Our Tree

I just planted our first tree. We have wanted a tree or two for a couple years and we finally followed through a couple weeks ago. Today I actually got around to planting it.

If you look in the center of the scattered red dirt, you may be able to see a stick. That stick is our tree. The one leaf that it had left fell off while I was trying to get the tree out of its plastic container.

Here is a close up. To the left you can see the one leaf it had.

I guess I won't know until next summer if it is just a stick or an actual tree.

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated Halloween on Saturday rather than Sunday. The day started with me waking up in Davidson at the Ada Jenkins Center where I spent the night with the youth that were participating in an overnight service project at the center. This was the first night that I spent away from Brigham in his 13 months here on Earth. It was a great experience working with the youth in moving the food pantry, painting the rooms and halls at the center, restocking the new pantry, and also assembling a new walk-in cooler and freezer for the center. Everyone worked so hard on Friday that most of the work was completed by Friday night so most people came home on Saturday morning. I returned home just in time to see Brigham before he laid down for his nap. Once he got up we headed to Carowinds for the last time this year. We met up with Shannon, Justin, and Briggs' bff Kaitlyn. We spent the afternoon in the kiddie park riding anything we could with them. Then we went to the trick-or-treating that Carowinds was hosting that turned out to be pretty lame. It was crowded and there were only 4 candy stops (and they were only handing out dum dums and jolly ranchers).

This is one from the carousel. I thought Briggs was so adorable on this ride because he was actually holding onto the pole with both hands once the ride started.
This ride was pretty cute. There were these cars that rode around a track and played music from the 50's. It sounds lame but I just thought it was so cute.

We all came home and took naps and then I finished making Brigham's costume for the ward trunk-or-treat. He was Luke Skywalker and Mark was Darth Vader. Briggs' costume didn't turn out exactly how I envisioned but it worked. Since it was so cold out, we had to layer him in some long sleeve shirts under his costume so that made his "robe" not fit as well and also threw off the look a little. I couldn't find a pattern for this costume so I just used one of his shirts as a guide for how big to make the robe. For the pants I just made some baby legs and then I chut some brown jersey knit fabric into strips and wrapped it around his shoes and half way up his calf so that it looked like he was wearing boots (or whatever you call the weird Star Wars shoes that Luke wears). It was pretty cute seeing Mark hold Brigham with both of them in their costumes. Surprisingly, some people had no idea what they were. I wish I would have gotten a picture at the beginning of the night instead of the end when Brigham's costume is coming off his shoulders and is barely wrapped around him and I also wish I would have gotten Brigham's whole costume in the picture.