Bonus November Pictures

Colton and Kaylen with Piggy Pie from school. They both LOVE the pig.

Tuesdays are long days for us. Kaylen usually falls asleep on the way home from Grandma's.

Colton loves bubbles

Colton - a typical look after any meal

Colton on Spencer's Tony Hawk wii board

Freezing

I don't remember it ever getting so cold that we'd have water frozen at our house. When the kids were walking out to the bus this morning, I noticed some ice in our yard. It was all very exciting to us. The kids loved walking on the grass, feeling it crunch under their feet.

Along with the beautiful ice on the grass, came frozen plants. About 90% of the tropical plants around our pool froze. Because I did plant a winter garden, those winter vegetables didn't freeze. However, the basil and peppers completely froze.

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

The day after Thanksgiving, Elfie appeared at our house. Elfie is an elf who came to our house to watch the kids and report back to Santa each night. The first night we found him on our fireplace mantel with a book describing what his job is. The kids were very excited and constantly repeated, "Elfie is watching."

With a slightly bigger house this year, I was able to decorate even more. I decided that each day I would put a Christmas tree up. We would eventually end up with 6 Christmas trees. A lot of people asked how and why. I love Christmas trees. I like being able to choose a different theme for each tree. It doesn't really take too long, especially when my helpers join in.

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving 2010 started out on Tuesday, when I got to join the last portion of Kaylen's class at school for some pumpkin pie. I tried to get my parents to go, because I do not like pumpkin pie and didn't want to disappoint Kaylen, but they weren't able to. Surprisingly, when I tried the "pumpkin pie" it was actually good. It was some sort of pumpkin/cool whip/ graham cracker crumb mixture in a cup.

Thanksgiving lunch was at our house this year. Eric organized and played in the Turkey Bowl for our ward, so he was gone most of the morning. I had to enlist my helpers. Everyone, even Colton helped to peel potatoes. The kids also helped with other tasks I gave them, setting up, putting cheese on the celery, etc.

For lunch, we had Shelly and her kids, my parents, and Jen's family over. Lunch was delicious. After lunch, while we were looking at the Black Friday ads, we decided that we'd go to Old Navy and take advantage of me being an Old Navy cardholder, and got all Friday's sale prices on Thanksgiving. The lines were long, but it was fun shopping with Shelly, Jen, Lindsey, and my dad. When we got back to our house, the turkeys were miraculously deboned and cleaned up! (Thank you mom! That's my least favorite part about clean-up.) Jeremy and Rhonda's families were at our house for dessert. We made some sandwiches and ate some dessert. It was a fun, but long day. The kids loved playing with their cousins. I had made some games for them to all play together, so Lindsey, Maisen, and Spencer helped lead the kids in the games. Logan loved playing football with Grandpa outside.

A Garden Update

Some fruits of our labors....

Party at the Park

My dad's birthday was earlier in the week. To celebrate it, we (my parents, my siblings, their spouses, and all the cousins) met at a park. We kept it simple and had pizza, salad, and cupcakes. The kids had a great time playing with each other. My older sister brought her trikkes, and Shelly and I had a fun time trying to get the hang of riding them.

It was good to celebrate my dad's birthday. I feel really fortunate to have him for my dad. Growing up he did so much for each of us kids, without ever complaining. He would be the one to wake me up every morning for a-hour for school, and drive me there. He tried so hard to plan fun and memorable vacations for us each year. Memories of those trips are some of the memories that I cherish. After a long day's work, he would come home and fix dinner for us. He served willingly in his callings and set a great example of a righteous Priesthood holder. To sum it all up, I am so glad he's my dad! Happy Birthday Dad!

A Friday Afternoon

These are just some photos of the kids playing one day. Logan and Kaylen love to color and paint together. Spencer has been inspired by a young man in our ward who does card tricks. Spencer was practicing and performing his tricks in these pictures.

Burned

I alluded to getting burned in the Halloween post, but didn't finish.

So we were at our ward's trunk-or-treat. I had brought boiling hot soup (I didn't realize how stinkin' hot it was until it got spilled). I was trying to maneuver a stroller, a plate, and a hot bowl of soup through a grassy field. I tipped the bowl and the soup spilled on my wrist. (I am soooooo glad it didn't spill on Colton in the stroller.) I tried to wipe the soup off, after the initial shock of the spill. For the rest of the night, I walked around with an ice cold napkin on my wrist, trying to ease the pain. It throbbed the whole night. I didn't want to leave the kids; I wanted to watch them with their trick-or-treating. We also would have had a very difficult time getting the car out of the crowd of people.

Once I got home, I went to the hospital. I could have gone to urgent care, but didn't want to wait. So, instead I went to a hospital that advertised "door to doc in 30." They took care of me in an incredibly timely manner (which I dearly ended up paying for with the bill). I had first and second degree burns on my wrist on an area measuring about 2 x 3 inches. The burn was cleaned and slathered with ointment. I was given two prescriptions. One for silvedine and one for vicadyn. The burn got worse looking over the next two days, but then started getting better. My pain was very minimal. I took tylenol at night; I didn't want to risk losing my beloved sleep. Each morning and night I cleaned the burn, reapplied the cream, and rebandaged my wrist. About a week after the burn, I was cleaning out the garage. It was the first day I had unbandaged my wrist. Big mistake. A box tore open the burn. That was worse than the actual burning. I nearly passed out and threw up. After about an hour of trying to calm down after that, I bandaged up my wrist again and vowed to keep it covered until it was healed. The cream that was prescribed was a complete miracle. It healed my burn amazingly. Each day the burn grew smaller. There really is no scar. I can see where it happened, but no one else would be able to tell where I got burned.

Temple Groundbreaking

We are so excited! A temple is going to be built 1/2 mile away from us!!!

Today we (Eric, Lindsey, Spencer, Logan, and me) went to the groundbreaking for the new temple. Our seats weren't very good and we couldn't see much of anything, even the actual groundbreaking. It was still very exciting to see that the process is finally starting.