October

The start to October is always the best because General Conference and Brooks' birthday are right at the beginning! This year Brooks' birthday came first. When I was shopping at Target (alone, for ME) couldn't NOT but these Daniel Tiger jammies! He loves them and climbs up in his chair and asks me to take his picture, "CHEEESE".

Brooks and I love going to the Library. He loves shoving books (any books unfortunately) in the return slot, playing with the puzzles and tapping away at the computer. We decided to try their music class. This picture was from one of his first times... but he still has that same face everytime haha! Although he doesn't always participate and becomes shy I still think it's fun for him to watch and interact with the other kids. He'll jump in when they have props like shaky eggs, scarves, a parachute or a fun tunnel to crawl through but he's not interested in the actions and dancing.

I snapped this picture only because of the way Brooks folds his arms for prayer. We never taught him he just started copying us but he does it like this! Cracks me up! I'm sure one day he'll grow out of it but for now I love it!

Play date! Brooks is starting to learn his friends' names and it's darling that he remembers them!

The city of Haslet celebrated National Night Out and for our small town, they had an awesome event! Exotic petting zoo, rescue vehicles to tour, tons of vendor booths with games and prizes, a train ride and free In-N-Out for the first 700 people. Heck yes you bet we were there early. I just can't turn down free food.

We opened some gifts the night before his birthday just to spread them out and it was perfect. A book from Aunt Pam to read, then from my parents a new tractor blanket and elmo to sleep with! He LOVED elmo. It used to be Bronco and Bear. Bear got kicked to the curb and now it's Bronco and Elmo.

Although Elmo looks SO CREEPY on the monitor

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKS

Dan's parents came to stay with us for Brooks' birthday and conference weekend. We loved having them and Brooks was over the moon playing with them. On his birthday we decided to head to the Texas State Fair. We had a great time- saw a lot of animals, pig races, ate some good food and saw some tractors and cars- ALL of Brooks' favorite things.

Brooks thought this was big bird!

I think we wore him out pretty good!

We spread out some of his gifts so he could actually play with one before opening another. This year Dan and I got him a soccer goal. He loves it! It also folds up nice and tight for when you're not using it. Brooks loves kicking goals and even using it as a hiding place when you put a blanket over it.

This year I did a texas sheet cake for Brooks just so I could put oreo crumbs and tractors on it. He LOVED it. Plus who doesn't love eating texas sheet cake!

He wore this hat for maybe 5 seconds

He was so excited to blow out his candle. He always practices when I have a candle burning in the house.

He loved the tractors (he calls them 'DIRT') so much that he didn't even eat the cake or ice cream. NOT ONE BITE. Talk about home run on the decor huh? He just smashed his cake with them which was totally fine with me. I loved how much he loved playing with them.

Brooks was given some new cars and tractors, books, clothes, a remote control car, a golf set, a blanket and elmo. The next day we went to the Aquarium at Grapevine Mills. This was also a huge hit with Brooks. He loved the turtles and pointing out Dory and sharks!

That night Dan and I were able to have a game night at the Leopolds which is ALWAYS a fun time! We played our fair share of games with Dan's parents too and I had to document my double yahtzee round!

Sylvia and I went to the General Women's Conference and I really enjoyed it. I thought the speakers were engaging and thoughtful with their topics and I left feeling uplifted and inspired. Plus our stake had queso and guacamole after so that was a WIN! The rest of the weekend we watched General Conference, ate good food and Dan and I even snuck away for a quick Top Golf date. We loved having Eric and Sylvia here and we all (Brooks especially) missed them when they left. Come back soon!

I wanted to document Brooks lining up things in my pantry to race his cars on. Then somehow all his cereal ended up on the table? He still ate it haha!

PSA to bolt your dressers to the wall. I had procrastinated doing ours because Brooks is never allowed in our room without us. He knows that and he's actually very obedient. However this happened while we were both in the room doing laundry. He was right next to me opening a drawer and I was grabbing some close to put away in the dresser. However while I thought he was opening and closing drawers, he was actually just opening multiple drawers. AND I didn't realized he could reach the second one from the top. So with all the bottom drawers out and opening that fourth one, it started to tip. The top drawers flung out landed on the bed and on the floor as I dart to catch it. Thankfully Brooks was okay and just had a few scratches. Lesson learned! All things are bolted!

Brooks plays while mom gets ready

I think I mentioned recently that our ward split, a new ward was created and ward boundaries were adjusted. We stayed in the same ward and I was called as the Primary President. Well since then these last few month and especially weeks, has been a whirlwind trying to split things, reorganize things, find teachers and subs, calling new people and doing a Primary Program. The program was the thing that really kicked my butt! A lot of behind the scenes work goes into it. I knew it would turn out great- it just always does! I KNEW that but the anticipation and the stupid worries seriously kept me up at night. Now that I was the president my brain kept telling me it was suddenly my fault if everything went wrong. Pretty irrational but I couldn't help it. I couldn't eat the morning of haha it was ridiculous! But just like I KNEW, it went great. The kids sang beautifully, the spirit was there and they didn't wonderful! So many positive comments and congrats for the kids! Phew I was relieved it was over!

