This past weekend, we took a trip up to Houston. We stayed with Kelli and her family (cousin time is always great) and visited NASA as well as the Houston zoo. We took a LOT of pictures, but I’m only putting the highlights on here. Enjoy!
All in all, it was a great trip. We loved seeing family and loved having a new adventure to add to the books.
Weekly Happenings: After a crazy week last week (due to Halloween), I think all of us were more than ready to take a breather this week. We hung around the house, being pretty lazy. I didn’t even take that many pictures.
The Weekly Weather: It was good that we wanted to hang around the house and not do too much, because the weather totally cooperated. Early in the week it was cool, but then mid-week, fall finally hit. It was cold, rainy, and windy. I think it rained for over 24 hours, almost continuously. Friday and today brought back cool but sunny weather.
What Paul’s Been Up To: School and work, mostly. On Wednesday, it was voting day and he was stuck going after he got done with work. He was there for over an hour waiting in line. Poor guy. Especially since that’s when it started raining. Luckily he had thought ahead and had his umbrella. This morning, we were talking about making a bench of some sort to put on the porch to put decorations on (and to hide wires from Halloween and Christmas lights) as well as act as a place for people to remove shoes outside if shoes are super dirty. We were out and about, so we stopped by Lowe’s to get supplies. He had a picture in his head and knew just what to get and how much. He then built it in a matter of a bit over an hour. I’m so grateful that he has that talent!
What Sarah’s Been Up To: I had a much easier time voting on Wednesday, since I had the advantage of being able to go in the middle of the day. The only interesting thing that happened there was that two people got into a semi-heated discussion about whether or not veterans were getting the benefits they deserved (one guy was a veteran and the woman he was having the discussion with worked for the V.A. as a counselor of some sort). Other than voting day, it was just grocery shopping, house cleaning, and piano teaching as normal.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: Using superlatives…often. When he see’s something he likes, it is automatically his favorite thing. He’ll say, “Oh, it’s my favorite car!” or “That’s my most favorite shirt, ever!” He’ll also ask if something of ours is our favorite thing. It’s pretty funny.
This Week in Pictures:
Weekly Happenings: We had a pretty low-key week since we knew that the weekend would be crazy. This is the first year that Joseph really understood the concept of Halloween. He was excited to get dressed up and even excited to go trick-or-treating. On Thursday, we had our ward Trunk-or-Treat. We ate ahead of time because I knew Joseph would not want to eat while there. Paul was stuck going to his weekly class, so I took Joseph on my own. I was kind of sad for Paul, but he said he’d take Joseph trick-or-treating through the neighborhood on Halloween, so that made me feel better. When we got there, I got Joseph out of the car and he ran around saying, “Happy Halloween, everyone!” I have no idea where he got that from, but it was cute. I then let him play with his friends while I talked with some of mine (the field is completely enclosed, so the kids can run around and be completely safe. I just made sure to keep an eye on my little cowboy). They also had someone there DJing, which Joseph loved. He and a bunch of his little friends jumped and danced to the music. After that, it was time to go to the various cars for the trunk-or-treat part. Joseph loved saying, “Trick-or-treat!”. When we got home, he was exhausted, but not too exhausted to try some candy. His current favorites are Kit-Kats and Dum-Dums (which surprises me…I guess he’s not totally anti-sweets anymore). On Friday (Halloween itself), Paul took Joseph through the neighborhood to trick-or-treat while I stayed home to hand out candy (we had A LOT of trick-or-treaters this year). At one point, Joseph lost his sheriff star and was pretty crestfallen, but Paul went back out and was able to find it! Yesterday we went to the monthly market-day in Old Town Helotes. The weather had taken a turn (it started Friday night) and it was actually cool enough to wear a sweater! SO nice!
The Weekly Weather: The beginning of last week was still kind of warm, but towards the end it started to cool off. This week is supposed to be cooler, with temperatures in the 70s (and only one day projected to be in the low 80s). C’mon fall, you can do it!
What Paul’s Been Up To: Besides the normal stuff (work and school), Paul was able to be a bit of a good Samaritan when leaving work one day. Here’s what he put on his blog about the incident: “So yesterday I made sure to be all set up to leave work right on time. As I got out to the parking lot, I saw a coworker trying desperately to get her car to work. There was another coworker using her phone, trying to read over some directions to fix things. I decided to help out also. Apparently the gear shifter was stuck. After checking a few things we ended up deciding it was the brake shift interlock that was the problem. Luckily I like to be prepared. In my trunk I had a flat head screw driver that made it easy to depress the manual release for the brake shift interlock. I let her borrow my screw driver in case she needed it driving home. Today she returned the screw driver with a thank you note and gift card. The gift card was actually unnecessary but appreciated. I was just glad to help out.” That’s my helpful guy, all right!
What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not too much out of the ordinary. I experimented with making cinnamon raisin bread this past week, which turned out pretty good. We had it as French toast for part of dinner last night, which may be my favorite way of having it. Other than that, it was a week full of entertaining Joseph (and explaining to him that it was not Halloween…yet), piano students, and choir. 🙂
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s said some pretty cute and funny things this past week. One was him asking for candy and when I told him maybe when we got home (we were in the car on our way home from the Trunk-or-Treat), he said, “My tummy is saying, ‘Give me candy!'” Hilarious! Later that night, when I said that we needed to brush his teeth, he agreed, saying that we needed to make the chocolate germs go away. He also has dubbed my blow-dryer a “hair-da-fixer” and has decided that Grandma lives in the phone and that she’s his best friend. 🙂
This Week in Pictures:
