Sick Day

So sickness has caught up with us this season. Adelia has been throwing up and has a fever. She has handled it well and we have watched WAY too many movies in the last few days. Hopefully it will be short-lived and the rest of us won't get it. Cross our fingers. I am just glad that Christmas wasn't this weekend.

Meeting Santa

This past weekend we attended a family Christmas party and Santa came! Adelia and Tucker were so excited to see him, but less excited to sit on his lap. Adelia did pretty well but Tucker did not want to get near him. Christmastime is so fun. Adelia and Tucker are so excited!

Mormon.org

We love the "Our People" section of the mormon.org website. It is so interesting to learn about different people's lives. They all have such different personalities and interests. Some of them talk about their testimonies of Jesus Christ and why they have joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but most of them just talk about what their life is like. We LOVE it and have watched every video within a few days of it being posted. If you have some time to look at something worthwhile online, this is it!

Funny Story

I have been trying to get Adelia to turn off lights by telling her that we save money that way that we can use for fun stuff. The other day she went around the house and turned off all the lights and said, "Is our money safe now?"

Our Christmas Tree

Hooray! Christmas is coming. I LOVE this time of year. Adelia and Tucker (and Andrew and I) were excited to get a Christmas tree. Adelia thought it was so funny that we put the tree on top of our car to take it home. She said it looked like our car had a hat on it. We had fun decorating, however Adelia and Tucker still haven't grasped the concept that decorating was a one-time thing. They are often moving ornaments around or playing with the candy canes. It is so much more fun to have Christmas with them though. They are the perfect age to get excited about everything but not disappointed about anything. So fun!

Post of Gratitude

I am so grateful for good people. I made the dumb mistake of leaving my wallet in a cart in a parking lot the other day. Yikes! Somebody turned it in and nothing happened (except I had a very stressful hour) but it was a good reminder for me of the good in people. It seems like we hear so much about the other side of people in the media and it was just the reminder I needed as Christmas is approaching and I want to love others more.

Tucker's Birthday

Tucker loved his birthday. We actually had two parties but I only have pictures from our small little family party. We love having him in our family. He is so much fun!

We couldn't find our birthday candles so we just used tealight ones. Tucker didn't actually blow out his candles, he asked Adelia to do it. However he was willing to pretend for a picture!

His Elmo Birthday Cake. We were pretty proud of it but it was really easy becuase we just used a Cricut Cake. The hardest part was that we bought all white fondant and had to drop-by-drop dye it the color we needed. It was fun!

It's a Boy!

So this post is long overdue but Baby #3 is on his way to our family. We are expecting him the first week in March. Adelia is very excited and always knew it was a boy. I think Tucker doesn't quite get it but he is used to us talking about and praying for our baby.

Halloween Pictures

Here is our pink princess and our Tigger. It's not the best picture of them but no one was in the mood for pictures so it was the best we could do at the time.

It was raining but we decided to go out anyway because Adelia was so excited to. Our kids thought it was the best thing ever! Tucker loved that everyone let him choose his own candy out of the bowl. We couldn't get him to wear his Tigger hat though.

Last minute Adelia and I decided to decorate our trunk for a "Trunk-orTreat" we were participating in. I was proud of our efforts since we had little time and just had to work with what we had. She loved playing with the ghosts before we hung them up.

Carving Pumpkins

Adelia loved every minute of this! She loved picking out her pumpkin and choosing what kind of face I carved. I think she was so excited because of a favorite Berenstain bears book she has where Papa bear carves a pumpkin.

At first Tucker thought we were going to eat the pumpkins. He still had fun but I think he lost a little interest when he realized that we were going to carve them.

Our finished product. The girls' pumpkin and the boys' pumpkin.

Our Work Day

We've had some yard projects that we wanted to do but couldn't do by ourselves. Thanks to wonderful family we got a lot done in one day. It was mostly clearing stuff out so now our yard is more of a blank slate to work with.

Hugo- lookin' cool!

Taking out the shed was the hardest project!

Adelia and Tucker were great helpers!

Nan accomplished a miracle with all of these weeds!

Pretending

Adelia and Tucker are always pretending like they are dogs and kitties. Their favorite thing to do is get fed. They are always pawing at mine and Andrew's feet. I walked in their bedroom and Adelia was feeding Tucker-puppy out of her hand. It was so cute but by the time I got the camera they just kept both looking at me every time I took a picture. Still cute!

English Trifle

I really enjoyed this book by Josi Kilpack. It is second in a series and it is definitely my favorite so far (of two). I am not sure if I love it because it talks about food so much (I read cookbooks for fun.) or because it is a murder mystery that doesn't have any gory details. I read it all in one day because I couldn't put it down. I feel like she writes in a way that is predictable enough that I'm not disappointed, but she is also throwing in things that catch me offguard which keeps it interesting. Not educational at all, strictly entertaining but I would recommend these books (especially the second one!)

Tucker eating a pear

Tucker asked me if he could eat this "apple." It made me happy because I have never gotten him to eat a pear when I cut it up for him.

