Anderson Halloween Party 2024

 It is kind of traditional for Andersons to host a Halloween party and invite several families. It usually includes dinner of Panda Express, lots of desserts, and a scavenger hunt. This year was no exception. The theme was Spider Verse. Here is the list from Eli describing who everyone was. 

"Sam-King Pin, Me-Spider Man, Audrey-Doc Oock, Noah-Miles Morales, Luke-Spider-Man Noir, Hazel-Spot(villain), Mason-Metro Man, Hailey-Venom, Ashley-Spider Gwen, Harlow-Carnage, Baba- Aunt May, Papa-NYPD Captain."

Good thing Eli knew those, because I have no idea who most of those characters are- lol. 

Trunk or Treat 2024

For our ward "Trunk or Treat" this year, my trunk was GHOSTS. It turned out well. This year I was smart enough to fix up a piece of cardboard for my "shower curtain background" and save it for years to come. I love the pictures that I can get on shower curtains from Amazon. This one was a ghost looking in a window. Then I had lots of other ghosts... many with their own lights... and the florescent bubbles in white foam. I also had a spinning light that looks like ghosts flying around. The various colored lights and bubbles looked pretty cool. The dinner was chili and sides... and chicken nuggets and fruit for the kids. Ron had an assignment to go help set up chairs and tables, so we went about 45 minutes early. I was given an assignment to do a "spiritual thought"- lol. I wasn't sure exactly what that might be... but I came up with an idea. 😉😲Our costumes were, "Duck, duck, goose". The weather was pretty good for dinner outside. Maybe a little too hot for eating chili 😆😎Someone suggested having snow cones next year. 

Wynwood Halloween

 Almost every morning, I have a little 2.4-mile route that I walk through the neighborhood. It is an "inside" loop, that keeps me away from school traffic and bus stop traffic. I only need to watch out for cars backing out of their driveway. A couple of days last week I took pictures of my favorite Halloween decorations along my walk. You will see that most of these decorations are "cute".... not "nasty"- lol. 😏😕😖 (There are a few houses with really nasty Halloween decorations.) The one house on a corner, near us... with all of the skeletons and the hats hanging in the trees, that looks like Halloween blew up in her yard... won a prize. My Halloween decorations were all put away by Halloween. I was ready to move on the Thanksgiving/Fall. I am such a minimalist that my brain needed some clean empty space for a couple of days. And a lot of my Halloween decorations are bright orange... I needed some more toned-down colors for a month. My Fall pumpkins are a more muted orange and then I combine that with a pale teal color. We don't pass out candy on Halloween night. After trunk or treat is over... I am done- haha. Even though I already posted the pic of my front porch... I am posting it again here. I love the witch hats hanging from the porch ceiling. 

Elder Simms

 Here is a great post that Annie shared on Facebook about a tender mercy with Elder Simms. We are so grateful for his willingness to serve and for his testimony. We pray for him on a daily basis. And I included my favorite picture, so far. I am also including a couple of photo collages that Annie made, from when Elder Simms left for his mission. I already shared the pics of him and Nathan, but I love the way she put the photos together. 

"I've been updating my blog and remembered about a tender mercy I wanted to share from September.  As we were helping Jared make the rest of the preparations for his mission, one of the remaining things he needed was $160 in crisp bills for his Visa entry process when he entered Paraguay.  We ended up waiting until the last minute and were unsuccessful in finding what he needed.  We were basically supposed to find pristine uncirculated bills that didn't have any marks or folds.  Alex went to at least 15 different banks on this seemingly impossible task to find these pristine bills.  Since Jared was headed out the next day, we just had to send him with the best we could find.  All of the bills had a fold down the middle, and I was worried that they would be rejected.  At that point, I was just hoping and praying that they'd be good enough or maybe that God would be able to miraculously remove the fold.  I believe in a God of miracles, so it wasn't impossible.  Anyway, there was a bit of a miracle, but it wasn't in the way I expected.  It was better!  When he arrived in Paraguay, it turns out he didn't even need the money at all.  The church had been working with Paraguay to allow entry for the missionaries without that fee (or handling it some other way).  Instead they had a representative from the church who was helping them with the entry process, basically an advocate for them that they were who they said they were and serving a mission for the church.  So Jared not only made it through that process without any problems, but also was able to keep the money.  

As I was thinking about that whole experience, I couldn't help comparing that to us.  I feel like sometimes we're like the bills that aren't quite pristine.  We worry that we might not be good enough.  Sometimes we want a miracle to help with those imperfections.  And maybe sometimes we get those miracles, but not in the way we intended.  When the imperfections are still there, we might doubt God or why He's not removing those weaknesses.  But often, He had a much better plan all along.  We just needed an Advocate (the Savior) who knows us and can help us make it through whatever obstacle we were trying to get through. And even though those weaknesses are still there, we now can be used for a greater purpose than we had in mind because we had Jesus on our side.  

Jared is doing great, by the way.  He's serving in Ciudad del Este and his companion is Elder Ponce (from Peru).  He's already experienced some other miracles and noticing how the Lord is helping him with the work."

Some New Items

We have a few new things at our house. Ron does such a good job of managing our money, that I feel like I can buy a few new pieces of furniture or other things sometimes.  (Actually, for some of the items, I used Amazon cards that I got from our Visa rewards points and order from Amazon. I found some furniture there that comes assembled! 😃 That is always a plus.) The little white shelf falls into that category. (also, the two white book cabinets and the white end table.) We paid our neighbor to do a little work in the front yard. (The dark bricks along the sidewalk. That space was "my area" and the flower bed near the front window is Ron's area... we will see what he does with that 😉) I ran across a decorative box one day, that gave me the new color inspiration for our bedroom. I was going to do more gray... but I love the navy color with our "totally tan" walls. I found a new bedspread, that I love with the wall color. The color of the bedspread is a darker navy blue than what the pictures look like. (My gray wallpaper will need to go somewhere else... maybe the guest bedroom.) I figure that I used my recent garage sale money for that bedspread. I love the round table in the eating area next to the kitchen. (I may eventually order some different chairs for that round table.) And I decided that the black desk could go in the library room as a puzzle table. 

Favorite FALL Things

 Most of these are just pics that I grabbed somewhere. Some are things that I wanted to make, like the painted pumpkins. Other are decor inspirations. Others are just great Fall colors.