Busy Days at Home...

We arrived back in Murray on the afternoon of Oct. 28th to witness my brother, Steve, and our sweet upstairs tenants raking our leaves.  What a blessing for us as we had to leave promptly for a missionary dinner and then drive to CV later that night!

We woke up to this snow and were doubly glad we had made the drive the night before.

We had to be at Steve's orthopedic doctor's appointment by 7:45 that morning.  By the end of the cruise, Steve was experiencing a lot of pain in his hip and leg so we knew that the shot they gave him wasn't working.  After checking him out, the doctor asked if he was ready to fix the problem.  After a resounding "yes," he asked further questions about our schedule, etc.  He was able to get Steve an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Friday, Nov. 1st and ended up with hip replacement surgery scheduled for December 30, 2019.  It's kind of scary for him, but we think it will be the best solution for him to have a more normal life.

Hilary's kids were able to pick their pumpkins from our garden and carve them before they froze so they were happy to show them off to us when we got home.

Halloween night was still cold and snowy, so Steve did his best to remove snow from our porch so no one would slip.  We skipped out on serving hot dogs and gave out fruit snacks instead.

Here is Steve using a variety of methods to remove the ice including a blow torch since we didn't have any ice melt.

After giving out about 175 fruit snacks, we turned off the lights and called it a night.

We really enjoyed the gorgeous sunset on Halloween night.

Sometime during the week, Steve and I worked together to carefully move the rest of the outdoor furniture and cushions to the barn to be stored for the winter.  It really came early this year!

We were up early Saturday morning so that we could drive to Pocatello to watch Anna race in the Idaho State Cross-Country championship meet.  It was plenty cold topping off at about 25 degrees F. so everyone was bundled up but the runners.  Brrrr!

Heather tried her best to get Anna to wear warmer clothes but I think that she succeeded in getting her to wear gloves.

We were proud of Anna and her efforts along with her team.  We think it's awesome that this freshman competitor made it to the state competition.

                                          Here's the Madison high school team.

Here are all the fan club supporters with our start runner, Anna!

We had packed our bags for our next trip the night before so we bypassed CV and drove directly to SL for our flight to Munich and then onto Barcelona the next day.  It's crazy we know, but this next cruise opportunity was too good to pass up.