Fall Activities

As you may have guessed from my sporadic posting activity these last few months, my microbiology class is kicking my butt this semester.  Not only do I spend way more time studying than family scrapbooking, but I also think I have caught a rare disease from one of the pathogenic bacteria that we work with in lab.  My head, shoulders, knees and elbows have hurt for a week and a half.  There has got to be somebody I can sue. :)  The good news is that I can do a pretty decent gram stain and a passable streak isolation.  I even finally learned how to properly use a microscope after cajoling my lab partners to do it for me in both biology and anatomy labs. But, we have done some fun things this semester, and some of them I even have pictures of.

Sam and I took turns taking Chad to various showcase tournaments in New Mexico and Texas but between times we found a weekend to get away for our 20th anniversary trip to Manitou Springs, CO.  We stayed at the Two Sisters Bed and Breakfast.  We got there on one of the last three weekends before the owners retired so we lucked out.  Here is Sam standing in front of the honeymoon cottage that used to be the carriage house.  It was darling.  And the food was so good.  Yummy!  We also got to see a Halloween melodrama, shop at many a cute little boutique and tour a very rich Catholic Priest's mansion house from the turn of the century.

 And of course, if you're in Colorado, you have to hike. And we did.  It was beautiful!

One of the highlights of the season for the girls is helping Aunt Emily at her school Halloween carnival.  Here is Amber the magician getting ready for the big event.

This is what Amber does for business instead of pleasure.  Her homework assignment was to write about a sports activity using five of her spelling words.  This is what she came up with. Ha!

And of course another event that is greatly anticipated is the Hurst family reunion day in Blanding.  Lots of cousin time, lots of food and this year lots of leafs.  We gathered some up to spread on Poppy's grave.  We also visited Aunt Lizaboo's grave and collected some pinecones from around her grave to put next to Poppy's so that they could be have some of the same surroundings even though they are buried in different towns.

Cute girls getting ready for Trick-or-Treating.  Grandma and the aunts came over to get them ready since I had to finish my midterm. But I got home just in time to party.

 Of course, Bethany is too old to trick-or-treat with the family so here she goes off with her friends.

 But Miranda and Amber would never let us down.

And here is what the girls do with their candy once they've eaten enough to make them sick.