Halloween Preparations

Here's Sam in his Halloween costume for this year - a ninja! He loves wearing the headband, but it is on the tight side, so it can't be worn for too long! Sam loved getting to wear his costume to storytime on Wednesday and getting to see his buddies Josh and Lilly in their awesome homemade costumes. I'm just realived that this year it isn't a fight to get him to dress up!

And on Tuesday we had William and his Mommy come over to help us decorate some spooky Halloween cupcakes I saw on Make It & Love It and wanted to try. Sam was obsessed with the eyeball cupcakes and enjoyed eating them immensely!

And here are the mummy and ghost cupcakes. These were so much fun to put together, I think it would be great to do these for the "Boo"ing thing that goes around the neighborhoods next year because they really get you in the spirit of Halloween!

All of the finished cupcakes. Thanks William & Co. for coming over to help us make these yummy treats!

Annual Pumpkin Carving

It's time again for our annual FHE pumpkin carving. This year was made extra fun by the fact that we grew our own pumpkins and Uncle Jake was here to join in the fun! Jake's is on the left, then Robert's in the middle and mine on the end. Mine was a Frankenstein, but is hard to see because the features were so small. And probably that I'm not an expert at carving pumpkins, but we all had fun anyways!

Focusing really hard on getting it just right :) We have found a great way to get a cool picture on your pumpkin is to print out a stencil or shadow and using a nail or some other small object, poke holes all around the outline and then use the knife to carve the picture following the holes. Works every time!

Crazy Week

Sorry I haven't posted all week. My good friend had her baby and we have been doing our best to help them out in any way we can. We have also been adjusting to having Uncle Jake here with us as well, but it has been a good adjustment. Daddy has been going out every night after work trying to put his new gun to good use, but no luck as of yet. We are hopefully headed out soon for Utah to visit with my family and my grandpa who is here visiting from Virginia, so hopefully some fun pictures are to come soon! Have a great weekend everyone!

Can't Believe It

I can't believe it! We are FINALLY done with harvest for this year!! This year felt so very, very long for me and Sam and I can imagine it felt the same for Robert, too. What I also can't believe is how we have acquired yet another firearm!! Yep, somehow I was convinced to let Robert buy yet another gun. This will be gun #4 for him now. Our new addition is a Ruger 300 Winchester Mag. Robert has had hunting fever ever since he went elk hunting with my dad that first year and begged and pleaded with me that he needed his own gun and that the three other ones he owned just weren't right for the job. Don't get me wrong, I am glad to see my husband so happy with his new toy, I just can't believe how many guns we have acquired in not so many years! We each have a shotgun and Robert has a pistol and his Mini 14 and now the Winchester Mag.
In other news, Robert's brother is staying with us for a few weeks and so far it's going well. Sam loves wrestling and demanding Uncle Jakey to play with him and Robert likes having another guy to talk tractors, farming and guns with. As for me, I've pretty much finished up my canning for the year. We ended up with peaches, pears, peach jam, green beans and apple pie filling. I will probably can potatoes, but that can be put on hold for a while. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Trip to Logan

Last week Sam and I were able to take a quick trip down to Logan to spend some time with my baby sister and her husband and their new little guy, Thomas.

Even though this picture doesn't show it, Thomas is a very good-natured baby and it was such a blast to get to hold him and not compete with anyone but Mommy for snuggle time!

Sam really enjoyed getting to play with Uncle John while we visited - he misses his Daddy so much!

While there we were able to do a few things like sew some Pee Pee Tee Pee's to help with the whizzing little boys tend to do when you change their diapers! We also made a few meals, got Mommy a boppy to help with breastfeeding and starting working on some cutesy-fied burp clothes and getting the supplies to make a nursing cover as well. (that IS coming sometime soon, April, sorry!)

And last, but not least, one of the conditions of us coming to visit was that I had to make a cake for the Kimballs. We settled on fruity yumminess of a strawberry cake with strawberry filling and topping and cream cheese icing. It was very good! It was a great trip and we were so happy to be able to come down and enjoy some time with the Kimballs all to ourselves - thanks for having us guys!

A Good One

Yesterday was my birthday and it turned out to be a pretty good one. It was General Conference and my friend invited Sam and me over to help do some canning and play. We accomplished alot by finishing all 44 quarts of our potato/carrot/onion mix and processing two batches of 14 by the end of the day (they had to be pressure cooked, which takes FOREVER) During the priesthood session, we loaded the kiddies in the car and drove to Coldstone to pick out an ice cream cake and settled on the strawberry cheesecake variety - so yummy!!! Robert insisted that I couldn't make my own birthday cake (although I did last year and this year I actually WANTED to make my own birthday cake) and said we should try an ice cream cake again (we've tried the ones from Dairy Queen before) and I had a coupon for $3 off at Coldstone, so it all worked out great! I really like these cakes because instead of all ice cream, they are layers of both cake and ice cream, as you can see in the pic :)

And my sisters know how much I love flowers and sent this gorgeous arrangement of purple and peach flowers in a cool vase! Thanks sis's!! So even though Robert was gone, we were able to stay happy and busy and make the most of the day! Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes yesterday!!