October 2013

October is one of our favorite months of the year – the cool, fall days and gorgeous fall colors and playing in the falling leaves – we love it!! Here’s a look at our October:

Autumn celebrated her 11th birthday in style! Her birthday fell over our Fall break, so I let her invite all 18 of the girls she wanted to invite to her party, thinking that at least half of them would be out of town, but as luck would have it, all of her friends stayed in town this year, so we had the hugest group of giggling 11 year old girls in our basement for a late night pajama party – oh my!!  It was really a lot of fun actually, and Autumn loved it!!

She was also super surprised to get a riding electric scooter she has wanted for quite a while – she loves motoring around the neighborhood and giving rides to all of her friends.

As always, Autumn kept busy with dance, adding solo practices to her already busy schedule since she has decided to compete her first ever solo piece come competition season.  She is learning a beautiful lyrical dance that is really making her work hard – it’s quite a stretch for her, but she is working hard to get it down.  She was also super excited to finally get her front handspring down and now handsprings all over the yard!

Devin stayed busy with school, work and fencing, but still found plenty of time to be social.  He went to the Sadie Hawkin’s dance with his friend, Kristyanne and had a great time!  His group dressed as pirates and lost boys from “Peter Pan” to go along with the Disney theme.  Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the whole group, but here’s Devin and his cute date.

Seth stayed super busy with play practices, getting ready for this month’s production of “The Emporer’s New Clothes” and December’s production of “The Hobbit”.  We’ll keep you posted on how the plays turn out. 

Devin and Seth both had choir concerts, which were awesome as usual.  They also both earned straight A’s for their first terms of the year – working hard in school!  Autumn is doing great, too and has all A’s so far – her school is graded on trimesters for some reason while the boys are on quarters – I’ve never really figured that one out.

We took our traditional drive around the Alpine Loop to see all the beautiful fall colors – so much beauty in the mountains so close to home – LOVE it!!

We enjoyed a very short visit from Tami and family when they came in town to see the BYU-Georgia Tech football game.  It was great to spend time with them!!

We started the major reconstruction project of our master bathroom.  It’s all torn apart and probably won’t be completely put back together until the end of November.  Until then, sharing one bathroom with 5 people is fun. :)  Here’s a before pic and what it looks like now.

We had a huge mini-Finch family reunion at the end of the month when my brother, Bill came to town to run the Halloween half marathon with me and our 2 nephews, Ben and Brandon.  We ended up having 15 people sleep at our house the night before the half marathon (all of the runners and their wives/husbands, plus a cheering crew from Boise, Pocatello and San Diego) – it was so much fun!  The half marathon was great – the weather could not have been any more beautiful and it was a fun race to do together.  Plus, for a girl who prayed every night as a child for Wonder Woman underroos, dressing up as Wonder Woman was a bit of a dream come true. ;)

We carved pumpkins for Halloween – here’s a look:

Megan got her first new companion since arriving in Texas and also saw her cousin Alex for the first time at the transfer meeting.  She is doing well despite the typical missionary challenges.  We love her!!  Here’s a picture of her with her new companion, Sister Morris (who she loves) and one of her with Alex.

Autumn was our only trick or treater this year and she went with her friends alone while Devin and Seth both had Halloween parties at friend’s houses, so it was just me and Bryce and the trick or treaters this year – sigh!  Here’s a look at their costumes – Devin was some character from “Supernatural”, Seth was a nerd (esp love the socks with sandals – Bryce was offended), and Autumn recycled my Wonder Woman costume with a smaller shirt and go-go boots.

Hope you all have a great month!