Halloween Costumes; Two Babies Born--Magnus and Kade; Torrey Pines Natural Reserve Hike

We had Mission Leadership Council. We are so appreciative of Elder and Sister Burris for ordering and going to pick up food for the lunches for our big groups.

Brooke loves to text me. One day she texted this photo of her mom curling her hair because they were going to have family photos taken.

She sent me some teaser pictures of the photo shoot.

I appreciated the thank you notes from the children after their trip here. Caroline's artwork is especially adorable. She captured everything exactly!!

The Egyptian ride she liked to go on has a laser gun which hangs on a hook in front of each seat. Her hook is evident. My hook had the gun on it because I didn't like shooting. Every time we rode on it, I would just sit there while she shot and shot and shot.

Her laser beam is going straight to the target. Each target is a circle inside a square all through the ride--the bat has a target as does the decorative vase. I love the lap bar holding her in tight. My absolute favorite is how she depicted me. She captured the very essence of me and of our ride together. Great artwork!!!

Autumn means the leaves are changing colors. It also means Halloween is fast approaching. Sarah is always very creative with the costumes she makes for her family each year.

This year she had an Empire theme going on. Eli and Carson were stormtroopers from Star Wars Empire Strikes Back. Lincoln and Jonah were emperor penguins.

Rebecca's family enjoyed some Halloween festivities as they were all decked out in their costumes.

I laughed so hard at Dallas's costume--a play on James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." 

The company where Glen worked for 33 years, and where Dallas has also been working for quite a few years, sold shortly after we began our mission. It was bought out by Cintas, their rival competitor.

This is the photo Jacob sent of Luke, Logan and Claire going trick-or-treating. 

Apparently Wynne had two different costume looks going on this year. 

Wynne dressed as Winnie the Pooh. 

Newland was getting into his part as Harry Potter.

Abe and Klarissa even dressed up their newborn baby as Harry Potter as well. Adorable!!

That brings me to the big family news for the month of October. There were two baby boys born a few days before Halloween.

Abe and Klarissa's baby Magnus Ward Thomas was born first. He weighed in at a hefty 9 lbs. 11 ozs. The doctor called him the "catch of the day." They gave him the same middle name as Abe.

Two days later Ben and Haley gave birth to a baby boy--Kade Malan Thomas--who also weighed in at the exact same weight of 9 lbs. 11 ozs. Incredible!!

Haley went through hours of labor before ending up having a cesarean section. 

I love that they decided to give him the middle name of Malan--Ben's middle name. Ben and I both have the Malan cleft in our chins. I was delighted to see baby Kade also has the Malan chin cleft.

We always enjoy when we can have an adventure walk on Monday mornings. We are continually on the look-out for new places to explore. I am happy to report we did not see any snakes while on our hike in the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.

It was a very foggy day when we started our hike. When we got to this clearing, we couldn't see the ocean very well, but we could see the waves of the ocean coming in.

There was a log bench with a footstool where Glen sat down to look at the map. He gets all bundled up now when we go out on our morning walks.

It was 60 degrees that day. Absolutely FREEZING!! Or so it is to him these days. If his hands get the slightest bit cold, they drive him crazy with itching, so he always wears winter gloves during our morning exercise and pulls his collar up high on his neck.

Ahhh, it looks like he finally warmed up when the sky cleared up and the sun came out. It had been an invigorating hike. But, time to go home and get started working on his hours and hours and hours of reading the missionaries' weekly letters and answering them. It's a good thing he is fast on the keyboard.

We were asked to speak in another Spanish ward. This made three times I have given my 18-minute talk in Spanish. For some reason I felt more nervous this third time than I did the other two times. But, when all was said and done, they had understood me. 

The main thing is they love to hear Glen speak to them in their native language. He always delivers a powerful message and they feel the Spirit strongly as he is speaking.

It was time once again for our senior missionaries to come to our home for dinner and a home evening message. It takes some skill (mostly luck) to get a semi-decent photo of all of them and me in the same frame. After all, I had to document that was I there as well!!

We have three assistants for a couple of transfers: Elder Dalley, Elder Kiehl and Elder Burbank.

We were on a tight schedule to try and get everything fit in before we left town for a few days for our seminar. Glen invited them to our house for a meeting and we ended up feeding them all the leftovers we had from the senior missionaries' dinner the night before. It worked out PERFECTLY!!

After all, I was getting in trip mode as we were looking forward to going out of town and wasn't too anxious to cook for company. Heating up leftovers made it feel almost like I had started my vacation.

We were going to be gone over Halloween, so we didn't even buy any Halloween candy this year. There were plenty of reminders all around about the upcoming holiday.

This Halloween decoration was a bit unsettling. We saw it as we walked through a beautiful neighborhood on our roundabout way back to our car after our Torrey Pines hike. Creepy!!

Another unsettling thing we saw was this elder who had recently had a bike accident. Lots of road rash on his face and arms.

An unsettling experience we had was when we received a call that an elder was in the hospital. This happened the night before we left on our trip.

By the time we spent hours at the hospital and then spent more hours in the wee hours of the night trying to locate an open pharmacy to get his drugs upon his release from the hospital, we had very few hours of sleep before we had to get up very early in the morning to catch our flight to Oregon.