Hooray! The temperatures have left the 80's. We are starting to get some crisp cool mornings and I am loving it! I forgot how good the air smells when it's cold. I've been able to go walking along some of the nature trails on Fort Polk with Natalie and that has been beautiful. I love nature!! Did I mention Fall is my favorite season? We had more Fall activities this week, to include being "Booed" twice by our neighbors with yummy treats (hooray apple crisp and vanilla ice cream!), and going to a pumpkin patch activity on post. That one was kind of lame-o and pretty much just a big "stand in line for an hour to get a balloon" thingy, but we did pizza and games with the Gordon's afterwards and that made it all worthwhile. Friends make all the difference!

While volunteering at the elementary school this week I learned a few things:

- There's a teacher at Aly's school that calls kids "bubba" if she can't remember their name at the moment. That's quality teaching for ya, right there.

- When Aly grows up she wants to be a sailor because she likes the ocean and lakes, loves swimming, and likes riding on a boat and driving a boat. We have my dad to thank for the driving of the boat - thanks Dad! (Over the course of her short life, Aly has wanted to be everything from a parachuter to a Walmart checker. It will be interesting to see what she actually becomes when she grows up.)

- When filling in the blank "My Family is . . .", Aly chose to write "very funny". Okay, I guess that fits.

This week Analise was able to go to a tree farm with her preschool and see baby Christmas trees. Very exciting. She also had to do a nursery rhyme art project and chose "Mary Had a Little Lamb". She had so much fun drawing her school, Mary and Lamb.

And Kate . . . this week Kate has learned to give high fives and loves to give them to the entire family. She also discovered unrolling the toilet paper roll this week . . . many times.

Balloons and Kazoos

This week Analise learned how to write her name and likes to write it all over the place. She's really excited about it and . . . well, I think the picture says it all. She says this is her "brightest" smile.

So, I mentioned Aly's in a hand bell choir at school, right? They've been practicing for a Christmas concert and I thought it sounded really classy and had in my mind this beautiful concert we would be attending as a family in December to watch our daughter perform in. Well, the other day I was doing Aly's hair and she starts trying to make music with her comb and tells me that they use other "instruments" in the choir along with the bells, like combs and rubbing sticks together. So now I'm wondering if I'm going to go to a concert with kazoos and washboards and bells - true Louisiana style. Sounds like we're in for a real humdinger of a time . . . I'll keep you posted.

The highlight of this week was an overnight temple trip down to Baton Rouge. It included swimming, pizza, and playing with friends. I love going to the temple, especially with my husband - the peace you feel and putting everything into perspective just can't be beat!

And finally this week, Aly had a quote of the week about her school lunch:

Our family has "wet" [juicy] hamburgers and I don't like those. I like the dry hamburgers my school has.

In Search of a Good Book (or Two) . . .

Lately I have been looking for a few good books to read as Kate has learned to self entertain a little better. I love reading a good book (although I can only do it sporatically because it takes over my life until I'm done)! So if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears! (Erin, sorry, but I lost the list you sent me when our computer crashed!) I'd also like to list a few of my favorite books, in case you're also in the market. Happy reading!
1. The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom
2. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
3. The Other Side of Heaven - John H. Groberg
4. These is my Words - Nancy E. Turner
5. Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
6. I also liked Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, but I think everybody's already read that!

