Moving & Halloween

October 27th, we packed up all of our worldly possessions and transported them to our soon-to-be new house.  I say "soon-to-be" because, at the time, we had still not closed the deal. But the seller (who not occupying the house full-time) was kind enough to let us move our belongings into the front rooms.  So, we spent a week in limbo.  Matt stayed in a hotel in Houston while I took the kids to my folks. 

It so happened that Halloween was in the meantime, so we had fun celebrating with Nana and Popie.  

(No, this was not part of her costume.)

 Pumpkin carving is always fun --for the kids. They each took two scoops of slimy, gooey seedy mess out of the pumpkin and that was enough for them.  I did the rest of the scooping, cleaning, and carving,

 but boy, were they proud when it was all done!

If you can't tell, Sadie was a princess, Adelaide was a dragonfly, and Michael was a dragon.

 Ahhhh! Candy, candy, candy!!!

In addition to all the Halloween fun, we had a lovely and delicious hot dog roast.

 So while we were at Nana's, Michael came down with an ear infection, and the doctor thought he might have had a touch of strep throat as well. So she put in on amoxycillin and within a few days, he was back to normal.  But after closing on the house and moving in for real the following week, he came down with a freaky, terribly itchy rash over his whole body.  We took him to a new pediatrician here in Spring, and she referred us to the CDC, thinking it might be rheumatic fever.  Naturally, we started freaking out.

The next day at the CDC, the doctor said it was nothing but a severe case of hives, probably a reaction to the penicillin he was taking.  Poor Michael!  It took nearly 2 weeks for it to completely go away.  But he was a trooper and dutifully took his Benadryl every few hours.  No more penicillin for him!

While all this was going on, one of my dear friends from Brigham Young University, Liz Hutchings came to town for a weekend with her husband, James, and baby, Hyrum. Things with Michael were so crazy we were afraid we might not even get to meet up, but thankfully things got resolved in time for them to come over for a short visit and a slap-together dinner.  It was sooo good to see her again. It had been at least eight years.   Funny, BYU still seems like just a few months ago.