L's Halloween treats

L rarely lets a holiday go by without giving small gifts to her friends, and Halloween is no exception. She cleaned out the local Walgreens of its Tic Tacs, found a cute printable online, and decorated all the boxes.

Cute and easy. And she paid for all the Tic Tacs herself. She likes getting her paychecks!

Taking over his spot

We were a little surprised when Muffles jumped up on Andy's chair. Usually, that's an August move.

Halloween decorating

The Halloween decorations are pretty elaborate this year. Here's just a few of my favorites in the neighborhood. The first three pictures are at the same house. They also do a great Christmas display.

These neighbors found a use for broken dolls:

These ghosts were really popular a few years ago, but this is the only one I see this year. Inside the ring they have logs and orange lights so it looks like the ghosts are dancing around a fire at night.

Lots of neighbors put up skeletons in all different positions.

Not sure what this is, but it's spooky.

Slow reimbursement

Mayu was ill in April and paid over $300 for her prescriptions. She left at the end of June and today we got the reimbursement check from her insurance company. Now to figure out whether she can cash that in Japan or we have to do it for her. Time to talk to our banker, I guess.

Croptoberfest Day 3

This morning Darla and I did a "recipe" class. The recipe is step-by-step instructions on how to cut the paper and make a design on the scrapbook page. It was OK, but after shipping and tax my $12.50 class cost me $14.70. Wasn't realizing that. The instructions allow for about three photos on a page at most, and it's not really how I scrapbook. If I go to another crop, I think I'll skip the classes.

After leaving the crop, Cindy, Darla and I went to the At Home store. We were planning on having lunch together, but we took too long shopping and Darla wanted to get home to her hubby. We took this selfie before she left the store.

Overall, it was a productive weekend. I completed seven single pages in E's album, eight in B's, 13 in L's and 15 in mine and Andy's. That's a whopping 43 pages! Phew. I was planning on driving home Monday morning but Cindy had to run to the store to get milk for her morning cereal and to go to the farm to see her dog, so I drove home tonight. It will be nice to sleep in my own bed.

Croptoberfest Day 2

Being silly. I liked the festive headband.

"Our gang" of scrapbookers - me, Cindy, Alice and Darla. We had planned for my friend Ann to drive over from St. Louis and meet us for lunch but she had the time wrong so we said we'd try to do it another time.

Darla hard at work.

Darla's mom couldn't make it this year so our whole table gathered together and took a photo waving to her.

To Croptoberfest!

Cindy and I arrived at the crop in O'Fallon early this morning.

Darla and I were "framed."

Fun with photo props.

More props suitable for the season.

Getting down to work.

The hotel has a happy hour each evening and some food. This was a very sad taco. No cheese, no lettuce. Next year we plan to order a pizza instead of eating at the hotel.

Grandpa's tractor

I drove to Cindy's yesterday for the weekend crop. After she and Kevin went to the USDA this morning, we went shopping. We stopped at Siever's Equipment to see the 1950 Farmall tractor they bought from our uncle's auction. The story is that my grandfather bought the tractor, which was white, but he didn't want a white tractor, so he painted it red. Once the Sievers bought it, they stripped it and restored it. At the moment, it's not running so it's in the shop's garage. Jim, one of the owners of the implement dealership and farms my land, apologized profusely for it being dusty and not in the showroom where it belongs. He said we should come back and get a family picture when it's clean again. Next time I'll give him some notice I'll be stopping in.

Moonrise at ISU

Being at ISU made Andy revert to his photographer days. He took a couple nice shots of the moon rising.

Full-on fall colors

Sorority sticker

Andy and I have been dragging all day. Apparently, we're too old to do a whirlwind college visit. Anyway, he came home from work and put my sorority sticker in my car to replace my ISU cling that never was very clingy.

It was harder to put on than we thought so it's a little crooked. Not sure how long I'll leave that on before I scrape it off. We'll see.

Whirlwind ISU visit

L and her friend, A, got a crazy idea a few weeks ago to see Bazzi in concert and Andy and I were crazy enough to drive them to ISU to see him. We left around 1 p.m. and got to campus about two hours later, as expected, and began showing the girls the highlights of university life.

My plan was to take a picture of me and Andy in the driveway between our old apartments but we never really got over there with the girls. Here, you can see the apartments in the background. I was at 406 Locust and Andy was at 404 Locust.

Nice to see the ISU-Bradley rivalry is alive and well. We walked the girls through the quad, visited a classroom and lecture hall in Schroeder, went to the Alamo and stopped in at Watterson. A woman at the dining hall in Watterson offered to give us a tour so we got to go inside and see the various food stations.

This is new - Redbird plaza.

Wish they had swings when we were there.

Of course, we couldn't stop at Normal without dinner at Avanti's.

All day we were searching for this bench. It's rare we're at ISU in the daylight but it's usually by the Bowling Center and the Bone Student Center next door is under construction and everything is a mess. We knew the bench had been relocated. We just had to find it. I asked a cashier in the T-shirt shop, the woman at the Watterson cafeteria, her coworker and the parking lot attendant. No one knew! The girls were both wearing new shoes and their feet were hurting so we decided to drive them around and there it was - at the corner of College Avenue and University Street. Easily one of the busiest corners on campus. So, I got the picture I wanted but the lighting is bad because the sun was low and there's a huge semi in the background. It's Bazzi's semi unloading all the equipment for the concert in Braden Auditorium. Security was everywhere. We may have to try it again sometime.

I did manage to talk the girls into one fun photo in front of the Bazzi concert poster in the Student Center.

While they were at the concert, Andy and I stopped at the Pub for one beer before going to Walmart to kill time.

The Pub was pretty empty. It was Sunday night though. After spending as much time at Walmart as we could - we looked at everything - we parked near the Student Center and tried to nap in the car.

L and A were disappointed to hear that Bazzi didn't bring any concert merchandise so L bought this sweatshirt from one of his two opening acts. L called us at about 11 p.m. for their ride home. The concert was a success! They both slept on the way home.

Pie problem

L had a bit of a problem with this slice of pumpkin pie at work today - the entire pie part fell away from the crust!

Neighborhood's creepiest

The neighborhood is full of elaborate Halloween decorations, but this one wins my vote for the creepiest.

Our fall yard