Halloween, Gideon's Birthday and Dwarven Valentine's Day

 Last week Sara discovered the KSL classifieds free page and decided to get some things from it. We now are the owners of a cat carrier and a foot stool.

Also Last week we went to the OBT to see Dracula vs the Hunchback. The play was very fun, and had some of Mike's favorite Dracula scenes in all of the OBT's repertoire. One of the girls that was in the acting class that Rea, Sara and Timmy went to was acting in that show, so they were really excited to see her.

Last Saturday was the ward chili cook off, which usually is at the same time as the ward trunk-or-treat, however they didn't do that this year. We made cornbread muffins, and Amy made lemon jello that was colored orange, and it won the best dessert award, so apparently catering to the tastes of the children worked very well.

On Tuesday was Halloween. First we went to the trunk-or-treat, and when our car ran out of candy we left to go to the trick-or-treat. One of the cars was very popular with our kids - they dressed up like fishermen and had all the candy wrapped up in newspaper (like fish). The kids thought that that was very cool.

The kids all were healthy and had fun during trick or treating. They got a lot of candy (which is probably all eaten already.) We reserved some for Halloween cookies, but haven't made them yet.

With the beginning of November we (Mike, Alison and Rea) started up their annual NaNo/NaGa. Rea is doing very well and having fun, Mike was stumped for a few days but has started to make progress, and Alison is working hard, but is not having much success yet.

Both Rea and Alison don't want to reveal what they are writing about, so Mike will report on his game that he is making. It is currently titled "Dwarven Valentine's Day", and it is a two player game where you try to determine the gender and romantic/aromantic preferences of the other player to see if you could make a romantic relationship/business contract/or if you will instead have to go to war with the other player at the end of the game. If you form some sort of relationship then the players both win, but if you go to war then one player wins and the other loses. If you try to form a relationship and it fails then both players lose. Mike is excited about it currently.

Wednesday was Activity dudes, and we had a Dia de Los Muertos celebration and a candy swap. We talked about Grandpa Yoder, Grandpa Brown, and Grandma Sumption, and got lots of chili-covered Mexican candy.

We also celebrated Gideon's birthday this week. He says that it was very fun and that he got a frog, pokemon cards, bakugan, and video games. He has been playing with all of them since we celebrated his birthday, and loves all of them.

To tell a little bit more about the frog: Gideon loves frogs. He has many frog stuffed animals, and every year Rea makes hand made gifts for everyone for their birthday, so this year. Rea hand made him another stuffed frog. It turned out really cute: