October

The end of last month and the beginning of this month was pretty rough, so we spent the rest of the month mostly playing catch up in October. Christian had a ton of school work to catch up on, plus the other teachers are still out a lot so he has been doing a lot of substitute teaching to cover for their classes. 

I basically celebrated my birthday last month by myself as Christian was at the hospital with his family. He bought me a new fancy pillow from Amazon and it was delivered on my birthday though, so that was nice. I got to chat with Emily for a few minutes and Caitlyn sent me some text along with my family. Marian tried to come over to take me out to dinner, but got too busy so she came the day after and took me out for some Poke. We just picked up some food to bring back to the house to eat. I didn't feel like going to a restaurant and Marian had to log in to do some work while we chatted. 

Christian's dad came back up this month to take me out for my birthday. He took us to Islands and we went shopping for some boots. We didn't find any though because they were either hideously ugly or they didn't fit me. My calves are generally too big to fit into boots but I found some later that kind of fit okay.

Christian also got me a new lens for my camera. My old one is from before the kids were born and has a bunch of grime and scratches that can't be cleaned from the outside. We found a killer deal on a used one that we just couldn't pass up so we decided to take a chance on it. So far, I love it! I got so sick of having to retouch my pictures from the old lens. It probably cost nearly just as much to get the old one cleaned if that is even possible any more. Plus, this one has a slightly greater range. We have not had any time to take it out to try out so I've just been testing it around the house.So far so good!

The sad news is that the Josephine County Grand Jury decided that the officer that killed Mark was "justified" so nothing will happen to her for taking his life. His mom is devastated all over again. 

Christian's dad has also brought back his dreaded Trooper. His heater core broke so now Christian has to tear it all apart again to fix it. The dash and seats are out. We had to take his air conditioning back out as well because we could not get to the heater core with it in the way. Plus we have to flush his radiator before we can put it all back together. It is a nightmare, as usual.

Also, our nephew Mason got married out in Boston where Kendall's family is from. Obviously, we were not able to go out there.

We were a little worried about him for a while since his first fiancé called things off a number of years ago, but he seems to be doing fine now. We are very happy for him.