Millar Moments: OCTOBER - GENERAL CONFERENCE, FAMILY, AND FOOTBALL HIGHLIGHT THIS MONTH

We had a wonderful surprise when Andrea called and ask if she could fly in and spend conference weekend with us. Of course, we said yes. It seems that she missed snuggling little Arthur and wanted to spend the weekend with him and her daughters....and us. We loved having most of the Westovers here for the long weekend. Jillian and Lydia even drove in from Idaho to be with us all. Andrea, Jillian, and Lydia arrived on Friday evening. Saturday was spent watching three sessions of conference, playing games and eating.

President Oaks - our new prophet and president

Sunday was a special day, not only because of the wonderful messages of conference but because Ryan and his family as well as Jon and his family came up that afternoon for dinner. It was incredible to sit around the table and talk and laugh together. We always have a fun time when we are all together.

We missed Todd on this day

Football is always in full swing in October. We had two home games, both of which Ryan brought his family up from St. George to watch. The second game was the biggest as it was against the University of Utah, our greatest rival. We won that game in the fourth quarter so it was a very exciting game. We ended up standing most of the game. Because of another win against Iowa State the next week we are now 8 wins and 0 losses.

Half time tribute to America with both BYU
and Utah marching bands performing together.

We took a little getaway trip to Worldmark at Wolf Creek. While there, we went to the temple and a movie in Ogden. The resort's hot tub was very inviting as was just relaxing together in our condo. We were hoping to do a little golfing but, when we went to the club house to grab a bucket of balls for the driving range, we found it was all closed up. It had rained a lot that day so they must have closed early. We, then, decided to come home that evening instead of spending one more night at the condo. We were glad we did as we got up the next morning to snow on the ground. Who knows what our trip home would have been like if we had waited to come home in the morning.

Driving down the Ogden canyon
to the movie

We came out of the temple on Wednesday
to lots of rain.

SNOW in October.
This could be a bad winter

October always brings leaves falling from the trees as well as the final harvest of our garden. This October the leaves were plentiful as we ended up taking three trips to the dump with the truck full of leaves.

Paul raking the leaves to put in the truck

The last thing in our garden is always the squash. We pulled off 11 squash and gave several away to friends and neighbors. I also baked down a couple of them to make pies. I have three squash pies in the freezer along with 3 apple pies. A friend brought us a bag of golden delicious apples from which I made the pies. We're all set for Thanksgiving.

Apple pies ready for the freezer

A sad thing occurred this month with the death of our beloved prophet, Russell M. Nelson. He was 101. We all knew it would just be a matter of time before he was called home but it is never easy to lose such a wonderful man. He was an incredible leader and prophet who accomplished so much to the furthering of the gospel around the world. He will be missed. His funeral was televised and was a fitting tribute to a great man.

Elder Holland speaking at the funeral

Another sad thing.....We drove to the bank one weekend and ran into a group of people in front of the city offices protesting. It was part of the nationwide 'No Kings' day. It was obvious that it was organized by some outside group as the people had matching signs. If it was spontaneous the signs would have been homemade and all different. More than likely these people were bused in or told were to be on this day. We were so sad that our little Heber community was affected by these left wing lunatics.

We celebrated two birthdays this month - Maggie's and Ledger's. Maggie wanted pot roast and cream puffs for her birthday dinner so that's what she got. There was not one morsel of food leftover.

For Ledger's birthday I made Hostess cupcakes, a tradition for our one year old grandchildren. He loved his cupcake and ate the whole thing. We bought him a dump truck that has some learning gadgets on it to help him count and recognize colors. He loved that, too.

Other happenings this month included two trips to the Hale Center theater in Draper. We had to take two trips because the first time we went down to see the musical, Sister Act, the stage wouldn't work so they had to cancel the show. We were able to schedule seeing the show two weeks later and this time the stage worked. The show was incredible. It was worth the wait to see it.

At the end of the month, Paul went into the hospital in Orem for a procedure to decrease the size of his prostate so he wouldn't have to urinate so often. We were at the hospital a total of 6 hours with surgical prep, the surgery and then the recovery time. They needed to watch his urine output for 3 hours to make sure there was not clotting before they would let us go home. He spent two days with a catheter and once that was removed, he seemed to be doing quite well. He's been wanting to do this for a long time and hopefully it will have the results he has dreamed of.

And always last in October is Halloween. We opted not to go to Todd's this year partially because of Paul's surgery but also because all the Leavitt's were going to be there. We usually go down to help pass out candy so Todd and Kailee could take their children trick or treating but, because even Kailee's parents were coming, we wouldn't be needed. The night before Halloween, Avery vomited so none of the Leavitts came to Todd and Kailee's home to celebrate Halloween. We could have gone down to help but we also didn't want to get exposed to any illness. It turns out that Avery was fine the next day so could even go trick or treating. Todd and Kailee had to take turns with the children trick or treating so one of them would always be at their home to hand out candy. We ended up having about 20 trick or treaters at our home. It's been years since we've been home on Halloween so we had no idea if anyone would come.