October

October was a busy month. On top of all of our daily sporting commitments, Trey and Kyra started Cotillion, we celebrated Tyson's 9th birthday and had fun with Halloween!

COTILLION
While Kyra is enjoying participating in cotillion with a couple of her new friends here in Laguna Hills, I think it just makes Trey miss his Hong Kong friends even more since that was a regular routine for him with so many of his friends last year.

TYSON'S BIRTHDAY
Tyson decided to have his birthday dinner at Dave & Buster's.  First birthday in a while that we weren't celebrating at Outback Steakhouse in Hong Kong.  That was our staple birthday restaurant so the majority of us could enjoy a nice steak!! 

HALLOWEEN
The kids were so excited to have a "normal" Halloween of walking the streets to get their candy door-to-door like back in Eden Prairie.  In Hong Kong, we walked up and down the flights of stairs in our apartment building and that was it.  You could feel the excitement in the air as we discussed who would stay home to hand out candy, who would go out trick-or-treating, do we dare all go out at the same time and leave a bowl of candy out? How long would it last?  Would one greedy kid dump the whole bowl in his bag?  Well, we took that chance and decided to go out as a family for our first Halloween back in the States after a few years. 

Let's just say...apparently our house is in a bit older community with not as many young kids...I'm pretty sure not one piece of candy was gone from our bowl on the front step even after being gone for 1-1/2 hours.  At one point, we were on a long residential street and we were the ONLY trick-or-treaters on the street the entire time we were on it.  And I think it would be generous to say that 4 out of 10 homes were giving out treats.  Hmmm....not exactly what the kids were hoping for...unless the neighborhood was really going with the theme of "ghost town"???  Oh well...at least they had fun carving their pumpkins!