Joy's birthday plus some other photos

The most important thing most every Oct/November in our home is usually Joy's birthday. We also had a surprise visit from Pop and Grandma, who delivered us a replacement for our car Joy had just had an accident in. Not knowing if we'd be able to drive it again, my parents offered to just GIVE us their car. We very thankfully accepted. Among the nice parts is that they drove the exact same make and year we did, just in red instead of black. That made the trade much easier. Once we learned that our black car would live again, we similarly handed it off to another family who had lost theirs.

Joy says:

I have a hard time deciding where to start. Everyone takes such good care of me. This year I feel very successful in not getting stressed for the holiday season. My birthday is so close to the season that I often have a hard time enjoying it. So that is my biggest gift to myself: being relaxed for my birthday. Part of being relaxed is paying for a cake and not making it myself. I got a lovely cake from HEB, the Oreo ice cream cake, yum. At some point Derrill got me some flowers that I am still enjoying. We were at the store and Derrill asked me what kind of flowers I wanted for my birthday. I looked at all of the pretty flowers and wondered if I would finally have the courage to get baby's breath instead of large flowers. As I asked myself that, I started looking at the Baby's Breath and found a nice marroon colored group. I told Derrill I was thinking about getting the little maroon flowers, He seemed ok with it, so I got them. I really enjoyed them and I might get that kind of flower again sometime. 

When Pop was here we tried to go Ocean Buffet, a new Chinese buffet in Fort Worth, but the wait was so long that we ended up eating somewhere else. The weekend we were going to be celebrating my birthday there was also a stake dance planned in Fort Worth. Nia had not been to many dances, because she had just become old enough in the summer and we were out of town for most of it. I proposed that we could try the Oceon Buffet if we went before Nia's dance and then took her to the dance. The three of us took board games to play during the dance. We played Splendor as one of the games and we might have played Crew.

At the Chinese restaurant, Angel Nia

The Ocean Buffet was awesome. I am glad that we went. Besides having good sea food they also had a chocolate fountain just like in Frozen with cookies next to it that you could put chocolate on. I chose to have Mongolian Barbaque. It was really yum! I wished I had looked around, Derrill mentioned that they had some different themed rooms for customers to sit in while they ate. I only saw ours.

I got some realy fabulous gifts. I received two very beautiful shirts to help me prepare to be ready to work and I have been studying diligenlty with materials I was given for the National Counselor Exam which I plan to take in the spring. I got a book and some flash cards, hurray. 

I also received a beautiful organization kit for Wingspan (left). It is carved with leaves and ivy and makes that game more playable. I spent time putting the organizers together and we played that game using the organizers on that same day. I am really proud of myself for putting it together and not getting distracted (I don't usually finish projects so quickly).

I also chose to spend some of my birthday having some mini dates with the kids. I believe I played Tsum Tsum with Nia and Pinball with Derrin. I had a realy good birthday and not even Thanksgiving got in the way.

Nia's Halloween costume:
 a Muggle Gryffendor-enthusiast

It rained a lot one day and for some reason
I tried to get a shot of the waterfall by our front door

DW: After Joy's birthday we set up the Chrstmas tree. Our biggest change from usual was setting a Hyrum ornament in the hands of the angel on top of the tree, because our dear Hyrum is away at the Y.