Our Favorite Things

DAD:

Retaining Walls... We had to build another one yesterday...

Orchards - He wants one.

MOM:

Her children doing this.

Letters from her missionaries!

HERMANA HOUGHTON:

Take a look at hermanahoughton.blogspot.com.

ELDER HOUGHTON:

Take a look at elderlukehoughton.blogspot.com.

MARTA:

She's been missing spiced up food ever since she went to college.

Marta loves satiny-smooth fabric.

TESS (ME):

Yeah...

If you don't love them, then...

LEVI:

This is something close to his dream piano, but he likes pianos in general, too.

Levi's been into air-soft stuff lately. We just tell him not to shoot his eye out.

ALL OF US:

Music!

Brown Paper Packages! Mom wraps our birthday presents like this now. :)

The True Gospel!

Your Favorite Blog-Post-Maker, Tess

A Few Things That Make October Amazing

General Conference 
(See Last Post)
Homecoming Week
Every high school has a homecoming week, and this week just happened to be it for mine! At my school, themes are chosen for each day and everybody gets dressed up (or should). We had Tie Dye Day, Dress-Like-A-Teacher Day, Halloween Day, Throwback/Retro Day, and Spirit Day. Now, in the history of our family, we have this pair of pants from the late 80's-early 90's that Mom bought just before our parents got married. They've been worn a couple of times for dress-up days over the years. Technically they belong to Dad, who still wears them when he's on vacation. I couldn't Not use them, sooooo...

The Primary Program!
In our church, we have one Sunday a year that is put on by the primary (children 12 and under) of the ward (with much help from their leaders, of course). Today was our ward's program, and it was AWESOME! The children sing songs (some of the best songs ever written!), share their testimonies and experiences, and make everybody else in the room wish they were a little kid again! Not only are they sweet little kids that love the Gospel, but they are also funny little kids that make silly faces and start to get bashful in front of a room full of people. It's so cute!
Birthdays
October is the ultimate birthday month. In other words, my birthday is in October! I always forget how exciting birthdays are until they get really close! Especially this year because I'm going to be old enough to get my driver's license! AH!

Autumn
This is mostly self-explanatory.

I love Autumn!

Halloween
Even though I don't get to go trick or treating anymore, Halloween is still fun. We have an annual neighborhood dinner and Mom always makes pumpkin soup on Halloween night. And the candy is always good too. :)

Needless to say, I am pretty happy with this month.

-Tess

P.S. I didn't take any of those pictures of Autumn, although I wish I had.

Two of the Best Four Days of the Year

Were yesterday and today.

Here are just a few reasons why.

EXCLAMATION POINT!!!!

September is the Month of Curses

So, September is the month of curses. I can't wait until it's over!

The first reason that it is a month of curses is that I got my face split open by a girl's elbow at a water polo game yesterday. Luckily, there was an ER nurse watching the game, my coach is a doctor, and my mom is a nurse! Handy, right? Well, the ER nurse patched me up at the game and got it to stop bleeding. When my team got back home about 4 hours later (we got 3rd place in the tournament, by the way), my coach took off the gauze and bandaids and more gauze, and this is what it looked like:

 Then, he and my mom decided that I wouldn't need stitches after all. It would just take a little bit of super glue, and I would be set. So, my mom brought me home and did me up with the super glue. Luckily, she has had a little bit of experience using super glue to fix herself up, so she did a pretty awesome job on me, and it now looks like this:

 Although you can't see it, it has a serious bruise around it so that I can't even rub my eye. And, don't worry, my mother also covered it with some clear tape-stuff that she had.

The second thing traumatic experience I had this weekend was this afternoon on our way to Fresno for my cousin's missionary farewell open house. Well, we didn't get very far. About twenty minutes down the road, I stopped at a red light and the guy behind me just kept going right into the back of the car that I was driving!

 Mom, Dad, Levi and I were all in the car, but for the most part we are fine. Mom and Dad both have somewhat tweaked necks, but they'll be okay.

Dad says bad things happen in three's, and that was only two, so, if I post before Tuesday, you'll know why!

Cursed by September, Tess