In my past life.... Business Trips + Free Time = All kinds of unspeakable activities. And it would make me an anxious wreck every time business travels happened. In my new life, with THIS husband.... Business Trips + Free Time = 3 days of visiting Church Sites. Which on the Free Time Activities Spectrum would constitute opposite ends. And it made me so happy.
He visited Farr West, Adam-Ondi-Ahman, Independence, Liberty Jail and talked with countless interesting people with countless interesting stories. And he couldn't wait to face time me and tell me all about them. It's indescribable the joy that one feels when one is married to a genuinely good person who loves the Lord. I truly LOVE him with all my heart. He is most definitely my biggest blessing.
In between Sunday sessions of conference, we all ran out to the Village because I had to work a little bit..... we were completely booked and that makes for A TON of work and our staff really stepped up and worked twice as hard as we normally do.
I convinced the family that it would be super fun to watch the afternoon session in a million dollar home. They were troopers to come with me. I don't think it was too terrible for them.
This year was the first year of the Women's Conference taking the place of the Men's Conference. So we modified our Saturday Night Dessert Tradition a bit.
Morgan stayed up North conference weekend, so Nana and I took 4 of my 5 daughters with us.
And my heart almost exploded with joy.
Ryker's Final Team Photo
Allie's first Triumph concert was on Papa's Birthday.
He graciously shared his day with the Pine View Choirs.
Our sweet Papa, who always puts every one before himself.
We love celebrating him.
Our sweet Papa, who always puts every one before himself.
We love celebrating him.
Following the concert, we met up with the rest of the family at Menchies for
FROYO. Parker and Morgan came down to help us celebrate.
It was SO fun to see them.
Parker and some of his soon to be little sisters.....
Friday Night Restaurants at Freddy's
All I wanted was a picture documenting that Morgan and Allie
joined us this night....
This mayhem is what I got instead
For Parker's birthday in August, Morgan gave him concert tickets.
They went to Thomas Rhett
And they had amazing seats and they were on the Jumbotron
and the drummer gave Parker his drumsticks.
I think they had a wonderful time.
Our third missionary had his farewell on October 21st.
It was a beautifully cool and cloudy day
and the farewell was wonderful.
I bawled through Gavin's talk because he is so sweet.
About a month before Gavin's farewell, Kami asked if I could put her up in one of our houses.
"Sure I can", I confidently said.
And then I signed her up to stay in our newest, largest home.
And then the homeowner developed OCD and insisted the home was in perfect condition and didn't sign in time and by the time we discovered this horrifying news, we had NO OTHER homes in our entire inventory for her to stay in.
I DIED.
I cried and cried and cried.
I finally finagled a plan for her to be able to stay in a slightly smaller but equally cool home if she would alter her plans a little bit, which she did.
Raleigh and I along with the worlds best cleaning crew... had that 9 bedroom home completely cleaned and staged for them to go into in an hour and a half, which is unheard of and holds the company record for the fastest and most efficient clean so far.
I think they had a good time
I am so happy that it worked out.
They invited us to join their Ellsworth Family Thanksgiving Dinner
I have made a very extensive and detailed list for Raleigh of Saturday
projects for him to build for our new house.
He is allowed to choose which one he wants to do each week,
but if he must stay on track if we are going to have everything built in time
for us to move in.
This particular Saturday he chose
"Paint the Piano"
I have literally hated the color of our piano for 12 years.
It doesn't match and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Not any more.
Now it looks like it belongs in our home better AND I swear
I sound better when I play it.
It is so darling.
And then our sweet missionary left....
Just as I did when all the other boys left, I cried on and off all day.
And when Kami sent this photo, I sobbed.
Good thing I was in my office all alone.
I am a huge boob.
