It’s time for another monthly recap of things that made me smile! The following things in this post aren’t ALL the things that made me smile for October 2024, but a fair sampling. In the spirit of one of my new favorite bloggers, Auntie Leila of likemotherlikedaughter.org, I’m sharing what has been pretty, happy, funny, and real in my life. Plus things that are smart and kind. That’s a thorough way to describe the things that make me smile.

First, early in the month, I saw these herbs being dried at my friend’s home. Harvest time! Preservation time! That makes me smile! It just feels so homemaking-ish. I love it!

I saw the drying herbs when my son and I went to this friend’s home for a simulation for a homeschool group. The fresh mountain air and views were so amazing! I feel so blessed to live in a place where I can see so much natural beauty.

My son and his friends participated in a blindfolded simulation and then debriefed it. This is what “back to school” looks like for homeschoolers! Being out in the mountains! So breathtakingly beautiful!!!

I saw these games on the same friend’s shelf in her schoolroom and had to get a picture. Slamwich is a favorite game amongst my younger children, and I love Professor Noggins quiz cards, which the bottom sets of cards are.

I loved General Conference! My recap is here of our true holiday/holy day weekend of it. I spent the down time between sessions getting out my fall decorations. My leaf garlands just make me so happy along with my “Thankful” banner.

I also found my pretty wreath that my BYU-attending son made for me last year on a date. Yeah, he has a creative side, especially for being a math major. We have moved since then and I couldn’t exactly remember where I put it, but I eventually found it. Since then I’ve added garlands on the pillars on either side of the door. I’m so happy to have a house with pillars that beg to be decorated!

A wild edibles hike with friends! I have more photos here.

I got back into the groove of playing a game at least 4 days a week in our homeschool.

I’ve figured out that it’s best to do short 10-15 minute games on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and sometimes Fridays. So that means simple card games like Word Go Round, Fluxx or Timeline. Then on Wednesday, the only day we are home all day with no big commitments, that’s the day for us to do a longer game, beyond ten minutes. I got these new games below in October. I’m so excited to engage with them! (Images courtesy of amazon)

Here’s a game I played with my Sword of Freedom class (a class about the War Between the States for homeschoolers):

In this game you simulate being abolitionists in the Underground Railroad. You win the game if you get a certain number of slaves off their plantations to freedom in Canada, and a certain number of support tokens (I can’t remember the name of those). It is a great game that involves strategy, cooperation, and historical facts and geography. It involves a map as shown below plus cards with flavor text. Those are the abolitionist cards. Each card features a different abolitionist from real life history. Some cards tell a bit about them and then they have special powers to help you move more slaves or get more money for the cause. I can tell I loved it more than my scholar youth. I am excited to find some group of adults who love history and are super desirous to play it with me. Is that even possible? I hope so!

We went to a free event to see Mexican folkdancers. It was so cool, the men danced with swords and the women danced with bottles on their heads. They were so talented!

My daughter has started a seasonal Cousins’ Craft party, held at the home of her grandmother (my mother). She and I love cousins and crafts so this is perfect. To clarify, I love crafts but whenever I do them I feel guilty, like I should be doing something more scholarly. I have felt this way since my AP-class-attending days in high school, when I had loads of homework. Then it was college with loads of homework then marriage and motherhood with loads of housework. I have to remind myself it’s OK to take breaks and do crafts, just like it’s OK to play games! My daughter and mom provided the materials to make these wax paper lanterns. You just sandwich leaves inside wax paper with an iron, tape the sides, and then put a battery-operated tea light inside. So cute! My niece crocheted the little baskets and doilies.

These are some of the leaves in my parents’ backyard that I got to choose from to make my lanterns. I love that Utah has four distinct seasons. As much as I love our former home of southeastern AZ, which also has four distinct seasons, fall comes really late there. They just don’t have leaves that ever look like this.

One one of the October 2024 nights, the TV game show Jeopardy! had a category about authors who are members of my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yay! (Thanks to Jeopardy! for these images.)

