Slow week. Busy weekend. We hosted small group at our house Friday, which was lightly attended and will probably be the last time until after the holidays. Saturday Alex had another basketball game; this time Beth was able to go to it. She was relieved to see how well Alex was doing. The coach talked to us for a minute after the game and told us he thought Alex was getting better every game. He still seems to be enjoying himself. Maybe next year he'll get to score, or handle the ball for more than a couple seconds at a time. Missy was invited to a birthday party for a preschool friend of hers this weekend. It was held at the new Tokens & Tickets at Northside Lanes. It is re-opened now, new much smaller location and much fewer things to do than before the fire last summer. Also, unbeknownst to the parents of the birthday girl, the alley was hosting a large high school bowling team tournament, with schools from as far as Logansport and Rochester, plus all the locals, and you could barely turn around in there. But, since it was high school, not much smoke in the place. Anyway, Alex got to go too, which really pleased him (and Beth and me). The parents handled keeping the kids and bwling teams away from each other, and we just went home while the kids were partying. I worked on the room downstairs, which I've been doing a lot lately, now mostly painting and trim work. The ceiling tile wall brackets are also up. Beth quilted. After I picked them up (with all their candy and ticket trade-in junk) Katie came over to babysit shortly after. Beth and I went out to dinner and were going to go see the new 007 movie, but neither one of us was really into it. We went to Elder-Beerman to do some looking for red clothes for an upcoming family picture,and wound up noticing too late that the movie was starting in 2 minutes. So, we skipped it and continued shopping for more warm clothes for the kids. There was a bake sale after church Sunday.

Missy's fall parade at preschool was last Tuesday. I took off work to go see her and got some precious photos. Her hat was a bit top heavy though, and kept covering her eyes, so she wasn't really happy in some of them. We took the kids trick-or-treating on Friday; Missy was dressed as a fairy princess and Alex as a cowboy. At first we tried going around here but practically nobody was home, so we went down to Fort Wayne Street in town instead like we did last year, and it worked out well again. There seem to be a lot of people who live around there who really get into the whole Halloween thing. The kids still get scared of the monsters, though. Saturday was Alex's first pee-wee basketball game of the season. This year he's on the Tar Heels. For some reason, all the other kids on his team seem bigger and faster than him now, and some of them are really good at dribbling and shooting. Maybe he's just on a team that's got several 6-year-olds. He was also having a hard time paying attention and seemed to not get the whole thing. He also can't quite dribble yet. Beth and I were worried for a while that he wouldn't want to keep playing, but later on in the game he started doing better. He's been looking forward to playing basketball again so I hope he progresses with it. It was also a Katie day yesterday, but no movies Beth and I wanted to see, so we went to Goshen for wings and trivia again. Today we took the kids to Golden Corral for breakfast and spent the rest of the day at home, relaxing and cleaning up leaves, again.