End of Fall soccer, Mom's 2 year angel-versary, cooking our way thru Our Best Bites cookbook, trail running with Nora and Penny

Soccer season has come to an end which  means our Saturdays and weeknights are a lot more open! Hurray! No, but in all honesty, I do enjoy watching them and I love that they're getting regular physical activity with all their practices and games. It's good for the heart and soul. Scott coached Jane's rec team this year which she liked. 

November 6th is my mom's angel day. I read through some old journals and letters she had written to her parents from when she was newly married and looked at pictures. We had Izze drinks with dinner in her remembrance. 

We are cooking our way through the 'Savoring the Seasons, Our Best Bites' cookbook. We mainly are doing this on Sundays, and we'll often make multiple recipes on Sundays. On this particular Sunday we made Pork Tenderloins (I've never made that before and rarely cook red meat), multi grain rolls, holiday quinoa salad (which I've made many times...I've also made the rolls before and both of those are delicious), and apple cider ice cream floats. Most family members didn't love the floats. And only a couple of people liked the pork; though they said they probably would've liked it better had it been served with mashed potatoes instead of rice. 

Here's a pumpkin crumble dessert we made on another ocassion. We started this about a month ago and we've probably made about 10-15 dishes so far. It's mostly fun, but sometimes I don't feel like making or having anything in the book; there's lots of dessert recipes and a good amount of meat dishes too. But it's kinda fun for us to try all these things that we would've never made before. If I ever do this again I'll probably pick a healthier cookbook, like Forks Over Knives or something similar. 

I've been taking Penny trail running with me once a week for the past 6 weeks or so. She absolutely loves it! She wears her ecollar and if she gets distracted by a bird or something else and runs off, I'll beep or vibrate her collar so she comes back, but mostly she's really good about staying right with me. Nora wanted to come with us last week so we shortened the run to 2 miles (we usually do 5-6 miles) and went a little slower and walked ocassionally. Nora had a good time, though we did run into a blood puddle after we'd seen lots of clumps of fur on the trail, and then we noticed part of a carcass or something just off the trail. We were worried a mountain lion had been there but come to find out there was an archery hunting competition and someone hadn't hidden their gut pile very well (that's the carcass we saw on the side). That was a relief. 

 

Halloween and BYU football game date night

Halloween is a lot more fun when you're working at an elementary. All the kids and staff dress up and the energy at the school is high. This year I was a witch, Jane was an M&M and Nora was a zombie soccer player. 

I made these M&M sunglasses for her to wear (which she mostly didn't wear because she said they were too heavy), and then I used the wrappers to make bows for her hair which she did keep in all day. 

We bought a $2 soccer jersey at DI for Nora and cut holes in it and then Elisabeth did her hair and makeup.

Here we are at the school's Halloween parade. We did it outside this year, which although cold, was so nice to have all the space because normally we're packed in the cafeteria. 

We were asked to work longer hours on the Halloween parade day so that we could be there to direct parents as to where to go for the parade. So we had some extra time during the morning after the parade was done and one of the teachers asked if I could come help with their halloween party since only the room mom was able to come since the other volunteers hadn't gone into the district to get their fingerprinting done yet so they weren't allowed in the school. I was happy to help and even more excited when I found out the room mom was my friend and neighbor Becca. She had some fun games and activities for the kids. I loved this craft they made with latex gloves, candy corn for fingernails, popcorn, an elastic hair tie to tie it off and a spider ring to go on one of the fingers. I'll have to do that one year for a party. 

They also did toilet paper mummies, 

and a game with mystery items in bags with labels like vampire heart or wolf's tongue and a brain where they're guessing what's inside. 

Here's me and my coworkers. Laurie was gone that day so she could help at her kids Halloween parade since they don't go to this school.

I loved Johanna's cruella devil jacket! So amazing! Her mom made it 20 years ago. 

Here's my witchy makeup

And Nora's zombie makeup

Scott made mummy chili poppers for a work lunch and Jane had a Halloween party at our house on Friday night the 29th, so we made a bunch of fun Halloween foods including these cutie jack-o-lanterns and the Monster Munch popcorn.

We also had witches brooms (string cheese on a pretzel) doritos, and we played the game where you eat a donut off a string so we had powdered donuts as well. 

We bought a face painting kit on amazon and as the girls arrived, we did face paint on whoever wanted it. It was nice because the face painting kit came with some sticker stencils so we got fancy. And of course, I knew how to draw a spider web so we offered that too. 

We played Halloween scattergories, halloween bingo, and we also had halloween charades but we never got to it. 

A good time was had by all. The party went from 7-930 which was a good amount of time. 

For dinner on Saturday October 30th (when Halloween is on Sunday in Utah, most kids trick or treat on Saturday which is what we did) we had potato soup in these cute Halloween bread bowls that we picked up from Peterson's. It was delicious. 

Saturday night was the BYU football game vs Virginia. None of the kids wanted to go since it was the night of trick-or-treating and Halloween parties so I went with Scott. It was fun to be back at the BYU stadium. 

Since it was Halloween, I painted a BYU spider and web on my face. 

We won! It was a very high scoring game. BYU has been doing well this year. 

 

Temple date night and Family Pictures

 Kneaders salad and tomato basil soup after some time at the temple was a great date night.

We had our family pictures taken. We originally had an appoitment at an outdoor studio, fotofly, at Thanksgiving Point. But the day before our appointment they called and said they needed to cancel because it was supposed to rain the next day. We tried to reschedule with them but they were so full that the only available time slots were not good for our family. So I did a quick search and I was able to make an appointment with Camera Shy, an indoor studio in Daybreak. They said we could bring Penny, but that she could only go in this one room, so while we took pictures in the other rooms, she'd have to go out and wait in our car. We've never left her in the car before so we decided to not bring her this time....we had even bought her some cute Fall-colored bows for her ears. Oh well, maybe next year. 

I loved the way the pictures turned out and I'm grateful we have some good ones since it's Elisabeth's senior year and I'm not sure how much longer we'll have family photos with everyone together. 

This is the one we decided to blow up and frame. It's also the one we used for our Christmas cards. Someone pointed out that they loved this so much because mom was in the center of the family.