I got the top two answers and my teen daughter knew all three. The answer to the bottom clue is “What is The Mazerunner?” which she has read. (She said it was OK.) Fun fact: one of the BYU roommates of my sister Emily married James Dashner.

I attended a rally on the steps of Utah State Capitol to show support for Phil Lyman, running for Utah governor. I got to go with my sister-in-law/girlfriend Sally and girlfriend Joyce, which made it so much more fun. Wonderful speakers! I’m so grateful for people who stand for liberty, truth, and transparency.

At the rally I had a Gayle Ruzicka sighting, shown below. She doesn’t know me from Eve but I appreciate all her work for conservatives. Utah liberals don’t like her. She is a powerful woman who stands for principles.

I celebrated La Leche League’s birthday by blogging about it here and taking a photo of all my books from my LLL Leader days. They are old friends and have helped so much on my mothering journey.

I babysat my grandsons. Here is one of them playing in the back yard of the neighbors. I’m also doing “Grandma School” one morning a week.

A cute little boy in my neighborhood had his own farmer’s market by selling lavender bunches and tiny pumpkins that his family had grown, plus pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I couldn’t resist going! I love things like this. I bought some of each. I did resist eating the cookies and stuck to being keto carnivore and gave the cookies to my kiddos. To protect his privacy I took the photo below when he was bending down to get some pumpkins for the neighbors.

I noticed lavender growing in the yard of the church building that houses the FamilySearch Center where I serve on a monthly shift. It was so amazing that I had a couple come in who, it turned out, have connections to my husband in two ways. The husband of the couple is my husband’s dad’s half-second cousin. The wife grew up in Scotland. She knew my husband’s mother from when my mother-in-law served a mission in Scotland. My mother-in-law taught a woman named Sally Brown the gospel, and Sally got baptized, along with her husband and children. Sally Brown’s son baptized this wife of the couple who came into the center. So we had a fun time talking about all this. It was like a family reunion even though we hadn’t ever met before.

I got to go to the FIRM Foundation Conference and see this cool replica of the Book of the Mormon plates at one of the vendor tables.

We attended BYU’s Chemistry Magic Show in honor of National Chemistry Week. So fun! It’s our fourth year in a row now.

It has become an October tradition for at least me and my youngest to attend this show. For the first time ever, my husband came this year. I love that I got some great photos of the explosions at just the right time this year!

BYU’s Chemistry Department is in the Benson Building, named after Ezra Taft Benson. Go figure. President Benson was not a chemist. I don’t understand why BYU’s life science building wasn’t named after him, as Pres. Benson was into agriculture, which falls under the umbrella of “life science.” He was even Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower. Anyway, the Benson Building has this amazing display case of memorabilia about President Benson. He was the 13th president/prophet of my church when I was an older teen. I have very fond memories of him and his promotion of the Book of Mormon. Seeing this display always makes me smile. I love that President Benson was about liberty and the proper role of government. He even wrote a little book about it, which is in the display case.

Getting my barely natural waves to appear from a hair wash day is a work in progress. It seems to take so many steps and products and watching curly girl YouTubers that I get exhausted. These waves along the neckline of my shirt made me smile. If only I could get them to uniformly appear all over my head so that the rest isn’t stringy looking. I’m getting there!

I saw these DVD movies at a library I don’t usually go to, when my husband and I attended a meeting at that library about Social Security and retirement. Yep we are getting to that age. So now I’m adding these movies to my watchlist.

Speaking of movies, the hubs and I had some really fun movie date nights this month. I lucked out in finding some great romantic movies that had great acting too. Here’s one we watched, with Melissa Gilbert. I loved that it was about marriage and motherhood. I also loved how it turned out. I must say, Rosanna Arquette has the most beautiful looking lips. She played the single mom in the movie.

We read and discussed Uncle Tom’s Cabin for my Sword of Freedom class. I’ve read it before when I mentored the class before. This year it was even more meaningful to me because last August, with my sister and daughter, I visited in person the room in the house in Maine where Harriet, the author, wrote the book. It’s not the greatest of literature, but I love the Christianity theme of the book, the selfless, Christlike example of Uncle Tom, and that Harriet wrote it as a busy SAHM of 7 with no modern day conveniences to save her time. The book became a bestseller, catapulted her to fame, and gave her financial independence for the rest of her life.

