Fall turns to winter...

... and that's about how much I blog.

November is always a busy month... Ryan's mom is one of the directors of the Jubilee of Trees.  She spends 18 hours a day working on the Jubilee for the month of Oct. and Nov. (I really don't think that's an exaggeration).   We help her as much as we can... this year our names were even in the paper:)

Of course, we also attended the Jubilee...

The kids had some fun stuff going on at school.  Brenner participated in a story-telling festival.  He also is in his school choir.  Joren's class put on a fun Thanksgiving program.

We got to see a lot of our family for Thanksgiving.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with Ryan's family.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with my family.   And the only pictures I took were of my cute craft... nice:)  We also went to a temple session with a few of my Williams family to do the temple work for my cousin, Jeremy, who passed away last June.

 The week after Thanksgiving, I had surgery.  I had a benign goiter removed from my thyroid.  Luckily it was benign and luckily I only had to have one lobe removed.  I recovered quickly.  This picture is right after the surgery... the scar looks much better now.

 Stay tuned for December... I actually took lots of pictures of December!

Family Pix

We got our family pix taken a few weeks ago.  I had sooo much fun putting the outfits together... I even got Ryan to wear a Pink shirt:)  Kassidy Baker took our pix and she did a fabulous job!  

 I love how she captured their personality in the pix!

Fall Fun

I've been a HUGE blog slacker... honestly, I think it's because I'd rather post my pix on instagram and facebook.  But, since I do know there are a few people out there who may check my blog that don't have instagram or facebook (Libby and Cash), I hope you read my blog... I'm doing this just for you.  So, here's the instagram photos I took in October...

Fall Break from school was a chance to work on some projects around the house... and take the kids out to have a little fun.  We always love Staheli Family Farm.   There are so many fun things to do there.  

We went to Kanarraville to work on Granny's house again.  We got done sooner than we thought we would, so we headed over to New Harmony to pick some apples.  On our way home, Libby sent us on some dirt road from New Harmony to Pinto.  We were hoping to see some fall leaves, but we didn't see many.  We definitely went on a road we'd never been on before!

A lady in our ward has a swimming pool in her back yard.  Her daughter cuts our hair, so when we were getting our hair cut, the kids begged to swim.  It was October and only 76 degrees, but they had a blast!

We got our family pix taken... this is a preview:)  I'm loving the colors we picked!  You can leave a comment if you want to make sure you get a Christmas card!

Monday night before Halloween we carved pumpkins.  The kids were so excited.  Brenner had found his template weeks before halloween on Pumpkin Masters.  He did a great job... with Ry's help as well (left).  Joren insisted on making his own design (middle).  I think Terek really just liked stabbing his pumpkin.  He designed his own as well (right).

For some reason I really got into the trunk or treat this year.  I found some black fabric and a skeleton at a yard sale a few weeks before Halloween.  I thought a "dead end" theme would be fun.  The skeleton was stabbed and had blood (although the kids liked to say that skeletons wouldn't bleed... blah blah).  I used this idea to make the glowing eyeballs....

Halloween was fun.... my awesome principal let me leave work early so I could get to the school for the kids costume parade.  Then we had our ward trunk or treat and still went trick or treating in the neighborhood.

Brenner is a mad scientist (he was going to be a vampire until he wore his costume to a party before halloween and the cape drove him crazy being around his neck.  So we came up with the mad scientist thing kind of last minute).  Joren wanted to be the same ninja he was last year.  Terek got his power ranger costume as a present for his birthday from grandma Rose... perfect!

Ryan and I were bah humbugs and didn't even dress up this year!

Our New Humble Abode

Life has been busy crazy lately... what with moving and all.  So, here's how the story goes.... We moved to Ivins 2 years ago.  We have been living with my parents...  helping take care of my mom, but also because we were short on money.  Well, you can only live with your parents so long...  I have been wanting to move for quite awhile, but Ryan kept talking me out of it....moving really is a lot of work:)  Tanner (my nephew) moved in with us in June... his parents were still living in Oregon.  Now there was a total of 8 people living in a 4 bedroom home... Tanner was sleeping in the storage room.  Well, his parents moved back from Oregon the end of August.  That brings our total to 10 people... they chose to sleep in my parents travel trailer over on the farm rather than the uncomfortable hide-a-bed in the family room.  We started looking for rentals and found one in the neighborhood where all of my kids' friends live... Amber Estates.  It wasn't one of Ryan's dad's rentals.  When Ryan mentioned to him that we were thinking of renting from someone else, he said, "I have a rental in there that's been available for 2 months."  What?????  To make a long story short, he had already promised it to someone else, but they backed out, so we got it!

 Here is the front of our home.  I don't love the southwest style of these homes, but it's all good.

Here's the back...  It's the house on the right.  We don't have a back yard... just an open commons area. The kids can ride their scooters back there....

... and they had a blast playing their own version of Angry Birds there last week...

