Block Party!

For the last couple of years Ryan and I have talked about planning a neighborhood party. We've also talked about having neighbors over for dinner so we could get to know them better, but life just gets in the way. I get overwhelmed very easily, and everyone has busy lives after all. We kept putting the idea on the back-burner... until finally the fall came and we felt very strongly that we should make it happen. Our neighborhood is sort of off the beaten path and it feels like everyone knows everyone else. People are always outside washing their cars, mowing, gardening, chatting with each other, walking their dogs. It's the most friendly and genuine group of neighbors I've ever known. The few that live in our culdesac are often blowing our leaves for us, pulling our garbages in, checking on us, and watching out for our kiddos while they're biking around. One even pulled out his tools and fixed Logan's chain for good when he noticed that it kept coming off. They are truly the greatest!! We felt that the Spirit was whispering to us to be better neighbors and reach out to those within our sphere of influence. Call it being a missionary, or just call it finally making them our friends and opening up opportunities to serve them. We spend so much time just with our ward friends and there's so much good that we can do for those who are living right next to us.

I made flyers and a bunch of the ladies in the neighborhood (who go walking every morning) dropped them off to each house. We scheduled a food truck to come on Saturday Oct 21st and provide dinner. We wanted our neighbors to come, enjoy, meet each other, and not feel like they needed to be cooking that day (since a pot-luck is the norm for block parties). I personally felt like I wouldn't want to go if it was a boring ol' pot-luck kind of thing, so I wanted to make it more exciting. I think the food truck worked! I would do it again for sure.

 That day, the kids helped me prep some candy dishes and set up tables and chairs.

 I wanted everyone to be able to have a visual of our area and write their names on their house on the map. That way they could say to someone "We live right *here*." It worked out great too!

 We set up some lawn games on our neighbor's lawn.

 My partner in crime.

 Our sweet neighbor Kay Keen. She is just the greatest! We could spend hours talking, and sometimes we do just that. 

The block party was a total success! We received so many compliments, thank you cards, emails and phone calls telling us thank you and how much fun everyone had. I think everyone came except for roughly 9 of the houses in the neighborhood. I call that a great success! I'm so proud of us and that we actually did something like this. It was well outside of our comfort zone to host this kind of event with a bunch of people who aren't our typical group of friends. But it was so wonderful, and I have a feeling we will be able to see some great service opportunities and blessings come out of it. We were absolutely guided by the Lord to this specific home and area. That feels more true now than it did 2 years ago, and I am so very thankful.

Book Family Farm

Logan's school class took a field trip to a local family-owned farm to pick out pumpkins. I don't often get to help out with Logan's class because Boston makes things tricky. But I found a friend to watch him for a few hours and I was able to drive Logan and 2 classmates. It was a lot of fun!

Every morning the whole elementary school meets for a short assembly. This is one of the many things that makes Achieve Charter unique and awesome. I was really impressed! 

 The farmer was so fun and the kids were glued to him the whole time. 

 We saw baby chickies! They were so cute and so loud.

 He found "the one"!

We had a great time at the farm! He has such a wonderful teacher and lots of great parents who help out. This school has been the very best place for Logan. I'm thankful he is with a good group of kids too, since he will move up with the same group each year.

Fire Season

During the night of the terrible wind storm, a horrific fire was sparked and it raged through wine country, just a couple of hours from us. It ripped through neighborhoods, businesses and thousands of acres of land near Lindsey's family and wiped out many homes in her in-laws' neighborhood. We woke up to that sad news the next morning, and were glued to the news as we heard the stories coming out of that area. 

Later that day, I was driving up from a hair appointment and I saw this plume of smoke as I headed up the Skyway. I knew right away it was right next to our town and I was really starting to get nervous as I got closer! 

  A few minutes after I passed the flames (which are just beyond those palm trees), they closed down Skyway. I was lucky to get through when I did, especially because my kids were at my friend's house!

When I got back home and could find out exactly what was going on, I learned that the fire was burning in the Honeyrun canyon and headed up towards the town. Several neighborhoods were ordered to evacuate right away, including a few of our ward members and friends. This was a picture of the Hanchett's house about an hour after I drove up into town. Their house is at the top of the hill where the flames were headed, and you can even see the fire spotter plane in this photo.

That was a rough evening and night as I was afraid of what would happen in the night. Would some of our town burn? Would people I love lose their homes? I wasn't afraid for us because we are on the complete opposite side of Paradise, but because of how quickly the Santa Rosa fires were moving, I knew it wasn't totally out of the question if we had another wind storm. I was nervous, and Ryan was still out of town. Thankfully everything turned out just fine for our town. They were able to put the flames out over the course of the next few days. More importantly, they were able to hold the fire line which was literally several yards from the first line of homes in Paradise. We are so thankful for such wonderful firefighters!

All that red is from the flame retardant they dropped along Skyway where the flames got to.

 A Boy Scout group in Santa Rosa was collecting new and gently used halloween costumes to give to kids who lost their homes. So I gathered up 20 costumes from our storage and friends nearby, and we organized and shipped them out to the group. It felt so good to DO something. It's hard feeling so helpless and far away when there is so much suffering and sadness.

Because of the crazy wind storm I mentioned, our trash blew all over our backyard. The kids were such good helpers picking it all up and getting it back into the cans. 

General Conference and Johnny Appleseed

General Conference is always one of our very favorite weekends. The kids did crafts, took notes, listened for key words, played and snacked. Boston was crazy and into everything, but it's all part of the fun of having an 18 month old around.

 

 We worked on a 750 piece jigsaw puzzle together (with Ryan too) and it took us a little over 2 hours.

Logan's class walked over to the park nearby and they taught the kids to pick up trash there. Here was a cute photo I stole from their slideshow!

 Grace is the BEST big sis. She often begs me to bathe Boston. I mean... OKAY!! Win-win.

 A little bike riding with this little dude.

 In october our town had their "Johnny Appleseed Days" festival. They had a farmers market, lots of apple items (pies, caramel apples, treats, etc) to eat and purchase, and there was an area with kids' carnival games. The kids had a fun time and won some prizes.

Ryan was out of town for a conference, so I treated the kids (and myself) to lunch at Black Bear Diner. Logan was clearly excited...

 When we got home we spent some time putting up all of our halloween decorations. Our favorite part was putting the spiderwebs all over the front yard. So fun!

 That evening we had a terrible wind storm that seemed to come out of nowhere. Our power was flickering for awhile and then went completely out for an hour or two. Ryan was still out of town, so I was nervous going into that night with no power. It finally came back on as the kids were getting into bed, so we were thankful for that. 

Side note: it turned out that night fires sparked in several places around NorCal, including Santa Rosa near where my sister lives. Their fire quickly ripped through neighborhoods, thousands of acres, and caused evacuations that lasted two weeks. The wind was insane and made the fires extremely difficult to fight. So, so sad. We were extremely thankful to have stayed safe during that storm.

Boston: "Hurray! I'm can do this shape puzzle!"

 Some cute pics of cute kids.

 Zoned.Out.

 This was me trying to get a photo of my kids together... and this is Boston saying "No way!"