Halloween 2011

Yes, I love how I am getting around to finally posting about Halloween in the new year. Our ward has a neighborhood kid party for Halloween with little games and things. Collin was very excited to go. He was a dinosaur hatching out of an egg.
It especially looked cute to see him walking around with his little egg wobbling. Pictures don't do it justice.
Playing games was fun.
Liam was a pea in a pod. But, he didn't really want to stay still....more like crawl around everywhere.
The cupcake walk was a favorite.

As well as the donut eating. Yeah for Halloween!

Preschool zoo trip October 2011

Collin's little preschool went to the zoo back in October and I got to be a "helper" mom. Granted, Collin has been to the zoo before, but it's been awhile. He got to ride in a fun little wagon.

Looking at the animals

Where do we go next?

Collin was a little scared of this elephant that blew air....but he LOVED to see the elephants eat.

And who knew giraffe's have blue tongues? I promise....they do!

We saw this one stick out his tongue and it was indeed blue! We had so much fun!

Going to see the Witches at Gardner Village

Sadee and Ava came into town also in October for a visit, and we went to see the witches at Gardner Village. We bought treats to eat while we were there.
Of course, Collin is in his "I don't want my picture taken".
The hula hoop was a favorite of the girls.
Brianne was nice to carry Collin for awhile.
Liam, unfortunately, was sick.... he ended up being diagnosed with a double ear infection later that night.... poor baby...
Playing the piano
More pictures...
That night while at Jeff and Brianne's apartment, they played doctor and nurse. Too funny....since Brianne really is a nurse :)

Discovery Museum

Yes, once again I'm behind. Back in October, my parents came into town and took us to the Discovery Childrens Museum. SO FUN!

Collin LOVED (like this was a surprise to me) the building and construction section. You could build things and stack things, all things boy.

I just made this big stack tumble down!

Liam just liked playing on the cars.

Or eating the food on the farm...

Collin riding the big horse

This picture just makes me laugh so hard. SUCH a perfect display of our two boys' personalities.

Liam destroying the blocks upstairs.

Liam LOVED this little thing on the wall in the little little people section.

Dress up bird

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for taking us to such a fun place!

We will have to go again soon!

Love You More Thomas Nelson review

I thoroughly enjoyed the book Love You More by Jennifer Grant. I have often wondered about families with adopted children in them. The first third of the book I enjoyed the most, especially when Grant shares her spiritual feelings and experiences about having children. I also especially
appreciated that she “knew” there was another daughter out there in the world, but that it would be from somewhere else in the world, not the United States.
Though this book is a true story, it reads like a novel in many ways. I especially enjoyed Grant’s writing about the challenges in facing adoption, and dealing with people’s questions when her daughter Mia joins their family. One of my favorite lines is when someone asks if Mia is her daughter and Mia says she calls her mom because she’s her mom. It’s interested to read
about the perception of adoption and how the world treats adoptions, especially
international adoption.
Mostly, I appreciated a family’s view of adoption in that they felt inspired to adopt even though they already had had natural-born children. I appreciated Grant’s experiences of traveling to Guatemala and the love she and her husband had for her daughter before she even came home.
Overall, this was a tender story of one family’s experience in the many emotions of adoption.

Liam's first BYU football game, with Collin :)

The first weekend in October, my dad randomly called to say they had 2 extra tickets and would any of our family like to go to the BYU game. I debated and debated, but finally decided I would be brave and take both Collin and Liam. It was a Friday night game.... so off we went after dressing the part.
I knew Collin would love all the tailgating festivities. To be truthful, he enjoyed that stuff more than the game. I love this pic of Grandma and him walking over.
He got to throw a football for a mini football. "That's my favorite!"
A future quarterback?
We spun the wheel and got a reusable bag.

Liam loved listening to the dance band the most. He was SO intensely focused on that. Collin attempted to throw a basketball.
Collin, I can't believe, sat still long enough to get a Y painted on his face.
Liam giving the staredown.
Collin's face painted.
In the game, let's just say, between nursing Liam, Liam having a canption (yes even in a loud football game) and screaming if anyone else held him for a second besides me, and taking Collin in and out, we had to leave early.

The good news is stopping to nurse Liam on the way home, my dad and I turned on the game, and of what was a pretty sad game while we were there, ended up with the Cougars winning!. GO COUGARS!

Canning projects

We have made quite a bit of canning this year. I think it has been our biggest year yet. The above is homemade concord grape juice, 100 percent juice. Our dear neighbor told us about a church farm that lets you come and pick grapes for free, so we went and picked our 4 buckets, and came home and made 23 quarts. It tastes YUMMY!
This is also another year of MASSIVE apple production on both our apple trees. I made more than I can post, but we did red apple pie filling, dried apples, diced apples in the freezer....
both smooth and chunky red applesauce...
Our raspberries did AWESOME this year! I have tons in the freezer, and I finally had enough to make my own raspberry jam. YEAH!
This has nothing to do with canning, but conference weekend I made pumpkin cinnamon rolls with maple frosting. YUM!
Our neighbor let us take a cooler of peaches from his peach tree, so I did a batch of fresh peaches.
And thanks to a friend at the gym, I finally got enough tomatoes to do one batch of salsa. Granted, I also made my sister's HEAVENLY fresh salsa recipe.
I truly felt like a pioneer and thanks to Ryan for helping me out so much with it. It's definitely a challenge canning with two little kiddos in tow :)