The last time I logged into this thing, all of my friends had blogged so that there were about twelve different posts to read and I was thinking to myself, "What happened? Has it really been that much time?" It had been. I get so easily thrown off by cumulative travel. I drop things completely, blogs, friends, cooking delicious foods, if it's not nailed down, it might get lost. Sorry, friends. I still love you more than life.

Have there always been this many Halloween parties to go to? Costume inspiration is at an all-time low. I think I'm going to be Little Red Riding Hood because I saw a red cloak at Target for $8. I hope it's still there... Halloween isn't the holiday I go gaga over. It's Thanksgiving and Christmas that I love. I am practically counting down the days till we can start putting up Christmas things in our apartment, writing a Christmas letter and cards for all our friends and family, going shopping for a tree and ornaments (what theme should we do? Of course, whatever we pick now will be outdated by the time our kids are old enough to have opinions about that sort of thing), finding the perfect presents, making buckeyes, drinking eggnog, and you can never forget the Amy Grant Christmas album. No Christmas is complete without it.

My class is going a lot better. We're working on costumes for the party next week, and they are loving it. We get to paint, and today we're going to start working on props. Mario hats and gloves, a Spongebob spatula, sunglasses, other things. Yesterday I started to win over one of the slightly difficult kids. I loved seeing the light dawn in his eyes that I actually cared about him. More good to come. I am glad I work here. Last week we got to carve pumpkins with our kids, and that was great. We were outside so they could be as loud as they wanted. I love doing things like that where it's just pure fun. Telling them about roller coasters at Disney during snack is also wonderful. They want to know if they are tall enough to go.

Time to go look for costume parts, for me, for them.

This morning I woke up one minute before my alarm went off with a feeling of deep satisfaction and contentment with my life. I'm not perfect. I can't accomplish everything, but I'm starting to begin with that expectation. It's okay if I don't. At the Bible study I go to, one of the ladies has this saying, "don't persecute yourself." It's a good one.