Who won the Texas-Oklahoma State game?

How 'bout some dip for the Cowboys? Don't old 'pokes indulge in some chaw out on the trail? OK, so it's a stretch, but we just happened to have a plethora of Fun Dip on hand for Halloween!

And speaking of a plethora, Texas leads the nation in non-offensive touchdowns! We had two more pick-sixes tonight. Gotta love that!

Texas 41, OSU 14.

P.S. - ChaCha was a BIG help as I was trying to take this picture:

Time change.

And I don't just mean Daylight Saving Time! This Halloween was different for our family because for the first time, we didn't take the kids trick-or-treating.
Well, that's not entirely true. We did take Ryan and Katie to Memaw's and to Nana and Papa's for some treats.

And we took their Halloween pictures in Nana and Papa's living room like we've done since they were babies. But you notice anything unusual about Ryan's costume? As in, he doesn't HAVE ONE?!

Now that both kids are in middle school and Ryan's an actual teenager, we figured we might have exhausted our trick-or-treating days, but when Katie was invited to a Halloween party, that sealed the deal. From Nana's house we stopped by a neighborhood haunted house and then dropped Katie off at her friend's. Then it was back home to greet kids at our own door.

Brett and Ryan made a few more stops at our old neighborhood to visit with some friends, and they circled our new neighborhood to snag some sweets (Ryan at least managed to find a mask), but mostly, we had our fun giving candy to the gobs of little kids who rang our doorbell. (My favorite line: "Tonight's Halloween! Halloween is FUN!" You got that right, kid!)

So we've reached yet another milestone with our kids. Gone are the days of roaming the neighborhood. The personalized pumpkin baskets have been retired. Thank goodness we at least have pets to dress up!

Constant carvings.

For years we've gathered with friends from our small group to carve pumpkins. Although the group makeup has changed over the years, the tradition has not! We enjoy funky food, goopy guts and creative carvings!





Our pumpkins: a tribute to our new house and our Texas homage, a Longhorn Experience pumpkin.




We didn't carve this jack-o-lantern, but isn't it cool? It won best overall.

A real treat.

On Saturday night Katie and I headed to HCC for the annual Trunk of Treats. Matt and the host of volunteers did a wonderful job hosting this event with its estimated 6,000 attendees. It was MASSIVE! Everywhere you looked, people were having a great time, and kids and adults alike were wearing the coolest costumes.

What was even cooler was the response I heard from one of our guests. She came up to me and a friend and asked who our senior pastor is. I told her, half expecting her to complain about something. Instead, she told me that she'd been hurt by a lot of Christians, and that it'd been years since she'd even considered herself a Christian. But, she said, she has a friend who goes to Heritage, and between her friend and what she's seen when she's visited us, her opinion of Christians might be changing. Now how cool is that?

We pray that this event and others like it will let our neighbors know that we're here, we're friendly and we have much to offer them and their families!

You want to do WHAT at WHEN Saturday morning?

That wasn't my actual response when we first talked about participating in the kids' school's fun run, but when the alarm went off Saturday morning, I was questioning my sanity. We were up at the crack of dawn, and oh, it would've been nice to sleep in!

As we waited for the race to start, we were COLD! It was a gorgeous, brisk fall morning, just perfect for a run/walk around the neighborhood. Still, we got pretty chilly in the shade in the minutes before the starting gun was fired.

The kids made good time around the mile-long course, and I finished far from the end of the pack—SUCCESS! The last time we participated in the fun run, I was a little closer to the end, so I was happy to see plenty of walkers finish far behind me and my old, slow self!

After all that exercise, I took the kids to their favorite McDonalds. Nothing like a "healthy" breakfast to feed the athlete!
Even though it was hard to get out of bed, the run gave us a good excuse to get an early start on our busy weekend.

Concerted effort.

In some ways it seems like the school year just started, but already Ryan's band has had several performances! This time his and the other middle school bands presented the school's fall concert.
The next big concert will also feature Katie and the beginning band students!
As always, we were impressed with the band's great sound!

Dining in style.

We've been in our new house for about a month, and our new dining table and chairs arrived a few weeks ago. Still, it was out of the blue when Katie suggested we eat dinner in the formal dining room tonight!

So what did we have for our first official meal on our formal dining table in our formal dining room? Hamburgers!

Who won the Texas-ou game?

Last year we spelled TEXAS using our favorite fair fare, so this time around we chose another State Fair staple: the wax cup. These represent the sooners better since the fairgrounds seem to be crawling with them!

Texas 16, ou 13.

Game 6: Texas 16, ou 13.

It was a gorgeous day at the State Fair! As we were entering, we fell in behind Bevo, the giant Texas flag and Smokey:

WOO-HOO! Nothing like seeing those Texas traditions on the fairgrounds to let us know that Texas-ou had arrived!

We said hello to Big Tex, but our first destination was the Fletcher's stand closest to his right boot.


BREAKFAST! Dede and I had our first corny dog down before 8!

From there we wandered down to the College Gameday set:
Later on some more of our friends showed up, ready for their own "breakfast of champions"!

Can you tell we like the Fletcher's corny dogs? So what if it's only 8:15 a.m.?

We later took our party into the food pavilion where we met up with some other Longhorn Experience-ers. It was good to visit at our "traveling tailgate."


Back outside, Gameday was really rolling. Dede and I stayed there until it was time to make our way to the Cotton Bowl.

Our seats were in a corner and on the next-to-last row. We were right where the new upper deck meets the older part of the stadium. That overlap gave us a good view—and vertigo!

Yep! We were pretty high up!

The Pride of Oklahoma

LHB's Wall-to-Wall Band

Shotgun Texas

The PoO played sci-fi music, including the theme from Transformers.
And the LHB did its popular video game show again!


I love, love, LOVE the Mario part of the drill!

So the game. Oh. My. I can't ever remember feeling so disgusted and uneasy after a win over ou! At one point I was sure my head was going to explode if we threw one more short pass on third and long. Thank goodness for Muschamp's defense!



Darrell Royal's "Ol' ugly is better than ol' nothin'" has rung true all season long, but never truer than today. Our lack of offensive production was, well, OFFENSIVE, but when the game was over, the boys in burnt orange took home that Golden Hat.

And then it was time to wade through the crowd to get home!

The orange (and red) sea!

It took a while, but we worked our way around the Cotton Bowl to find the guys in the food pavilion and then to spend the rest of our food coupons.

Then it was time to bid goodbye to the State Fair of Texas and the best football weekend of the year. We'll be back in 2010!