CONFERENCE CASH

My genius mom came up with this fantastic idea to get her grandkids to actually watch conference. They get conference cash for writing down what the speaker is talking about. So for every speaker, they write 2 things the speaker was talking about. They'd get a 'conference' dollar for each thing they wrote up to $30 in conference cash to spend in the conference store after conference was over. My kids have NEVER listened to more conference speakers than they did this October! They even watched the Saturday session without Ty and I since we were busy with basement stuff (we watched it later no worries)! It was so awesome to see them actually listening to conference! 

 

LILY FALL SOCCER

 First we had homecoming week this week. Crystal and Jay went to the parade on Friday with me. It made us a little late for Crystal's soccer game due to traffic getting home ... oops ... but we had fun! 

Lily has decided to go back to soccer after trying a couple of other sports the last couple years. Her team went to the Haunted River during Crystal's game Friday. She came home marked with 'blood' as a sacrifice. Clearly from the picture you can see she was terrified. Haha. Not really. She had a ton of fun. The next morning they got pictures taken and they all did bubble braids for the game. Someone took some great live shot pictures as well. They turned out great!

Also that night Lily created a Lady and the Tramp moment with Roscoe and her ramen noodles. It was super gross so naturally I had to document it with pictures. 

HARVEST

We got a lot of peaches and apples this year from Caldwell to can and freeze. Honestly I didn't follow through with the freeze drying very well and most of it is still sitting in my freezer. Hopefully some of it gets freeze dried before it all gets ruined. We also got a ton of plums from Ty's parents' plum tree. We made plum butter and apple butter and canned a lot of peaches as well! 

Our garden did better than last year but it could still improve. We managed to get several honeydews, cantaloupes, and watermelons to grow. A large animal of some sort got to most of the honeydews and cantaloupe. I almost cried. I was so excited for them! The watermelon was so so so sweet and delicious! 

Our biggest issue with our garden this year was that we were a couple of weeks behind so it was all growing but not quite fast enough. We actually had to pull the tomato plants and hang them upside down in the garage for a couple of weeks after the first frost to get them to ripen. We still had so many green tomatoes that we canned salsa verde with it. We had zucchini and crookneck squash. Tons of green peppers and jalapenos. Our corn did great as well!!! Over all I think it did pretty well this year! And after some trial and error I think next year will be even better!