... the house is nice... 3 bedrooms 2 baths... it has an attached Casita that will be Ryan's office and my craft room... it's a huge mess right now!   It's a rental, so it's not as clean as I would want it to be... I'm scrubbing grout and cleaning carpets... I don't think the carpet will ever look good enough for my liking.  BUT, the biggest downfall of our house is our visitors... Scorpions!  We have lost track of how many we've found... I think we are over 10!  The first one we discovered when it Stung me!!!  It was in my bathroom on the floor and I stepped on it or right next to it.  Don't worry, you don't die from scorpions... they just hurt really bad!  We have found 3 alive in the house and many more in the garage.  We have sprayed 2 or 3 times... yesterday I bought a black light flashlight and went on a hunt!  I found 2 pretty big ones in the garage as well as a smaller one.  We also some some out in the yard... we must have a nest somewhere.   We are now setting traps... we will conquer these creepy critters!!!  Eeek!!!

PS... I will post pics of the inside of the house when I feel like I have it decorated cute enough to post pics.

Preschool

Terek gets to go to two preschools this year!  The first preschool is at Red Mountain Elementary School. 

 He was a little nervous to go since it's a new place for him.

Tanner took him to school an had to stay with him for a few minutes.  But Terek loves it now!!!

My baby turned 4!!!

This past 4 years has been a whirlwind for our family!  I can't believe how fast time has flown by.  

 My sweet baby boy, Terek in the hospital.

 Terek had his birthday party on the Saturday before his birthday.  For details of his birthday party, you can visit my craft blog.  He was so excited to have 2 birthdays!!!

And here's the pix I took of Terek for his 4 year old pix.... he's a silly boy.

Happy Birthday Terek!!!

1st Day of School

Brenner: 3rd Grade

Teacher: Mrs. Hancey

School: Red Mountain Elementary

Joren: 1st Grade

Teacher: Mrs. Evans

School: Red Mountain Elementary

Anisa: At-Risk Teacher

School: Dixie Middle School

Back to our old stomping grounds:)

Last weekend we had a family reunion in Provo.  I thought it would be fun to head up a few days early and spend some time with our friends.

The first night we got there, we headed to Daybreak to see Sam (sorry no pix)...  The boys played with Sam at a few of their favorite parks in Daybreak.

The next morning we met the Headricks at Classic Fun Center... it's one of our favorite places to go in the summer.  We picked up Sam on the way and took her with us... man I've missed that girl:)

 I'm so glad Rachel has moved back from Denver even though I don't live up north any more... at least I can visit more often.

 We headed straight from Classic to Hogle zoo to spend the afternoon with the Stringhams and the Brittons.  The new polar bear exhibit was the best part of the zoo... you could sit in an air conditioned building and watch the polar bear swim back and forth and do a summersault off the glass... he was cool;)  The kids had fun seeing their friends, but I think I enjoyed seeing mine more... so much more that I never remember to take pix of me with my girlfriends:(

 We always stay at Chad and Melissa's house... they are so nice to let us stay there.  Brenner and Cierrah used their toys to build their own zoo... rather creative:)

 The reunion was at lunch time... (no pix) and after the reunion, Ryan took the boys swimming and the girls headed back to Melissa's to get ready for a baby shower for Sara...  You can see more details of the shower on my craft blog, Larcie Bird.

 The next day we spent the whole day at Lagoon!!!  Our nephew Alexx works there so he got us in for only $11 each!!!  We went with Kelli, Cali, Kiersten and Alexx for the first half of the day... they left us and we were on our own.  We went on almost every ride and went to Lagoona Beach.  There were a few rides that Joren and Terek couldn't go on.... more Terek couldn't go on, but we still had tons of fun!!!

It was a super fun mini vacation and now we're back to reality... school starts in just over a week...eek!!!

Pioneer Day

Here's rundown of our Pioneer Day Activities:

We began the day with the Ivins parade.  The boys and I rode on the primary float.

 After the parade, we attended the booths and activities at the park.  The big boys had a blas in the water bubbles while Terek rode on the boat.

After the Ivins activities, we had plans to go to Pine Valley and have a BBQ.  Well, when we got there we realized that we couldn't have a fire or briqueets because of the fire hazards.  So, we debated on what to do and ended up heading back down to Veyo.

The Veyo pool and crawdad canyon is awesome!  There are fun bridges to cross and a rope swing that swings into the river.  There is also a deep swimming hole in the river.  And you can catch crawdads... with bacon apparently:)

We thought it would be fun to swim in the clean pool as well as the dirty river, so we took the kid to the actual pool to swim.

Then we headed back home to Grandma Rose's and Grandpa Tom's house to do fireworks (since Ivins won't let you do fireworks).  The kids had a blast setting off their own... despite the fact that Lin's raised their prices on their fireworks the day before so I couldn't afford the pack that I had been wanting to buy:(

4th of July

Since we've moved back to Southern Utah, we've kind of started the tradition of going to Kanarraville for the 4th of July.  Last year we had the kids decorate their bikes for the parade.  This year, my cousin Summer and I decided to go all out and make a float.  

Our theme was "Our founding fathers are the real super heroes" and we had the kids dress up like superheroes.  (Details of the float can be found on my craft blog)

We like to say we won!  They gave the top 5 prizes in no particular order (I say we won:)

After the parade, we went to the program.  We ate lunch at the cobble crest.  Then we ran to Cedar to get a few things for Granny's house.

The kids had fun doing the races... no one won, but at least they all ran.

They had a dunking booth and the big boys really enjoyed that.

After the activities at the park, we went to Cash's house for a family BBQ.  The kids had fun playing with their cousins.  I had fun with my cousins too:)

We headed home to watch the St. George fireworks with the Hammons. 

Good times with good friends.  The St. George fireworks were pretty cool!