Living with REAL intent

I just watched this video and I loved it! I think it is so easy to let your life pass by and just go through the motions or get stuck on the computer in a virtual world. I have been trying to make all of my actions more meaningful and make sure I am doing the Lord's will. I love how this video talked about how things need to be done with real intent. I recommend it! https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-00-0002-living-with-purpose-and-real-intent?category=social-media-sharable-videos&lang=eng

Date Night Idea- Learn to Dance

This is especially one of my favorites because I love to dance! I think Andrew has fun too but I suspect he does it to be nice to me. We just go go to the library and borrow how-to-dance videos. We have gotten different kinds of swing and ballroom. It is fun to experiment with a new kind of dance when absolutely no one else is watching and you are with somebody who already loves you. Unfortunately we have not retained any knowledge we might have gained from these date nights but they are always fun anyway!

Movember

Andrew did the Movember thing.

Tucker's birthday

Tucker looked forward to his birthday for a long time. (I guess most kids do...) but he only thought about his cake. Whenever I asked him what he wanted for presents, he just talked about his cake. He chose a Thomas the Train cake. I am totally still learning about cakes but Andrew and I did our best and Tucker liked it at least. However, it took soooo much frosting. This picture of it is when it was very chilled. As soon as it was room temperature everything just slid off!

Halloween

Our cute trick-or-treaters. (Well, Miles didn't go...)

Carving Pumpkins

Adelia & Tucker were so excited to carve pumpkins. Our kind neighbors gave us some awesome pumpkins that they grew. As Andrew and I started scooping out the innards (there was NO way that our kids were going to touch it), I realized how ironic it was that Adelia and Tucker were the excited ones, because they were pretty much just observers. They did, however, choose what their pumpkin faces would look like. I "helped" Adelia, and Andrew "helped" Tucker. We had fun. I love holidays.

Our Garden

I just wanted to post about our awesome garden because we are so proud of it! We had so much fun and almost everything was successful. Tucker's favorite crop was the carrots. Every day he wanted us to go dig one up. We canned (for the first time) pickles, tomato sauce, beets, and relish. We learned that we need to plant more tomatoes and that maybe we don't need 7 zucchini plants ( I know. I know. What were we thinking!?!) As much as I loved it I am pretty excited to not feel the need to go weeding for a few months.

Jeremy's Wedding

Hooray! My little brother, Jeremy, married a wonderful girl named Amy Jane last week. My camera was lost (but now is found.) so I don't have any pictures but they are a wonderfully cute couple and I am so excited for them. I just love weddings! Andrew and I have decided that we don't want to wait until our 50th wedding anniversary for a big shebang so we might have one at 20 years. We just are one of those wierd people that LOVE planning.

Date Night- Game Mania

Andrew was in charge of this night. We simaltaneously played four games. It got a little crazy! We played backgammon, dominoes, chess, & checkers. We had a bean bag for each game that we used to mark whose turn it was. So basically we just ran around looking for a bean bag on our side and took our turn and then threw the bean bag back on the other side. We tried to finish within a time limit, which I think started at half an hour, but we were having so much fun we ended up just finishing all of the games no matter how long it took. I discovered that I don not have the skills to play more than one strategy game at a time. I was so confused with the chess game. I lost that one so fast! Andrew totally beat me. He won backgammon, dominoes, and chess. I managed to win checkers. I think we will definately repeat this date night.

Dinosaur Museum

For Andrew's birthday, one of the things we did was go to a dinosaur museum. Even though this wasn't a dinosaur we thought it was fun! It was pretty crowded. Miles was especially having fun exploring his vocal chords but since it was loud anyway, no one could really hear him. It was perfect!

Their absolute favorite was "digging" for dinosaur bones at the end. They didn't quite work together and so they were constantly finding and covering the same bone the whole time.

Adelia's room

This is an art project I did on Adelia's wall inspired by my sister-in-law, Tonia. The butterflies are made out of paper. I thought it turned out pretty cool.

Tucker's Faith

Yesterday Tucker couldn't find a specific Lightning McQueen toy. I haven't seen it for a really long time. He had only looked for a few seconds when he wanted to say a prayer. He said a simple prayer that he would be able to find it and right at the end of the prayer Miles spit up everywhere. He rarely does this but I told Tucker after I took care of Miles I would help him look for his toy. I went up to get a burp cloth and what was in the the burp cloth basket? Lightning McQueen! I know that Heavenly Father answers even the simplest of prayers. It was so sweet to see Tucker's faith.

