Chatters,

I can hardly believe its already the first week in October! We've been staying warm here in the New River Valley with our temps being in the high 70's to mid 80's. That's above average for this time of year here. The leaves are starting to turn here and there. We've decorated our house for fall. Grace just loves all the fall stuff which makes it so fun to do!

Today, as you can see, we baked cookies with our friends the Coiners. Garner is 20 months and very cute. He and Grace get along really well. They both helped cut out cookies and put on sprinkles although not many sprinkles made it on to the cookies. Also I included two pics I took at the Salon when we were home for Jim Cecil's funeral.

Carl is really busy with work and school. He is taking two online classes and when he's not working he's doing school work. Even though we don't get to see him much I appreciate how hard he is working for our family.

Grace is getting excited for Halloween. She has Carl pick her up every morning so she can find Ladybug Grace on the family calendar. She also enjoys looking at all the other costumes we wore as kids. She is really excited about being Sleeping "Duty"(beauty) for Halloween and loves to go down the Halloween sections at WalMart and K-mart. She's not crazy about the life size zombie at K-mart nor the candy bowl that has a monster hand sticking out of it (and actually moves it someone goes in for candy).

Grace is now fully potty trained! She goes all by herself and only wears pull-ups at night as a precaution. No more diapers for this Girl. She also gets dressed by herself and can put on her shoes. I can't believe how quickly she's gone from baby to little girl.

I'm staying busy with home, work and church. My big project is painting the upstairs which has turned into a construction zone. I can only work on it when Grace is sleeping or if a I have a few Grace free moments during the day. Slowly our house is starting to come together. And aside for a few things we all love our new home. I miss NY and the family but all in all we enjoy this little part of VA.

I miss you all and love reading and catching up on all your news from all over. Keep posting!