Weekend in Spokane

Last weekend we had the chance to get away to Spokane. We went to a Jon McLaughlin concert which was awesome. He is crazy on the piano! If you don't know his music you should check out his myspace- www.myspace.com/jonmclaughlin He is a guy we've been big fans of since IWU when we saw him perform at FNL and then saw him at a coffee place in Muncie and then again in Indy. It's exciting to see him get more and more popular. We got to talk to him after the concert and told him we were from Indiana (he's from Anderson) and that we'd seen him before. It turns out his mom works at IWU now. How funny! So after that we spent the rest of the weekend shopping and relaxing. We bought new stuff for decorating our apartment. We went to the Melting Pot. The bananas foster fondue was delicious, as was the rest of the meal. It was great to just be able to get away and spend the weekend together away from all of the school stuff we've been doing.

Harvest Party and a Trip Home

Wednesday night, John and I had the opportunity to put together a Harvest Party for the kids from the ranch and the church. We had a great time. We weren't really sure how well it would go, but everyone really enjoyed themselves. The tradition for the Harvest Party here is to have people dress up in costumes and do a skit of some sort, which has just sort of fizzled out over the past few years. This year, no one did any skits, but we did have some fun activities going on. We bought about 25 pumpkins after Halloween at our grocery store for only about $1 each and we had a pumpkin carving area. We also had some fun games up in the gym, like a football toss, tug-of-war, pumpkin bowling, a variation of bobbing for apples where we hung the apples on a string and the kids had to eat them without using their hands, and of course knockout (the basketball game) because it is a favorite of the kids. We were pretty happy with the way things went. Several people told us that it was the best Harvest Party they had been to here, which made us feel pretty good. So we got our first taste of party planning and hope to do it again next year! We were pretty busy helping out with pumpkin carving so we didn't get a chance to take pictures of all of the fun that was going on upstairs.
Also, last week we got to go home for vacation in Indiana. It was a great week. We had a lot of fun visiting family and friends. It was especially nice to be there in the fall when the leaves were beautiful in Bloomington. We spent the first part of the week at John's parents' and had a good time down there relaxing and visiting. We got to visit Bryan and Becky and meet their adorable little girl, who I amazingly didn't take any pictures of. Thursday Lynsey and Derek and Annabel (another beautiful baby I ended up without pictures of) came down from Marion and Sarah and Katie and Melissa all met us for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Bloomington. Friday, we went to McCormick's Creek with Shawn and Amber and my mom and dad. We hiked around, and found out that Ace, Amber and Shawn's dog is afraid of heights and does NOT like to hike down hills. We had a fun time that day and then that night Lacy and Steve came over and we played Wii! That can certainly provide hours of entertainment. We also went to the Great Pumpkin Launch in Bloomington on Saturday before leaving for the airport and saw some pretty cool pumpkin launchers throw some pumpkins over 200 yards! I didn't take very many pictures while we were there, but I did manage to steal some from others on facebook and other blogs. (Thanks Mom, Lynsey, Shawn, and Katie!)