Kennecott

We went on a fairly spontaneous visit to Kennecott Copper Mine with Grandma & Grandpa. It was amazing! This is one of the tires from the trucks they use. I could not believe how big they were. Tucker and Adelia both loved the museum with all of the replicas of machines. It was SO crowded and we were especially grateful for the extra arms from grandparents.

Date Night- Chopped

So recently Andrew and I got into a show called "Chopped." Four chefs are given a basketful of random ingredients that they have to incorporate into a dish in a short amount of time. After each round one of the chefs gets chopped. Anyway, because of this show and another culinary show that we watched for awhile we thought it would be fun to let our creative juices flow in the kitchen.

We decided to work together rather than compete and we gave ourselves one hour to complete three dishes in. We made an appetizer, a drink, and a dessert. After we started our time we randomly drew out of a hat our ingredients. Appetizer- Carrots; Drink- Soy Sauce (gag!); and Dessert- Cauliflower.

We decided to saute the carrots with some zucchini in olive oil. We added parsley, onion powder, and oregano and then topped it off with parmesean cheese. Pretty safe but it turned out well.

You know how sometimes you go to a Chinese place and the sauce for the egg roll or lettuce wrap is so good you just want to drink it? Actually the only person I know that has ever felt that way is Andrew and this was our "inspiration" for our drink. We decided that we put rice vinegar with the soy sauce. It needed a more drinkable flavor so we decided to do a fruity-slushy drink. We ended up with ice, nectarine, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, a little ginger, and more sugar. It tasted ok.

We decided that since cauliflower looks like mashed potatoes we could use it to make doughnuts. You know like spudnuts? Any connection was good enough for us because cauliflower and dessert don't seem to go together. So we tried to concoct a very small amount of batter. Then we put carmel frosting with it (because we already had some...) It turned out pretty much how you think cauliflower in a doughnut with carmel frosting would.

So to sum it up, I would definately say this date idea is only for those with strong stomachs. Or else give yourself really simple ingredients that go good in everything. Like sugar & chocolate. It was fun to try this once but I don't think our stomachs would be able to handle round 2. We definately would have been chopped.

Word Roundup

So as I have mentioned we usually have date night at home and as cheaply as possible. That's just what works for us because of our little family right now. Because of that we have the "opportunity" to get creative so we aren't just watching a movie together every Friday night. My sister-in-law told me I should start a blog with the ideas we come up with but I don't think I have time for that so I will just include an occasional date night idea that we have fun with.

This idea is actually a website: Word Roundup It's just a silly game but we love to play it together. When we do this it usually is followed up with a movie or something...

Tucker's smile

This is what Tucker does when we ask him to smile for a picture. It always makes us laugh. I think he thinks that a smile has more to do with your eyes than your mouth. Oh well. Candid shots are better anyway-right?

Thompson Family Reunion

We had a lot of fun with family at the Thompson family reunion. I rarely remembered to take pictures but some of the highlights were: finding a crawdad at a park, talking with Grandma Call, playing with Nate's kinect, going shopping with the women (for me), watching the kids get so excited just to wash windows, and watching Andrew do the "impossible" and crack a raw egg by squeezing it (which consequently exploded on the floor & Grandma). As always there was good food and games. Fishing. We lasted a few minutes before Tucker & Adelia decided they would rather play on a playground that was nearby.

Having fun at the pool with cousins & Nan

Adelia's Birthday!

Adelia turned 4! She wanted to have a Curious George Birthday! We had so much fun.Playing "Pin the Hat on the Man in the Yellow Hat" (Andrew's artwork)

Dancing to the Curious George Theme Song

Running a "jungle" obstacle course
Blowing out the candles!

Date Night

For part of a date night Andrew and I each chose a toy and then we tried to make it out of playdough. I lack artistic ability but I was impressed with Andrew's and we had fun!

Andrew's

Mine

Alex's Wedding

My little brother, Alex, got married this last weekend to the most wonderful girl named Catherine. I love weddings and was so excited for both of them! I realized that we didn't get a single picture of them. Oops! Most of mine and Andrew's day was spent explaining to our kids that this was a fun day because they seemed to have a hard time realizing that on their own. :) It was still a wonderful day.

Our kids hang out with their aunt, Talitha, outside the temple during the wedding. They were excited to get a picture of them touching the temple.

I love that Tucker and Miles both got little boutonnieres.