1. Halloween has come and gone and the candy overflows. Here are our little trick or treaters. A zombie skateboarder (I don’t know), Ariel and Tinker Bell. Our neighborhood does Halloween right with a community potluck, warm chili, lots of kids and a bonfire afterwards. Seriously it’s like straight out of a movie! And I love it!

2. Tonight we are having an overnight visitor! I love having people come and stay with us, especially when it’s one of my favorite people like Jaime. Jaime was a friend of one of my best friends growing up. Through that mutual friend we have become friends. Did you follow that? Basically we are all friends, I love her and I am super excited to have her here. Although, my girls are not too happy she is not bringing her two girls along with her. And I hear the same is true for her. Sorry girlies, next time! Jaim excited to hang out with you friend!

3. For the last 5 weeks it has been a crazy schedule around here of Brian and I traveling. I hardly every travel alone and I did twice this month. We have flip flopped travel dates 5 times. Seriously, I think we have spent less than 10 days together this month. You know for a married couple that just doesn’t work well. Kaia confirmed this yesterday. She said, “Mom there isn’t much between you and Dad. What do you mean? I asked. Well you never see each other and you hardly ever hug.” Awesome. I agreed with the not seeing each other much lately but had to disagree with the hugging part. I am hugger people. I am also hoping for and looking forward to some downtime as a family. All 5 of us!

4. This week when the girls were at school I had a date with myself at Starbucks. Super exclusive. I took a pic of myself and several people asked about my scarf. It’s from Dayspring, which was a sponsor at Allume. I love it!

5. Last week we implemented a couple new behavior systems in our home. Behavior systems sounds intense but I don’t what else to call it. We saw the need to step up our game with certain behavior issues. Enter in the Lego jars. We have a couple friends that do something similar so we can’t take the credit here. For our family we are working on 2 things. TWO THINGS. Keeping it simple here folks. Legos can be received for the following:

1. Obeying on the first time.  aka first time obedience (I say this multiple times a day)
2. Serving others and showing kindness without being asked. This could be to each other, a friend, neighbor, stranger.

Ground rules: It’s not a guarantee you will get a lego in your jar each time you do either of these. You can not ask to receive a lego (kinda missing the point here kids). Also, legos are not taken away, though it is tempting at times I admit. God does not work this way with us though, thankfully!

The kids decided together on 3 rewards they could choose from when their jars are full independently. So far it is working pretty well. It is our prayer that these attitudes will become ingrained in them sooner rather than later without receiving a lego. I really don’t want to be handing out legos to my teenagers. I’ll let you know…

Do do anything in your home to encourage good behavior? I would love to hear about it! Share with us!

Have a great weekend friends! And don’t forget it’s time change, enjoy that extra hour of sleep!