Halloween!

 We are not a big Halloween family- but when I found out that our school was having a Barbie theme, I decided to lean into it. Here I am with my teammate Kelly:

And with my good friend. Becky

And, with Ken at our trunk or treat- we won for best couple costume

Camille was a princess and all of her friends (about 7) dressed up as secret service agents to protect her. And they all wore tutus. I'm not sure what all that was about, but they had fun with it

We only had about 30 trick or treaters, which is too bad because I had lots of full size candy bars, but oh, well. We did not carve pumpkins this year.

Wisdom Teeth

 The time finally came for Audra to get her wisdom teeth out. She was pretty nervous, but she did great. And she actually healed up pretty good- she never needed the narcotics, for which we were grateful. The Tylenol and Ibuprofin were enough.

Escape Room

 Ben decided to get in on the fall break fun, so we went to an escape room. We got combined with two other people, and it was great. We made new friends, and escaped!

Breckenridge Troll

 Since we came home a day early from Amarillo, I took the non-tantrumy children up to Breck to see the troll. This is another item I've had on the bucket list for quite some time. It did not disappoint! Combined with crepes and the changing leaves, it was a perfect day!

Amarillo ?!?

 With fall break, we really didn't have anything planned, but I have been wanting to do a road trip to Amarillo for awhile, so we did it. It was quick- we left Sunday after church and came home Tuesday- but I'm glad we went. The drive wasn't too bad, 7 hours. Thankfully, we missed a horrifying accident where a train derailed and landed on I-25 killing a truck driver. It's simply awful- but we went through about 2 hours before the accident and avoided that, though on the way home I-25 was still closed so we had to take a slightly longer route home.

On our first day, we visited Palo Duro State Park- this was the impetus of the trip. It was very pretty- about the prettiest thing that Amarillo has to offer. Claire and Camille didn't like the hike until we got to the end and got to the dangerous rock climbing up to the lighthouse.

Do you see the gecko? It's there somewhere.

This cave was pretty fun, too

After the hikes, we went to dinner at a restaurant a friend recommended. After my girls asked, "What's bbq?" I knew we had to go to a good one. This one was quite tasty- we all enjoyed it. And the vibe of the restaurant definitely felt very Texas.

The next day, we stopped by The Donut Stop because we heard the cherry donuts are the best thing on the planet. We thought they tasted a little like cherry cough syrup, but I'm still glad we tried them.

Then we went to the Cadillac graveyard. And after a tantrum from a certain teenager, we decided to head home rather than stay another day as originally planned.

Here's pictures of when we got up to the "lighthouse" on the hike:

The weather was perfect- mid 70's. Not too hot, not too cold. There were a ton of warnings about wearing sunscreen. I think hiking this in the summer would be torture

Things we learned about Texas:

1. There are a lot of places to bury a body

2. It is FLAT! This must be Flat Stanley's favorite place

3. They have donut shops on every corner. Ben would have loved it had he come

4. Texans don't like bathrooms. There were multiple rest stops that had picnic tables, but no bathroom facilitites. And in the state park there were very few bathrooms. It was weird