The next week in church I was giving a talk, talk about back to back right haha. There were 4 youth speakers, an intermediate hymn and me. The youth speakers were talking about their experience going to Nauvoo this last summer and I was to talk about the Saints book- the new multi-volume church history book the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just published. After all four youth speakers finished we still had 35 minutes left in the meeting. THIRTY FIVE! Usually you plan on speaking for 15 minutes, yikes! Of course the bishopric leaned over during the hymn and said I didn't have to speak THAT long, phew! I took as long as I could which ended up being 25 minutes then the bishopric closed out the meeting and it was perfect!

I want to mention the Saints book. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published two church history volumes in the past in 1842 and 1930. This is the first multi-volume published church history since then- it's a big deal! This first book covers the years of Joseph Smith's life and ends right before the saints traveled west to modern day Utah. It was an engaging and thoughtful narrative about people’s lives. I have gained so much insight to the early days of The Restored Church of Jesus Christ. I reviewed things I knew, I learned new things, I learned the circumstances behind the actions, I read about the joys, trials and mistakes of a people trying to find God’s true church and establish it on the Earth. 

This book touched me so deeply. I was moved to tears multiple times not only by the things they had to endure but how they endured it. I was angry for them, I admired their humility, I watched them give everything they had to the Gospel and to their families. When faced with unspeakable trials they chose again, and again, and AGAIN to follow their faith in the Lord. They weren’t perfect, they made mistakes, they had doubts and many fell away and lost their testimonies. They were human just like the rest of us. Bottom line- IT WAS SO GOOD. And FYI it's online and on the Gospel Library App.

So last year after Halloween I went to Party City and tried to put together a family costume since everything was on clearance. Brooks wasn't old enough to like anything yet so I went with Batman! A year later and I'm so happy everyone's costumes fit! Although Brooks thought he was Jackson Storm from Cars 3. We just went with it! Here's his costume before I cut the eye-holes from the mask.

I was in charge of one of the games for our church's Trunk or Treat party so I made a bean bag toss!

 Brooks painted his pumpkin and did so good! Last time we tried painting for a fun activity and he wasn't in to it. Apparently that's changed! He kept asking for me to turn it and for more black.

One of our friends hosted a fun Halloween party for ladies and their littles. Brooks LOVED their house. They had toys from Cars, Thomas the Train, trucks galore- Brooks was in heaven. It was nice so I could talk to my friends and he was good and occupied. While we were there he learned how to say his friends' name and was running around yelling "CONNER! CONNER!" finding him and pointing to him. It's so fun when Brooks learns new words and he knows it!

 After Brooks went to sleep Dan and I carved our pumpkins. Every year we remember that we aren't good at carving pumpkins and have to remind ourselves not to be overly ambitious.

My best friend left these in my mail box because she's the BEST,

I made lots of sugar cookies for our church's Halloween party. This is how Brooks learned the word sugar :)

Our ward Trunk our Treat was great! I was definitely tired by the end though! They had games and a cake walk, lots of fun trunks decorated and of course lots of candy. Brooks kind of got the hang of it I think all the people were distracting though. Some people had some of those inflatable dinosaur outfits- Brooks was afraid they were going to, "get you?" poor thing!

On the day of Halloween is rained ALLL DAYY. Which if you're not in Texas right now, is nothing different since we seem to be in monsoon season lately. It was just dumping buckets until it magically cleared up around 6pm. Brooks and I walked around the block. He loved knocking on doors but would get really shy in front of people. Then he'd go yelling "Trickertreat!" until we got to the next house. I was surprised he didn't want to eat it all right away but he put it in his pumpkin and built up a good stash. Everyone loved his costume and when asked, "Who are you dressed as?" he'd say, "STORM!" Also notice I cut the eye holes so he'd keep the hat on.

Happy batman Storm with his candy

A funny story from Halloween is that our neighbors across the street set out a witch holding candy while they trick or treated. It kind of looked like this.

We took Brooks up to it so see his reaction and once he realized what it was he didn't come near, even to get a piece of candy. He just shook his head no and we grabbed a candy for him, no big deal. Well we were all done sitting in some camp chairs on our driveway eating candy when all the sudden the witch fell over and toppled down the sidewalk. Brooks LOST IT. He was terrified and sobbing! After we told him the scary witch wasn't real, it just went and moved in his eyes! Oh man we felt so bad (and so did all the neighbors outside) but we all thought it was a tiny bit funny. I was giggling until he woke up screaming that night because he was scared. Then it wasn't so funny anymore.