I feel like every 30 days we make it through deserves a celebration. We made it through October! Praise be! You know what I mean? But seriously, we all deserve a pat on the back and a raise and a steak dinner for making it through yet another apocalyptic month of 2020. You can bet we will be pulling out our Christmas decorations EARLY in November because “we need a little Christmas, right this very minute” and I don’t feel bad about it AT ALL. Do NOT come at me.

It felt SUPER weird to even be considering scary Halloween decorations and costumes this month. Like, come on kids – you are literally living through the scariest/weirdest/most overwhelming year of your lives and you want to make it scarier? Hard pass. Bless Sadie who just wanted to be a nerd. Bless. She ended up being a 50’s girl (photos below) and looked ADORABLE.

October brought us our dear friends (who feel like ohana) the Pierce family and we tried to make them stay waaaaaay longer than they were planning. We succeeded in getting them to commit to an additional week so we felt proud of ourselves. We like who we like :). Our middle schoolers finally went back to school in-person for the first time in seven months and at a new school no less. They handled it and I’m really proud of them. Everything about middle school is cringey and awkward and tragic and when you add the fact that you don’t know anyone at all and have never even seen the school…well…they were rock stars for even getting out of the car. My older two kids secured jobs (proud of them for getting their hustle on), we went back to in-person church for the first time in seven months, the Clawsons came up to enjoy General Conference with us, I got REALLY into weaving (like, every single night while watching TV), Sam took the boys camping and overall we continued to pull together our house making it into a home. Overall it was a busy and dare I say NORMAL-ish month? Sort of? I will take it. Here is a little bit of what October was like around the Stubbert casa 🙂

I finished my wall hanging AND figured out how to get it off of the loom! I found a stick on our property and got it strung up and I’m just so happy with it. I’m officially addicted to weaving.

Our friends the Pierce’s came to visit and it was one of the highlights of 2020 for us. Originally they were only going to stay about five days…but we convinced them to stay almost two weeks! Major score for our family. We were a combined family of 11 and had the best time. I adore Chris and Taylor and their kids so this felt like a two week vacation that we all needed for so many reasons (hi 2020). Chris and Taylor are two of the strongest, most interesting and inspirational people we know so it was a real blessing having them here. I love having people stay with us and am usually ready to have my house back when people leave…but we REALLY missed the Pierce’s when they drove away.

Early in October before the Pierce’s came, Sam took our boys camping. They returned to a favorite place (Penner Lake area) and had a great time.

While the Pierces were with us we also had the Beverley family come and stay. So for a little bit we had 16 people staying at Casa Toscana! It was awesome. Our tribe of 16 met up with other friends from Fairfield at Apple Hill, a Northern California autumn tradition. The best apple cider donuts in the entire world are at High Hill Ranch in Apple Hill – oh my gosh these alone are worth the hour drive to Placerville! While we were all there our boys did some fishing with the Pierces and Sebastian caught three fish!

Simon was able to spend five days with his best friend Sariah; we loved having her here and have missed her so much! Somehow I only really have one photo of them together and it was when we dropped her off at the airport!

Our sunset views from the deck continued to be the perfect way to end our days.

The pup continued to be adorable. She has adjusted really well to her new life here. The first several days right after we moved in were ROUGH. She cried a lot and was really whiny and clingy. Then she just kind of came out of it and has been amazing ever since. Moving is hard on everyone involved, even sweet little fluffs.

Seb looked so cool before church one morning so I had to snap a pic. He grew out of his church shoes during pandemic so had to grab his sneakers (God doesn’t care) and was wearing his late grandpa’s tie.

And finally, our girls celebrated Halloween with Sadie as a 50’s girl in a poodle skirt and Sophie with her bestie Natalya dressed as frat boys. Our ward did a drive through trick or treating Haunted Hill which was super fun and then we took the kids through a neighborhood nearby that was decked out for Halloween. Despite it being a pandemic, Halloween was pretty fun this year.

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