Recap of October

:: It took three weeks to get rid of all the moving boxes and another week to find homes for the random odds and ends I couldn't justify shoving in our closet. Then we moved on to painting. I've never been a huge fan of beige and the previous owners used it, in varying hues, in every. single. room (with the exception of the dining room, which is red). So we went to Lowe's, cleared out their grey paint chip selection, picked a color, painted a sample on the wall, bought 5 gallons, and realized our first wall of Suburban Sunrise was unmistakably blue. So we repeated the same process (minus buying 5 gallons) with three other colors before committing to Filtered Shade. It makes me happy and is 85% exactly the color we want...there may be a slight blue tinge the other 15%, but I've made peace with it.

We're 2/3rds of the way through painting. Once we're completely done I'll post pictures

Colby on one of our many trips to Lowe's

:: Sahuarita Lake: We finally took a walk around the man-made lake (bodies of water don't seem to occur naturally around here) that marks the center of the community. They're in the process of of draining it right now, but it still makes me happy.

:: We found the library! It's small and shares a building with our water company, but it has a great board book section, weekly storytimes for Colby, and an effective system for borrowing books from the larger libraries. I love it.

:: Canadian Thanksgiving:
Usually we celebrate this with my mom's side of the family, but since there's the issue of distance, we invited our friends, the Caltons, over and partied it up with them. Robb and I made a detailed plan of attack:

1:00 - Prep turkey Robb

1:00 - Prep bread pudding Lakin

1:45 - Put turkey in oven Robb

1:45 - Start slow cooker for bread pudding Lakin

1:45 - Start cranberry sauce prep Either

2:00 - Put cranberry sauce in oven Either

3:30 - Start stuffing prep Person 1

3:45 - Start mashed potatoes prep Person 2

4:10 - Put stuffing in oven Person 1

4:45 - Start gravy Lakin

4:45 - Prep veggies Robb

5:00 - Carve turkey Robb

And for our 2nd solo Thanksgiving dinner, I was pretty pleased with how everything turned out. I was also exhausted and hence forgot to take any pictures until the next day (mmm, leftovers).

:: Halloween: Honestly didn't turn out the way I expected it to. We carved pumpkins the Monday before (and cooked some spectacular pumpkin seeds), Colby spent most of the time watching from a distance before coming over to "help" with my pumpkin. By Thursday both pumpkins were rotting, mine was filled with hair-like mold and Robb's looked like an old man with tooth decay. The night of, Robb got dressed while I attempted to get Colby in his costume. He was supposed to be a werewolf. The ears stayed on 30 seconds and he wouldn't let me get anywhere near him with the furry feet covers (thank goodness we bought face paint). We hit up three houses before Colby was done and then we came back and passed out 250 pieces of candy in 2 hours. Robb eventually set up camp next to the door with a football game because there wasn't time to leave the door.

The next day we went to our ward's Trunk or Treat and I managed to throw a costume on this time (I'm a mummy).  I was kind of relieved  the next day when everything was over and we could throw the remains of our decomposing pumpkins away.

:: On a happier note: I love Arizona skies