To curl or not to curl, that is the question

Okay, so you get to hear more about my hair. I know what you're thinking, "Spiffy", right? I am one of those people who never does anything to her hair. Maybe I grow out some bangs for a couple of years, then cut some for a couple of years, then grow out some more. I've had plenty of criticism from hairdressers for only getting a haircut every six months or so and for letting my sister (sorry Laur!) cut my hair in our garage. So a couple of years ago I was grateful when my friend Niki told me to get my hair out of the 80's and actually showed me how to style the bang schwoopie off to the side and how to use mousse. :)
So, I've been feeling pretty good about my hairstyle for the past couple of years, except lately I've noticed that my natural curl is becoming a lot more predominant. Could be the pregnancy hormones from three kids, could be the humidity in the air, who knows? The point is that I've been thinking that I need to learn how to do a curly hairstyle before I end up looking like Little Orphan Annie (you know the red head fro girl from the movie?) So I asked a lady in our ward who had a cute curly hairstyle how she does her hair and I've tried it out a couple of times. It required the acquisition of "curly mousse" and a diffuser (I had to ask what that was), but here is how it turned out. So, what do you think? Is it a "go" or a "no go"? Do any of you fellow curly hair gals out there have some tips to help me out?
Okay, so enough about me . . . a couple of highlights at the O'Gwin home this week are that Chris finished another quarter of classes with all A's, I got a date with my hubby, Aly is loving her gymnastics class and the hand bell choir she was chosen to be in, Lise brought her "Scootaloo" My Little Pony to show and tell, did a fabulous job, and currently knows almost half the letters and sounds in the alphabet, and we discovered Kate knows how to blow kisses and say "hello" in the exact same sarcastic tone I use! :)

We also completed the yearly monumental task of getting the family picture taken for our Christmas letter. It was a whole day event as the closest JCPenney with a photo studio was a 1 1/2 hour drive away. But we made the most of it, smiled brilliantly, ate lunch, bought the girls some clothes, and I even got a new bedspread out of the deal. Then we went home for a relaxing family movie night.

The lowlight of the week is that at about midnight, Lise started throwing up. Chris joined in at around 5 am, and Aly woke up at 7:30 saying she was going to throw up. Lise went through 3 or 4 sets of jammies and blankets last night and finally was able to keep down a bowl of cereal for "breakfast" at 4 pm. Aly and Chris pretty much slept the entire day. I spent last night and today doing laundry and feel pretty beat, but I am so grateful that Heavenly Father gave me the strength to take care of my family today and that so far Kate and I are not sick. Is it terrible that I am also grateful that no one started throwing up until after we were done taking family pictures?

Analise's Pumpkin Song

General Conference Tents, Computer Crashes, The Golden Apricot and More . . .

This week I went to get my hair cut and found out that my natural color is "Golden Apricot". How 'bout that? And I thought I was just a dirty dishwater blonde, or whatever color that is.

Kate has learned to do summersaults this week and thinks she is pretty "hot stuff" when she does them. She is talking up a storm with words like umbrella (brella), balloon (alloon), Dora (Do-ah), and Here You Go (Hee oo go). Kate has had a runny nose for the past two weeks and I am just LOVING IT because she has not gotten an ear infection. Hooray for tubes in the ears! They have made it so that I can look at a snotty nose with a smile. :) Kate and Lise are currently sharing a Dora obsession, and so we now have a little Kater the Explorer on our hands. She loves wearing a backpack around the house.

The ultimate highlight of this week was, of course, General Conference. I love the spiritual high I get and the motivation I feel to go and build the Kingdom of God, help others along the way, and try to make myself more fit to be there. This conference we tried a little something different for the kids. I had seen an article in the October friend about building a "reverence tent" to watch conference in like the people in The Book of Mormon who faced their tents towards the temple to hear King Benjamin's Sermon on the Savior. We decided to try it and it actually was a lot of fun. It could become a family tradition; we'll see.

One obstacle we had during conference was that when we tried to go online to watch the last session, our family computer crashed. We were able to watch it on Chris' PC and with Chris' awesome computer skills he was able to restore everything on our computer EXCEPT our entire e-mail address list is gone!! So, I'm requesting a little help. Whoever is reading this, could you please send me an e-mail and any e-mail addresses of common friends we have?

Thank you so much!!

"Fall is . . . well, not in the air, but on the calendar!"

So, I guess when it dips down into the 80's you know that fall is in Louisiana. It has felt rather nice not to have my clothes sticking to me all the time, and I've even worn some pants with my flip flops! Even though the leaves don't change color, just fall off the trees green and then turn brown, we have found other ways to celebrate the season: decorating the house for Autumn and buying pumpkins, baking pumpkin cookies, having SOUP for supper, and, my personal favorite, my two eldest musical daughters made up their own Pumpkin songs!! Aly has become a big story/song writer as of late, and wrote her lyrics down; Analise just makes them up on the fly.