Happy Day after Halloween!! So sorry I was MIA for the last couple of days. Unexpected family thingy's going on...and of course, HALLOWEEN!! My 2 dinosaurs sure kept me on my feet yesterday that's for sure :) I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween! I may take a couple of days to recover. But, its so nice out today, I better get outside and take down all my decorations. We have graveyards, archways, ghosts, and skeletons...everywhere!!! It will take all day to pack it up...then on to turkeys and haybales for Thanksgiving :) Shirley, Is bear poop lucky?? I heard an old wivestale that if a bird poops on you its lucky...does the same go for bear? :) I can only imagine how much you had to wash off...ewwwww My mom loves books on tape, and gets them from our library too. My husband just started listening to them when he's in the truck, he really enjoys them. Our library has a used book sale a couple of times a year and they always have books on tape too. I got some for my mom for 50cents each. Jeanne, Congratulations on your new family member! Sydney is a very lucky pooch! :) Margo, I'm glad your little one is starting to feel better. :) Bunny, the garlic is from the garden. You can eat some and plant some if you'd like. It comes back every year, and if you cook with it, its way cheaper to grow your own. :) HAPPY HALLOWEENS ON THE WAY! Michelle (micyrey) sends to Jen (jlee160)***SENT***REC'D*** Jen (jlee160) sends to Margo (smitties)***SENT***REC'D*** Jeanne (sandlapper_rose) sends to Annie (canyonwind)***SENT***REC'D*** Rose (rosemctier) sends to Michelle (micyrey)***SENT***REC'D*** Melissa (hazelnutbunny) sends to Beth (beth_b_kodiak)***SENT***REC'D*** Margo (smitties) sends to Shirley (brittneysgran)***SENT***REC'D*** Beth (beth_b_kodiak) sends to ME (mellen)***SENT***REC'D*** Shirley (brittneysgran) sends to Rose (rosemctier)***SENT***REC'D*** Vina (flowergirl34) sends to Melissa (hazelnutbunny)***SENT***REC'D*** ME (mellen) sends to Jeanne (sandlapper_rose)***SENT***REC'D*** Annie (canyonwind) sends to Vina (flowergirl34)***SENT***REC'D*** I happily declare this swap officially closed. Thank you very much ladies for making this truly a HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Now onto November...Jeanne...take it away... vina

Here's the one that I made. Hope you can use it. Card Outside: Card Inside:

My kid's been boo-ed but we call it "Phantomed" (which I like a lot better) and a picture of the phantom ghost goes with the poem. Kids secretly ring your door bell and drop off a bucket of candy at your door running away so you don't know who they are. They leave a picture of the phantom ghost with a poem that says you've been phantomed and you need to phantom someone else (or it could be 3 people, etc). You leave the picture of the Ghost hanging on your door or window so that others know if you have already been phantomed or not. I'm sure there are other variations for office workers or adults to play with different rules. You could called it anything for Christmas... You've been jingled, run over by a reindeer, Secret Santa-ed, Kris Kringled, Lit Up like a Tree, Ornamented, Eggnoged... the list could go on forever. Make up any word you want. If people are understanding the term Boo, you can probably roll with just about anything for Christmas.

Nancy, Gold is better than plain brown. Honestly, anything is better than plain brown. Around Thursday or so I noticed green leaves falling from some trees---they didn't even turn brown first. I think our trees are confused. Why wouldn't they be? Every week they are exposed to lows in the 30s and highs in the 90s. How they even know what season we are in at this point is beyond me. Currently it is 90 degrees at our Mesonet station and 89 at our house. There's reports of haziness and smoke in the air, but none of us are spotting any plumes of smoke, so I think that, as the rumored cold front moves across the state, it may be pushing smoke, fog, haze, smog, dust or whatever ahead of it. There was a 1,700 acre wildfire in the county west of us yesterday and it looked like smoke was hanging over the river this morning, so maybe it is that. Our gold foliage peaked around Thursday or Friday and is going to a dull golden brown today. I believe the hard freeze we had a few days ago has really impacted the tree foliage. Further south in Texas where the freeze didn't happen or at least was not as prolonged as it was here, they have better foliage color than we do right now. At least 3 or 4 of the red oaks in the yeard near our house have some red, and our big red oak near the road, which is my favorite tree, is beginning to show some red. It probably will peak next week though it is hard to tell in this weather. We turned back the clocks at bedtime last night so at least we'd be in sync with the rest of the area when we woke up today. It didn't matter what time the clock was showing---I woke up at the same time I do every single day, even if the clock showed it was an hour earlier. My body clock gets pretty firmly set on a time and doesn't really care what the clock says. It takes me at least a month to adjust to a time change and then before you know it, we're springing forward or falling back all over again. Jennifer, I'm glad you feel a little better today and hope you didn't cough your way through making the announcement at church. Hot and windy, hot and windy, hot and windy. It feels more like earliest September than early November. Chris sent me a text about a half-hour ago---a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio, TX. Word is several people were shot, including children, before police arrived and took out the shooter. He said he had heard 15 people were down, but I haven't seen any firm number on any media yet, and often early report are erroneous. It just seems to me like the world has gone mad---it is sad when people are not safe in church. And, in a state like Texas with open carry, it is unfortunate someone in that church wasn't armed because perhaps they could have stopped the shooter. It seems wrong to carry a gun to church, but we cannot kid ourselves---these shootings can happen anywhere any more. I'd like to be working in the garden, but all the swarms are still out there---Asian lady bugs, wasps, bees, yellow jackets....so I'm indoors. Oh, and the fire ants and harvester ants all are out and scurrying around. I guess maybe they are busy storing up provisions for winter. Dawn