Awesome!

We have over half of our Christmas shopping done!

I found Pride and Prejudice in the $5 bin at Walmart yesterday!

Lauren's teeth have finally all cut through!

Halloween is tomorrow!

Yay.

Aunt Callee

We're so lucky to have most of our family close by. Lauren especially because she gets spoiled by all her aunts and uncles.

We were out running errands on Saturday and stopped by campus to see Aunt Callee for a minute. Lauren was in heaven playing with the wind sculptures at the Fine Arts building.

And nothing like a good chocolate ice cream cone from the dairy to end the trip on!

Lions, Tigers and BEARS!

We went to the Hogle Zoo a few weeks ago with my sister and mom. It was a ton of fun! The new bear exhibit they have for the polar bear is amazing! It kept doing back-flips off the rock right in front of the window and you could see it swimming in the water below. I would for sure go back and see it again.

Michael and Thomas wanted me to take their picture.

Good buds these two!

Checking out the giraffes with grandma!

I've never been to the zoo in the fall before, and I would go again. All the animals were so much more active than I've seen them before. There was a baby giraffe too that was really cute and the elephants were out and walking around everywhere.  The kids had a great time and wore themselves right out. It was a fun day!

Pumpkins!

Lauren was fascinated by the whole pumpkin carving thing. She's such a girl; she put her hand in her pumpkin once to feel the slimy guts and then insisted on using a spoon after that and kept wiping her hands off.

We went with a butterfly for her pumpkin in keeping with her butterfly halloween costume. (Sorry the picture is blurry... she moves alot!)

This is the one I carved for our ward party on Saturday. We had a family history theme going on this week and they wanted the primary kids to carve a pumpkin with a temple on it for the table decorations at the Annual Soup and Scone night. So I did this one as Lauren's contribution. You can find just about any pumpkin carving template you want online!

Oh Lauren...

Lauren has become quite the little firecracker this last little while. She makes me tired. But oh, she's so funny.

One MUST ALWAYS lick the beaters mom!

Wow! Daddy's feet are huge!

Do you like my rock collection?

Mom help! I'm stuck in the laundry basket...again. (Not sure what her fascination with this is, she will walk around the house forever with the laundry basket over her head.

Playing with Daddy's phone camera.

And this is my favorite... Hmm maybe they'll let me stay up and push this box around if they can't see me! This garbage can should do the trick!

She had her 18 month checkup last week and according to the nurse she's shrinking. (Not really, they must have measured her wrong or something last time. I thought it was kind of funny.) She's getting tall and skinny. Dr. Horkley told me to watch out for temper tantrums in the near future and I almost laughed outright. Lauren has NO problem whatsoever letting her feelings be known if she's not happy. Hopefully she'll get that out of her system here soon.

The Grass is Greener!

Figured since our grass is now covered with snow, maybe we should post a few pictures to actually show that it WAS green and growing!

These are the before pictures on the day my awesome family came and helped us level and plant.

I should have taken a picture of the weed garden we had...all those weeds are that HUGE pile in the middle.

And the after.... I think 2 weeks or so later. The rocks and dirt on the left are where we're going to expand the patio so we can fit our picnic table on it.

The sprinklers were already set up to do the garden where the weed pile is, so our thinking is that we will incorporate it into the back landscaping where you can still see some of the weeds along the back edge.

Lauren Lately

Just found some random pictures of Lauren.

Eating  some yummy ice cream after swimming.

"Helping" me make the bed.

Catching up on some reading. She did this completely on her own.

Not sure what to think about this car.

Rocking her baby to sleep.

Dinosaur Park

We went to the Dinosaur Park yesterday with my sister and her kids. It was alot of fun! We had the park practically to ourselves and the perfect temperature.

Lauren thought it was great fun to try and crawl under the fences to actually pet the dinosaurs and collect bones. She also climbed up the the VERY top of the very tall tree slide all by herself and then went down the slide. No fear in her at all.

Looking at the bones in the cave. I couldn't get Lauren out!

Michael riding his baby dinosaur.

Lauren looking out the dinosaur head.

 

 

Thomas riding his "weally fast" dinosaur!

Dallin was there too and had a ball going down the slide with Lauren.
Thanks for the fun day Steph!

Going Ons

I finally made it to institute today. I have been trying to go every Tuesday and Wednesday for the past four weeks. Either something came up or Lauren needed a nap desperately. So today I didn't plan on going, and lo-and-behold! We made it!

Our grass is growing! As in, the grass we planted last week over the entire back yard, is growing! I can just picture how it will all look someday when we get it all done. Landscaping in the back with rocks, brick, trees, fire pit, swing set, shed, dog kennel, fruit trees, and a garden that grows food instead of weeds. For now though, I am happy that we have tiny grass blades instead of weeds.

The weed pile that amassed while we cleared getting ready to plant is taller than I am. We're currently waiting for them to settle down and dry out so we can have a massive bonfire.

I had a great birthday last week. Chase took me out to Firehouse for dinner and then we went to Home Depot. (I see a trend here... every celebration we seem to end up at Home Depot. Could be worse I guess.) He got me an awesome book The Violinist's Thumb, which is all about genetics. It's hard to find a good science novel these days so he did great!

Saturday I went with my mom, sister, aunt and grandma to the General Relief Society broadcast. We went shopping in Farmington beforehand and then rode the Front Runner to Salt Lake. Never done that before so it was a fun experience. The talks were very good and seemed to address things that my family are going through. They gave a lot of comfort and insight.

We just found out that Chase will FINALLY have his annual review at work on Friday. We've been waiting for this for a long time. It was something we were planning on right about the time we closed on the house...and it never happened (Typical Conservice; we should have known better.) So that will make our budget actually look like we planned on when we signed the closing papers. Whew.

We got a library card to the Hyrum library. Lauren loves it and it's fun to see her run in and pick out books. I haven't been too impressed with it yet. All the books I've gone to get are either out or they don't have them at all. The stuffed bear is pretty neat though.

I'm getting recipes together for Thanksgiving. I'm in charge of dinner this year at the Christensen's and I'm really excited about it! What's your favorite way to cook a turkey?

Trying to figure out what to plant in our flower beds. I am not a gardener and am lucky if I can tell between a weed and a flower so Pinterest has been helping me out some. I'm trying to find some more shade perennials or evergreens.

We canned some more tomatoes and spaghetti sauce a few weeks ago. Our house smelled great! I'm trying to find some Macintosh apples (or others) to make applesauce. Does anyone have any connections? Bountiful Baskets usually has them but I haven't seen them yet this year.

Finally cleaned up my sewing room. I haven't been able to see the floor for months. I just let Lauren loose when I'm sewing sometimes, which creates mass amounts of mess in there. Keeps her happy though so I don't mind, she likes to look at all the buttons and pretend to cut things out on my mat.

I'm excited for Halloween this year. We'll actually get Trick-or-Treaters! We usually got one, maybe two in our apartments.

Well, I think that pretty much sums up what we've been up to!