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We can't believe it's November already! Fortunately, we have still had beautiful weather here in Colorado--in the upper 70's for the past several weeks. We went golfing on Saturday in shorts and T-shirts! Ryan almost hit a hole in one! His ball was like a foot away from the hole. It was pretty exciting. We finally have grass in our back yard. It came about a month ago. The night before the sod was delivered, we could hardly sleep -- it was like Christmas! It is so beautiful! All our hard work has really paid off. Now we are already busy getting ready for the holidays. We just booked flights to visit Amy's brother and his family in Phoenix for Christmas. Amy's parents and grandfather are coming for Thanksgiving. Amy is also starting to get busy with Christmas programs and performances with her students and at church. It's a fun time of year! We are praying more intently than ever for a child to come into our home. We know there is a baby for us out there somewhere, and we hope the Lord will help us find him/her.

We had a great time on Halloween! I made both our costumes. I dressed as a witch inspired by a candy corn. I won a prize at our church party for "Most Creative!" Ryan dressed up like a Canadian Mountie. I thought he was hilarious (seeing as how he really is from Canada). After our church party, we went to hang out with our friends. Their son's birthday is on Halloween, and he was turning 2. My friend made tons of great food, including a homemade gingerbread cake with whipped cream. Sooo good! Before we went home, we made one more stop at another friend's house, who works with Ryan. She really wanted to see his costume and was disappointed that he didn't wear it to work. Do you think we'll ever get too old to stop dressing up?

Well, summer is pretty much over, and life is returning to a regular schedule for us. We had so much fun this summer with a family reunion on my side, a trip to Canada to see Ryan's family, and several visitors staying at our house. We are so blessed to have such a big and loving family. On Saturday, I had a voice recital and then we went out to dinner to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary. I can't believe how long we've been married. I told Ryan that morning "Thanks for picking me to be your wife!" He thought I was silly. I never get tired of him.

-Amy

We had a really fun trip to San Diego last week. Ryan had a business conference in La Jolla, so Amy joined him. Why miss a trip to the beach!? The weather was cool, but nice compared to the scorcher days we've been having here in Denver. Our first day in San Diego, we toured the Midway aircraft carrier that is now out of commission and ported in San Diego. It was really cool. Ryan had some meetings for a couple of days, so Amy shopped, went to he beach, and read by the pool. Meanwhile, Ryan was discussing the exciting issues of taxes for nonprofit healthcare companies. What fun! We also went to the zoo one day and met up with some friends we knew in college at BYU. We haven't seen them for years, so it was fun catching up with them and their three kids.

Our yard is really coming along. We will be getting fill dirt next week to fill in the huge hole from the pond. Then we should be ready to lay sod in the next few weeks. How exciting!

Well, this is our first journal entry! I think I'll just write a little about what's going on our house this week, because it's so exciting! We moved into our house 3 years ago, and the previous owners were Chinese. So, the whole backyard was a Chinese garden. We are finally working on getting rid of the gardens and putting in a lawn. I'm sure this will be much more family friendly. We tore out all the little wood paths, and are working on killing the flowers with roundup (I know it sounds terrible!) We had two ponds. One was smaller and quite easy to pull out. The other is huge! About 4 feet deep and full of fish. Over the last few weeks, we have slowly been cutting out the plastic piece by piece, and allowing the water to slowly soak into the ground. We pulled out about 30 fish! We gave them to some boys who live next door and have a pond in their yard. We finally finished the last piece of plastic yesterday! We now have to get some fill dirt to level it off.

Also, my mom and my sister, Mary, and her two kids, Maggie and Libby are coming to visit today. I get soooooo excited when my nieces come. My voice students have a recital tomorrow night, so it will be fun to have my family here.

Ryan took the day off today to golf. It's nice that his job is flexible this time of year, so he can have a day off to do something fun. He really likes it, so I signed up for a golf class during the month of August. We'll see how I do.

-Amy