Fall

We had fun in the Fall leaves today.  Had to get out to play before we rake them up! I especially wanted to take pictures of the Fall leaves since we haven't seen them in 3 years!!!  The colors are very nice, but I'm still not so sure about the cold :)  I've become wimpy!

Halloween!

We finally decided what to be just a week before Halloween, so we had to throw everything together fairly quickly.  I gave in and bought one of the boy's costumes because Momma Brown offered to pay for one as well :)  And I have to admit that they were much cuter (not to mention warm!) than anything I could have come up with.  But the rest were made from Dollar store finds.  We had our two cute firemen, I was the fire, Preston was the fire hydrant and he walked Sadie who was dressed as a dalmation. Then we even dressed the stroller as the firetruck.  That was a fun project!! It turned out SO cute and I don't have pictures of it!!!  But my mom took one for us (I forgot my camera trick-or-treating!) so I'll have to get a copy and then post it.  We had a great time going around with my sister and her family and then come back to our neighborhood for another hour of fun!  We have a fire chief in our ward, so Preston mentioned to him that we'd be visiting and the boys were going to be firemen, so when we got there his wife had made them special goodie bags with a little toy too.  It was very sweet.  Then we ended on quite the happening place where the Young Men president's family had put together a garage spook alley and they served hot chocolate with lots of fun mix-ins. The boys actually LOVED the spook alley because one of the little helpers would run through and tell people not to be scary because little boys were coming, so they were just friendly instead.  Haha.  :)  It was fun being able to trick or treat in our neighborhood and see tons of ward members!  One plus to being in Utah!!  It was a great time!

The Cake Pops we helped Mom make for a Halloween party. Cute, right?

Grandpa's Funeral

It was a sad occasion, but a great service.  The viewing was great, the thoughts, the prayers, the company, the food, and the overall feeling.  There were tears, giggles, and lots of hugs throughout.  We are blessed with so many wonderful family members! The Doxey's are a great group of people and sadly, I only really know a small percentage.  I feel like as I saw everyone it hit me that I had to think pretty hard to think of some cousins names, whose child they were and if I knew much about them.  Of course we have those we're close to, but growing up in Japan and having some other families growing up away, there are way too many people I don't remember until I see them.  Kind of sad.  But, it was really fun to see them!!

Anyway, the cool thing about having an Ameritus General Authority grandpa is that General Authorities come to pay respects.  We shook hands with Elder Christofferson and Elder Perry at the viewing and Elder Nelson walked in to the funeral right behind us, so we held the door for him and shook his hand.  Then he spoke for a few minutes at the end!  I think that's pretty darn neat.  It's amazing to be in the presence of an apostle!  And I'll admit it's hard not to follow them around just to say hi :)  Haha.  Without saying anything to Brayden when we held the door for Elder Nelson, he turned to us and said "That's one of our prophets!"  I said "Yeah! Do you know which one?" "No. Who?" "It's Elder Nelson."  Then very excitedly and loudly while Elder Nelson is walking down the hall Brayden exclaims "It's Nelson!  It's Nelson! Zander, that's Elder NELSON!" Then Zander joins in (always wanting to be just like Brayden) "That's Nelson!!"  I was slightly disappointed that he didn't turn around or respond.  That would have made Brayden's day.  But it made my day knowing that my little guys, young as they are, know that being an apostle is special.

Anyway, here's some pics!

Our Real Last Disney Trips

. . . with our season passes anyway :)

This past week we chose to head out to Disney World in Orlando because Preston had seminary off for a school break.  We invited Dan and Alyssa (who is a teacher in the same school district and therefore has the same break) to come with us if they wanted and by many little miracles it was able to work out and be a ton of fun!  Disney is always a happy place for me, but then we drove up to Tallahassee for Saturday night and Sunday and got to see all our long lost friends that we tend to be so bad at keeping in touch with!  It was absolutely incredible to drive up to the Porter's house and see the whole street lined with cars, knowing they were there to see us.  Almost wanted to cry.  And it was just magical seeing everyone again.  It felt like home.  We got to see the Bell's new baby and all the growing newborns from when we left.  Plus, it was so nice seeing the boys be outreached by all their old little friends.  They were right at home too ;)

(everything above was written back in October. I guess I just never got around to putting the pictures on. . . . oops!)