This year we definitely saw an increased level of interest from Asher when it came to getting into the Halloween spirit. We were invited up to Brigham’s house for a Halloween party with food, games and trick-or-treating, so we decided that we’d better all find costumes quickly.

Asher really liked his pirate costume, and at times refused to take it off. Jill and I, on the other hand, had a tough time settling on a costume, and eventually decided to build our own costumes just hours before the party. Armed with only a couple of moving boxes, styrofoam bowls and a few cans of spray paint, we assembled ourselves into red and yellow Lego blocks. We thought they turned out surprisingly well.

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We had a lot of fun a Brig’s house and Mom and Dad plus Tiffani and all her kids came up from Houston to join the fun. Brig indulged my inner-geek and let me bring up the computer controlled lights, laser and fog machine to deck out his garage for the evening’s trick-or-treaters. It also turned out well and we got several compliments. To make the evening better, we even got to catch some of the UT game on someone’s 10-foot projector!

As part of Texas State’s Homecoming tradition, a series of soap box races are held on campus the day before the Homecoming game. I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to go, though Jill and Asher couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to see the homemade box cars race down the hills of campus at breakneck speeds.

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Asher really enjoyed cheering on the racers, thought the entire event probably filled his head with ideas of doing something similar. If only I could get Jill to approve of that...

While Jill and I would never claim to have green thumbs, we have been trying to make the best of a year-long drought in Kyle. We have been on watering restrictions since March and had one of the hottest summers in history.

Nevertheless, Jill has been diligent in keeping her rose bush in front of the house alive. As the weather has cooled down and the rain has come, we’ve seen an explosion of buds and flowers springing alive. It adds a great amount of color to the front of the house and has provided hours of entertainment to Asher who loves to water it each week.

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Tonight we were invited over to Brig and Stephanie’s house to celebrate Stephanie’s birthday. Given that Jill and I often let our own birthdays pass quietly, it was a lot of fun to go to a party with presents, cake, balloons and ice cream.

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Mason really got into his dessert and we enjoyed an evening hanging out with the family.

In light of the lovely weather we had this weekend we decided to retrace our steps along a scenic Texas Hill Country drive we had discovered a few years ago. Winding through the hills along Route 12, just west of San Marcos, we made our way along what is dubbed Devil’s Backbone.

Once we reached the top, we pulled over at a rest stop to enjoy the sweeping views of the rolling hills and valleys. Unfortunately, our moment of peace and quiet was short-lived as car after car of people pulled over to take photos. Apparently this spot was not as secluded and undiscovered as we had thoughts.

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It has been a while since I’ve updated the website, so I decided what better topic to blog about than Asher’s hair? We’ve been training it back so that it won’t fall into his eyes often, but as of now, we have no definite plans to cut it. As long as it continues to be awesome, we’ll let it go, though there is talk to going to a stylist to even things out.

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It had been several months since Jill and I have had the opportunity to pack up the car and visit Houston, so as Mom and Dad’s birthdays loomed on the horizon, we quickly put together plans to go down and visit.

Tiffani thought that a nice way to celebrate would be to take Mom and Dad to Pappasitos for dinner so we made the arrangements and off we went. We of course had to tell the wait staff that we had two very special birthday guests at our table, and without fail they brought out a birthday sombrero for Mom and a few bowls of brownies and ice cream.

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It was nice to finally get back into Houston to see family after a long summer. Happy Birthday Mom and Dad!

Sometimes when we leave to go on our Sunday afternoon walks we leave with no plan in mind, hoping that something interesting will find us. Today was definitely an example of that!

On our way down the road, we passed the fire station that is just a few minutes away from our house. We noticed a huge jet of water erupting from the back of the station and swung the car around to see what was going on. It turns out that the large fire engine at the station has a remote-controlled water jet! The firemen came over to talk to us and when they saw Asher in the back of the car, they invited us to come and take a tour of the station.

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It was a lot of fun for us to talk with the firemen and for Asher to get to explore all the different trucks and equipment. They offered us a tour anytime we wanted to come back, so I’m sure it won’t be long until we visit them again.

This weekend was General Conference, which meant that we had to find creative ways to keep Asher occupied for a total of 8 hours. Thankfully we have a computer hooked up to the TV in the living room so that we could stream conference over the internet and watch from the couch.

Asher did well, some of his favorite activities included dominoes, coloring, and playing on my iPhone for 6 straight hours. I would normally have cut his playing on my phone short, but he was quiet and it let me and Jill enjoy the conference, so I let it slide.

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Along with conference we got a ton of rain on Saturday. Between sessions, Jill and I looked out the window to discover that our back yard was underwater!

I recently found a piece of software that allows me to control my camera and take time-lapse photographs, so we headed down to Texas State to get some shots of people walking around campus. We hit a speed bump, however, when we quickly realized that campus on a Friday night was pretty much deserted.

Since the time-lapse thing didn’t work out (I’ll have to do one later to post here) we took these photos instead.

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Maybe we’ll have better luck on a weekend when Texas State has a home game. They lost this weekend to Jill’s other alma mater, SUU.