For my sisters’ book club we did the one below. I started it but didn’t finish. It was just too heavy of a book for me to read and I couldn’t find a decent audio version to listen to while I multitask that didn’t put me to sleep. Someday I will finish it. I can tell it’s hauntingly beautiful.

I smiled at the fact that we went all October without a freeze! Here are my tomato plants still standing strong on Nov. 1. I picked most of the tomatoes the night before thinking it might freeze but it didn’t.

We had our first snow on the Tuesday before Halloween, the day I heard Dallas Jenkins speak. I smiled because it stayed up in the mountains, just where I like it, and melted on the valley floor. You can watch the speech here in my recap.

On Halloween Day, in the morning, my Sword of Freedom class joined another Sword of Freedom class for a Gettysburg Simulation. My son and I had watched Gods and General and Gettysburg in the weeks prior. War doesn’t make me smile but having the freedom to homeschool, and to get out and breathe fresh air and see the expanse of God’s great beauty does.

That night I progressed in carrying out my purist ideals for a pure Halloween, if it’s possible. Instead of giving out candy I gave out glow stick bracelets taped to cards printed on yellow cardstock saying “Jesus is the light.” I printed out the flyers from Jennifer Flanders over here, using the image in the bottom right corner of the owl. On one side it says, “Who can defeat the powers of darkness? Whooo?” Then on the back it says, “Jesus is the Light of the World.”

I forgot to get a photo of the cards with the glow sticks attached. I’m definitely doing this next year! I left them in a bowl with a sign that said, “Please take one.” I let my two teen children leave the home to go hang out with friends. Then my husband and I went to a Veggie Gal party at girlfriend Shauna’s home. We had super yummy food and conversation. I aspire to someday afford to give a king-sized candy bar to every trick or treater with the card below that says “Jesus is the King!” like Jennifer says she has done some years. I don’t know if I trust leaving that bowl alone, however, whenever I do that!

Thrifting this month wasn’t as bountiful as last month but I still found some great treasures.

I was thrilled to find the Thanksgiving conversation starter cards above on the way home from the FIRM Foundation conference at the Saratoga Springs Deseret Industries. The cards are round with the image of a pumpkin pie (bird’s eye view) on one side of the card and a question on the other side. So I’ve been using them for dinner time conversation lately because we won’t be able to fit them all in for the big Thanksgiving dinner.

Then the photo below shows what else I found in October for thrifting. A hefty-weaved nubby white sweater which I’ve been wanting for a while. I already have a nubby cream sweater already and a smooth white sweater. I just have some tops that would look better with a nubby white sweater instead of smooth. It was $8 at Savers. Then an aqua cardigan that is the opposite of nubby, so smooth, from another thrift store, the Provo Deseret Industries. A few books, a hinged photo frame, and a Disney board game, to hopefully play when my daughter-in-law comes for Thanksgiving with my son. I’m of the opinion of girlfriend/sis-in-law Sally to avoid giving Disney even a penny of mine these days, but I’m ok with buying Disney things used, to enjoy with relatives who love Disney.

Other things that made me smile this month are:

-a beautiful funeral made me smile even though it was sad too of course. My friend and shirt-tail relative lost her 18 year old son to cancer. The funeral was like a family reunion because the young man who died has an aunt married to my husband’s cousin. Then his grandmother is dear friends with my deceased mother-in-law. As most funerals do, it involved wonderful stories of the deceased and testimonies of Christ and the reality of the resurrection. It was so wonderful!

-spending an afternoon with my husband and younger children doing yard work for my parents

-having Zoom time with my son, daughter-in-law and grandson who live in TX. My grandson baby is so cute!!!! I can’t wait to hold him at Thanksgiving time!

-finishing the inventory of my long-term food storage. That was a huge task!!!!! I’m smiling a smile of relief that it’s over! I rewarded myself by getting the games I showed in the middle of this post.