We had too much fun this Halloween. Our neighborhood had a little festival. Caleb and his buddy Jeremiah went down the inflatable slide 100 times. Then we all went on a hayride.

Later that week, Caleb had two Fall parties at school where he loaded up on goodies. Below is a picture of him sacked out in the car on the way home from school with stickers on his face and his bag of candy.

Also pictured below is my 4-year-old class at our Fall party.

Caleb was a Transformer and little Jake was just a cute little pumpkin. On Halloween, we went to the town where Gigi lives because they have a big deal downtown where all the merchants dress up and hand out candy. Since Gigi works at Edward Jones downtown, she was dressed up and handing out candy. She was a banana, which was HILARIOUS! After that, we went trick-or-treating in Lindale and did that until about 9:30 p.m. Trick-or-treating in East Texas is so much fun because of all the trees and the homes with huge decorated porches. There were several trick-or-treating hayrides with decorated trailers, with lights and all, full of children going through the neighborhoods. The home-owners were dressed up and sitting out on the porches interacting with the kids. It was picturesque and reminded me of a movie with leaves floating in the air everywhere. LOVE IT.

I keep intending to take pictures of the autumn foliage here. It is so amazing. Having lived in the DFW Metroplex for the past 14 years, I had just forgotten how beautiful it is. Call me a tree-hugger, I just LOVE trees. I know this is goofy, but I actually teared up on the way to work the other day looking at all the beautiful colors in the trees.

We love being here. I love that we can run to Mineola (where my mom lives) in 15 minutes. I can borrow spices from her now. I love that everywhere we go, people talk to us like they know us. You can meet people in a restaurant, the mall, really anywhere. They just strike up a conversation like you aren't a stranger. From my perspective it seems the formality and "small talk" phase is just skipped here. It is very refreshing.

A few pics of little Jakers!

Our Trip to the Texas Hill Country

We had a blast on our annual Fall family trip. We were supposed to go to Galveston this year, but thanks to Ike we re-routed to the Marble Falls area of Texas. It was actually perfect. We loved it. We did a lot of jet skiing, rock hunting, swimming, fishing (well attempting to fish), boating, etc. The guys went golfing while the rest of us shopped. The guys took the kids to an underground cave while I got to sit in a doctor's office with the baby. Oh the joys of "vacationing" with young children. We roasted hot dogs, made smores, played board games and floated on inter-tubes. The Albin clan had a blast swinging from a rope into the nasty lake water. :) I enjoyed watching and taking pictures. Below is a picture of Aunt Eve going into the water. Aunt Eve, we found out, is a little on the crazy side. On our Oklahoma trip, she overturned her canoe. On this trip, she flipped the jet ski while performing crazy maneuvers with her kids riding on back!

God is a Texan

Just had to blog quickly because Caleb said the funniest thing and I wanted to document it before it escaped my so tired brain. When we were watching the election coverage and they were pointing at the big map, he asked, "Mommy, where exactly does God live in Texas?" I just thought that was pretty darn cute that he assumes God lives in Texas.