Some October Odds and Ends

 During General Conference Ben was very loving.  He came up behind Andy and gently grabbed his head and kept going in for hugs :)

He just kept silently hugging...it was so sweet!

Abby eventually asked him if she could have a hug...

Matt packing Thad around in his "comfy"...

One October Sunday evening at Mom and Dad's house...

More from the pysanky ornament saga...

I continued to try and make the blown out eggs work.  I tried different things to try and eliminate the speckles and the rings.

Every now and then I thought I hit upon a solution but then the next egg I tried with the same strategy failed :(

I ended up returning the eggs *sigh*

It was hard to admit defeat.

I even tried again with a regular, full egg after I sent the empty eggs back.  I thought maybe I could try and blow them out myself after I dyed them but found out that wasn't going to work either.

Matt was able to get his license a week or two after his birthday.

Now he and Abby quibble over the kids' car and sometimes Matt even ends up having to take the van!  Oh, the horror!!!

We were able to have an Institute reunion where all the past, living teachers/staff were invited.

The building is being torn down in a few months and a new one built in its place over the next couple of years.

Unfortunately, it has not been officially announced so we were unable to have an open house for the public like we had hoped but we were grateful to be able to get so many former faculty together for a fun evening.

The Institute Choir sang two beautiful numbers.  They are truly amazing!!!

(I wish I would have thought to get a picture of the whole group...for the second song they circled us for more of a surround sound effect.)

An in-house historian presented a slideshow showing the history of the institute.

It was fun to see pictures of my Grandpa Kidd who was the Institute director in the 70's

Andy also spoke as the current Institute director.

He did a wonderful job and used a scripture about multiple heavens to illustrate the fact that, yes, this building has been a heaven but the new building will be a new heaven.

There was mingling and refreshments after.

All the institute directors that were present posed for a picture.

We left around 10 p.m. - It had been a really pleasant and fun evening full of lovely people.

Along with that, this is a picture of Grandpa and Grandma on his last day of being a director of the Institute in 1979.

I wanted to recreate it to a degree with Andy during his directorship before the building was torn down.  I believe it was actually the afternoon of the event above, we had brother Roe take these pictures for us.

(They are really pixelated on my end...even though on my desktop, they look sharp.  I cannot for the life of me make them clear when I put them in blogger :(

And finally, the progress on our home for the month...the cement was finished!