Happy Birthday, Cathy!

In honor of Cathy's Nth birthday today, we present a couple of "classic Wath" photos. Enjoy!

Autumn leaves

Here are a few random photos of the leaves in the yard and neighborhood... it was a very nice autumn this year!

New Ward

Yesterday our stake was reorganized. Basically, they took six wards, rearranged them into five, and moved two of them into other stakes. Our ward got cut in half, and then had pieces of two other wards grafted on. As a result, we're somewhat larger than before. I don't know the statistics... but we did pick up quite a few new Young Men and Young Women. Lisa is really sad, though, because one of her really good friends in the ward is now in another.

As a side effect of the change, I am currently unemployed. We lost both our librarians in the reorg -- I volunteered to the new bishop that I might be able to help him out there. We'll see how it goes...

Halloween

Well, Halloween was more than a week ago, but better late than never, right?

Halloween was not a very good day for our extended family, but hopefully everyone is beginning to recover somewhat.

Here are a few photos.

Here are some of the cute cousins in their outfits.



One of the Things favors us with a piano tune.



The kids on Halloween night, getting ready to go out trick-or-treating. The older kids weren't planning to go, but then Moto (the boy on the right), an exchange student from Japan that's staying with a family in our ward, called and asked if he could go with us, since he's never been trick-or-treating before. Rachel helped him get a costume, and then the other kids threw together some costumes to go with him. Lisa is an orange slice, obviously. Rachel is a "vampire witch soccer player". Yeah, she put lots of planning into that one. Andrew is Mario, and Daniel is a hip-hop dancer. I'm not quite sure why he decided on that, but he'd been planning it for some time.



And finally, we end with some of the kids' Jack o' Lantern creations...

Typical Saturday

I haven't written anything for a while, so I guess it must be about time.

Yesterday was a fairly typical, busy Saturday. Our activities included Rachel taking the PSAT test in the morning, Lisa and Daniel each having a soccer game, four hours of Stake Conference meetings, three babysitting jobs (even Andrew and Daniel got into the act, watching Regan and Hadyn while Jeff and Maria went to their Stake Conference, too), a couple of shopping trips, and trying to squeeze in a few minutes of yardwork while the weather is so nice.

We had another three hours of Stake Conference today. I thought Stake Conference weekends were supposed to be easier than normal weeks!?! It was really good. Elder Kim B. Clarke, president of BYU-I, was our visiting authority, and he was really good. He's a great teacher, and it was fun to listen to him.

When we got home from conference the weather was so nice and the burning bush bushes and other leaves were so pretty we couldn't resist taking a few photos. Here are two...

Rachel goes to Homecoming

Tonight was the big Homecoming dance, Rachel's first formal dance. Here are a few pics.













The guys all had ties that matched the girls' dresses, which looked pretty cool.

Rachel Plays Football

Tonight was the Centennial High School "Powder Puff" football game between junior and senior girls.  Rachel played on the junior team.  Unfortunately, I missed most of it, because it was also parents' night at Joplin, but I did see the fourth quarter (when Rachel wasn't on the field...).

The juniors were ahead most of the game, but the seniors tied it up in the last minute, and then the juniors had a chance to score in the last seconds, but didn't make it.  They went on to lose in sudden-death overtime.

Here's Rachel after the game.