Camping Adventure

So Andrew and I like to think of ourselves as a camping family and we realized recently that we have only gone once this whole summer. We thought it might be fun to take a slightly spontaneous camping trip with just our little family for one night this past weekend. I don't know for sure if this was the best idea or not. On Friday when we got up there we found out that we had to pay to get into the canyon (which we were expecting) and pay for the campsite (which we were not expecting... I know, I know we should've!) We didn't have any more cash but it wasn't a big deal because I saw a sign that said that they took checks. We decided to unload half of our stuff so that Andrew could start setting up camp while I drove back and paid. As I was unloading the camp host drove up in her little golf cart and said, "Ummm. You need to pay." I hoped I looked honest as I told her that that was what I was about to do. She told me that I could just pay her right there. I pulled out my checkbook and asked who to write the check out to. As she answered I was mortified to discover that I had used my last check and forgotten to replace the checkbook. I asked if they took cards and she said "no" with a look that said, "duh!" With no way to pay our only option was for me to drive back off the mountain and get some money. I took Adelia with me. Poor girl was so confused and sad about why we were driving away from the campground when I had told her we would be camping. Anyway, we got that problem all worked out and had an enjoyable night.

Dinner-finally!

Adelia loved roasting marshmallows!

Hanging out in the tent.

It was so cold in the morning! We wrapped the kids up in coats and blankets but they were still freezing. We could see our breath and the sun never did make it to us.

We decide to go home and eat breakfast. The kids waited in the car to try to stay warm while Andrew and I loaded everything up.

Overall, I'm glad that we went but we realized that we want to be a summer camping family not a September camping family!

Birthday Party!

My grandpa just turned 80 and so my parents (and siblings) planned a big family party for him. It was so fun to learn more about my grandpa's life. I love when family gets together.

We had a marbles tournament and a jacks tournament (games my grandpa liked to play when he was younger.) Everyone got into the jacks tournament. It was a lot of fun. Andrew and I think we might go out and buy some jacks now.

They made coloring books for the kids from pictures of my Grandpa's life. They were pretty fun. Adelia and Tucker love to color!

Home Sweet Home

Hooray! We have become homeowners for the first time! (However I think that term is a little misleading because we own just the teeniest % of our home...) This is it. It has been vacant for a little while so the yard needs a little (or a lot) of love. It will keep us busy. We are so excited! The tree that is on the righthand side of the picture has since fallen down in a windstorm and we had to cut down two of the other trees. We have no trees in the backyard and the few that are left in the front I would stil consider saplings. Oh well.

Funny Sign

I saw this on a wooden sign at a small plumbing store last week:

"This is a not for profit business. We didn't plan it that way, that's just how it turned out."

It made me smile :)

Camping!

We went to a family reunion campout and had so much fun! Our kids were so excited about sleeping in a tent. I think it's the only time that Adelia ever asks to go to bed.

We got lost on the way which seems to be about as annual of a tradition as the campout itself but once we got there everything was great!

Island Park/Yellowstone

Here are some pictures from our little trip to Island Park & Yellowstone. Unfortunately Andrew wasn't with us because he just started a new job (fortunately!) and couldn't take time off.

Here's Tucker eating his first smore. He loved it! We always ate inside because there were SO many mosquitos.

This is Adelia and I waiting for Old Faithful. It rained on us so much! We were completely drenched by the time we actually got to see it. Grandma was in the car with Tucker while he was napping and the rest of the family was walking through the trails. It's a fun memory though!

Tucker loved walking everywhere. He was a little trooper. I couldn't believe how independent he would be for so long!

I think that Adelia's favorite part was canoeing. She had her own little brown paddle. We saw fish, a muskrat, birds, and a moose!

Memorial Day Hike

Taking a break!

Birthday Girl

Here's Adelia on her special day!

Birthday Cake

So Andrew and I recently discovered how much we are NOT cake connoisseurs. I realize that my biggest problem is the frequency of my cake-making attempts. I only try at birthdays and if you take in to account that we have four people in our family and that Andrew makes the cake for my birthday, that leaves three times a year. This is not often enough to create a skill. Here are some pictures of our efforts. It turned out ok if you don't mind that it could double as a bowl for the ice cream because it sunk so much! Anyway- I am determined to make cakes more often, which I am sure my family will not mind.

My Awesome Young Women

These are some of the teenage girls I work with at church. They are so fun! I love them so much. Our ward (congregation) is so diverse and I love getting to know more about other cultures.

Surprise!

This little frog greeted me as I was straightening up the other day. It is in a block in Tucker's shoe. It made me laugh so much. You just never know what to expect when you have toddlers.

Our Pretend Headboard

I was pretty proud of how this turned out so I thought I would take a picture. We didn't have a headboard so I cut these out of vinyl and just put them on our wall. However, we just got a hand-me-down headboard so this pretend one had a short life! -Andrew just read this post and thought I should point out that I cutted them with a Cricut machine not with scissors:)

Washing the dishes

Usually, Adelia helps me wash the dishes while Tucker is taking a nap. Sometimes Tucker and Adelia both help me. However, today when it was time to wash the dishes Adelia was running an errand with Daddy. Tucker was promoted to dish-rinser (He was pretty excited- this task has more access to water than his usual one.) He like to put his stamp of approval on each one. This involved licking or sucking on each dish. Needless to say, it took longer to wash the dishes than normal, but we had some fun Mommy-Tucker time:)

Who knew what 1 piece of chocolate could do?

Cute Story

The other day Adelia was helping me with spring cleaning and I asked her to hand something to me. She did and she said, "Here you go, Sweetie." I felt like I was the little girl. It caught me so off-guard and I had to be careful not to laugh.

I caught this spontaneous hug that was instigated by Tucker. So cute! Adelia loved it and kept telling Tucker it was "hug time" again

Food Co-op

So we just joined a food co-op and it is the BEST THING EVER! I love getting a variety of produce. I get stuck in a rut and usually buy only apples, bananas, tomatoes, etc. Nothing exciting. However this week we have had artichokes and plums, both of which we have never bought before. So fun.

Story-time with Pop