The beauty is that they took care of the trick or treaters.  I hid in the bedroom and let them do their thing.

I snuck out a few times and marveled at what happens when teenagers are in charge of bringing the food.  Is this really considered 'food'?

Bentley and Kendall went to a haunted house.  Only teenagers would stop to take selfies with the monsters.

Junk Drawer October 2024.

Kendall has befriended this squirrel outside of one of her college classes.

Sidney took Claire for her inaugural trip to Scheel's.  Claire did not want to leave.

No words needed.

I showed my mom Sidney's saddle bag.  Before I knew it, my mom had whipped me up this gorgeous saddle bag of my own.  My mom's talents never cease to amaze me!

First we had giraffe-ie, then we had cow-ie, now we have Kendall's emotional support hippo, Howie.

Vegas Baby!

I will be taking two Vegas trips in a matter of weeks.  The first trip was for work.  It was a great trip to the ULI conference.  

I am pretty sure they will be calling me for a job...although perhaps I might need to grow a few more inches.

For the Love of Animals.

 Here is this months cornucopia of animal pictures.  Levi and Bella did not manage to get much picture time this month.  I have been taking riding lessons and am now confident enough to ride pigeon, our 'go' more than 'whoa' horse.   Did I mention the round pen lesson that Sid gave me on trotting pigeon awhile back.  I should have been concerned when she told me to just 'hang on' as she stood in the middle and lunged him while I was on his back.  Well, you only live once I guess.

Sidney sent me this sweet picture, as she went riding after a rain.  Do you see it?

We are convinced that Pigeon thinks he is a lap dog.

Sidney and Pigeon are gearing up for jump show season.  They are looking pretty fine!

Sweet Bailey.  To think he was the craziest puppy I have ever had.  He is the most mellow adult dog!

Sidney scheduled Bailey for an interview at work.  He LOVED it.  She has been taking him regularly to work with her.  He comes home literally exhausted!

Oh Bella, she needed to sneak into at least one picture!

Mid-Century Club.

My little sister turned 50.  Wait, what?  That makes me somewhere north of that.  I made a trip to visit her for a girls weekend.  We had a great time.  We had a spa afternoon.  We went for a gorgeous walk along the lake, and we did some amazing shopping.  It was just what the doctor ordered.

Of course, I had to jump in the giant Adirondack chair for a cheesy picture.

We also took in a movie, We Live In Time.  It was beautiful and amazing and OH SO SAD and I literally bawled.

My sister gifted me these fantastic socks.

As any good sister would do, I wore them and took a picture to send to her.  I took this primarily to get under her skin, as any good sister would do.  Her biggest pet peeve is when people wear socks with slip on shoes.  Yep!

While we were out shopping, my sister spotted these owls that she wanted for her mantle.  The store had a no return policy, and she was not sure if they would actually go with her decor.  I told her I would buy them from her if they did not work.  Well, her loss is my gain.  I came home with these cute owls.  It was not until I had them up on my dresser that one of the girls remarked that it was us.  Now these owls mean the world to me!  Of course, Kendall wanted to be the tall one.  I told her no way.  I am the tall one, no matter what!

Car Realities.

 I started to title this post "car whoa's", but I decided to make the subtle change to "car realitie's".  Why?  Simply because we are so blessed as a family to each have our own car.  With much privilege, comes much responsibility and sometimes things just happen.  Here are a few of those tales.

Kendall got some practice changing a flat tire.  Thank goodness it happened as she was pulling into the neighborhood.   Much better than somewhere else.  The moral of the story is 'things like this never happen at a convenient time'.  She had a crazy day ahead of her and had to deal with this sudden inconvenience.

Sidney paid to have her car windows tinted.  It looks so good.  Yet, I somehow do not have a picture.  That being said, her headlights were ridiculously fogged over.  I decided to take on the task of replacing the entire headlight assembly.  I, of course, roped my dad into helping.  This task was not for the faint of heart, as it literally required the car to be on jacks and basically the whole front end to be taken apart.  It went quite seamlessly.  That being said, what took the guy on youtube 30 minutes, took us 4 hours.  Ha!  We did it though!

Sidney had made a comment that her vents were not working super well.  She said she was going to clean them.  I started to giggle.  I do not think a bit of dust on the vents were going to make a change.  However, it donned on me that we had never changed their cabin air filters.  We made a trip to the auto parts store for new filters.  Yep, they were disgusting.  Kendall's was the worst.  The squirrels had definitely had a field day.  This is just so gross!  Well, onto fresh air and a regular schedule for changing these filters!

BSU Bound!

Kendall signed up for Bronco Day and took Sid along for the fun.  They showed up right on time, which meant late.  The day started in the Morrison Center with the marching band and big festivities.  By the time they arrived all of the seats were filled and they joined a hundred or so prospective students in the overflow area. 

The girls received BSU swag bags.  They had a lot of fun running from event to event.

They spent some time in the maker lab decorating cups.  They also visited the bookstore and bought some items to get their 'free' lanyard:).

They managed to spot Buster on the way to the blue turf and snagged him for a picture.

They got some great pictures on the 'blue'.

Apparently right after the visit to the stadium, they took off for a dead run to catch a tour of the dorms before they closed down for the day.  

The big reveal....drum roll please...Kendall is going to BSU.  She is super excited.  She got her acceptance letter along with a Dean's scholarship award!  She has worked hard, and she is starting to reap the rewards of that hard work.  I am going to enjoy every moment of this last year with her, as she will be moving on to bigger things before I know it.  She did ask me if she could come home to do laundry...of course.  Then she asked if she could come home for dinner...uh, no.  I am not going to take up cooking just to get you home:).