I LOVED the supportive T-shirts
What a cute family
We found out a month ago that we were going to have a Homeowner's Appreciation Event at the end of October. I legit starting crying. You can ask everyone. October is one of our busiest months of the year with the Marathon and the Huntsman Senior Games. I knew that we were already going to be stretched to the max both physically as well as mentally. And not only that, we are bringing on our biggest house yet (9 bedrooms/10 bathrooms) and that in and of itself has been the biggest roller coaster of emotions and stress and then to add a HUGE (like over the top) event on top of everything else..... I wanted to crawl in a hole and hide.
Everything in my life was categorized either before or after the event.
KK: can I be a cat for Halloween
Me: Is that before or after the event?
I can't talk about that until after the event.
Allie: I need money for Sadies?
Me: Is that before the event?
Talk to Raleigh about it.
Well unfortunately whether you want it to or not, the calendar continues to move along.
And suddenly the day was upon us.
And all of our planning was about to come together or fall desperately apart.
We brought a hot air balloon to give everyone rides.
And a ba-zillion people showed up.
That was one of the coolest things I have ever done.
I had to hold the mouth open and the pilot turned on a HUGE fan
that blew the whole balloon open.
It was hard to hold it open and hold it to the ground.
All of my muscles were being worked to the max.
I was supposed to step on this cable so that the mouth would stay open,
but the cable kept lifting me off the ground and my legs were shaking.
Then the guy come over and blew the heat in and it was SO hot and SO loud
This is an inside view
And..... NO, I didn't take a ride.
I can't even go on an escalator at the mall.
I quite enjoyed my view from the ground
Then a bunch of us ran over to the Village Commons Area to set up for the
world's most chaotic Halloween Carnival ever with
a hundred crazy kids running everywhere.
We had bounce houses and carnival games and candy and prizes.
And crying children.
And a crying GM.
It was a mess.
Chef Boy Ra-Leigh cooked hot dogs for everyone
It was pretty successful for the most part.
Of course, I knew of every bump and hiccup and so from my
perspective, we could have done so many things better.
But everyone told us how fun it was and how they can't wait to
come next year. Oh. My. Gosh.
I better start fine tuning my resume.
From start to finish, I was there for 15 hours.
Every bone and muscle in my body was aching and I almost fell asleep
while I was driving home.
But, the bottom line is...
IT'S OVER
and it's never coming back.
Nighttime backyard games in the cool Autumn evenings
are the greatest.
Raleigh and Ryker would design plays by drawing on Raleigh's hand and
Ryker would concentrate so intently and confidently.
But, Peyton just dominated.
And Ryker would get so mad.
It was really funny.
We also have been spending lots of nights at the village working.
It's fun to go over there at night and swim in the pools.
And play with the amenities
We finished the month with my least favorite holiday of the year behind Columbus Day....
Halloween.
I am NOT a fan.
I only have about 7 more years of it.
The Love of My Life feels the same way too...
We told the kids, go onto Amazon, and find a costume and put it in the cart.
If we approve of it, we will buy it.
If there's not one in there for you, you will not have a costume.
They all chose wisely.
Peyton looked the EXACT same as she looks every other school day.
This is literally how she looks every day when she gets out of my car.
For Halloween she was Leo Messi
I don't know who he is, but Brent showed me his picture and
he's a decent looking fellow
KK was a fox.
Some people called her a bear or a lion.
Nevertheless, she was darling
Ryker chose a Skeleton.
By the time we got around to purchase, the costume he originally chose was sold out,
so we had to choose another version.
This version was for a portly child, which Ryker is most definitely NOT.
The hips were wide and the pants were too short.
He was still cute though and warm.
Halloween Parade
This is what we all looked like on Halloween night.
As we handed out 850 pieces of candy to children we didn't know from
neighborhoods far far away.
I think we handed candy to no less than 23 trick or treating WOMEN over the age of 25 who were dressed proactively and would fall into the white trash category. It made me want to barf. And I
also wanted to ask them lots of questions like....
why?
what are you doing with your life?
are you the slightest bit embarrassed?
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