Fire Drill and Friendship Week

The last week before fall break, Jackson had fire safety week at school. I got to attend the field trip to the local fire station with him as the culminating activity. It was an exciting week! 

Then on Sunday, someone pulled the fire alarm at church and we had  an exciting fire drill interrupt our Sacrament Meeting. It was kind of fun, to be honest! Eli made sounds as loud and as real as the fire alarm so that once we had congregated back safely to our seats, people around us thought it was going off again. It was funny. 

We had been planing to do our own home fire drill for FHE, so the very next day, we had some practices and taught the kids how to make it out of the house, where to meet, what to do, what not to do...all the things they'd need to know. It was a great run through. Eli was really afraid of the fire alarm. 

For our "Dessert Activity" we made a spooky haunted gingerbread house. It was all a very fun time. The Haunted house no longer exists, I'm sad to report. It has been eaten. I figured it would, so I'm not too bothered by it. I was just waiting for it to happen, and it happened sooner than I expected. I thought they'd pick at it slowly until it was wasted away. But no. I was taking a shower this morning and found it shredded to pieces when I made it downstairs. And the kids all had marks of orange and black frosting to prove "who dunnit" :)

This week also starts the first day of our ward friendship week. This year, we have three widows and a less active/ part-member family. We started the week of nightly gift giving by leaving some cheery fall flowers. The rest of the week has poems and gifts that go along with each night. The kids totally loved doorbell-ditching! I love this tradition because I love the feeling of helping brighten someone's day. 

 Our secret friends left the kids face masks to wear and make. The LOVED it!! Such a fun idea!

our poems: 

(Day 1: Flowers)

(Day2: given with canned peaches and recipe)

The week of Friendship has just begun,

And we hope you’ll enjoy our gifts of fun.

You may ask, “Who treats us so well?”
But that is our secret and we’ll not tell!

We’ll give you clues as to who we are,

The first one is -- we don’t live far!

Another clue, in this poem we will sneak,

To help you guess by the end of the week.

We like to camp and Dutch-oven cook,

We’ll share a recipe from our family cook book.

And so we leave you with a small gift and rhyme,

We canned these peaches just in time!

                                                               

Enjoy!

Peach cobbler

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, softened

2 cups flour

4 tsp, baking powder

1 cup milk

1 quart canned fruit

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 9x13 baking dish. Mix dry ingredients together and cut in butter until the mixture resembles oatmeal texture. Add milk and mix thoroughly. Spread batter evenly on the bottom of the baking dish. Add the canned fruit with juice on top. Bake for 45 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean.

  

(Day 3: given with home-canned slasa and chips)

Although we now claim Utah our home,

Once on the plains of Texas we roamed.

If you’ve ever traveled to the heart of the South,

You’ll know what South’ners like to put in their mouth!

Preparing good food is nothing short of an art,

So for today’s gift we leave you our part.

Salsa is one thing that we love to eat,

We hope for you it’s not too much heat!

You may look for this jar in stores near and far,

But it can only be found where they fly the Lone Star.

We hope you enjoy this gift and our poem,

As we leave behind something of us in your home.

(We like it served warm, cantina style, with chips, or over eggs, in tortilla soup, nachos-- you name it!)

(Day 4: Given with bag of BYU mint candies)

We have many reasons to like BYU,

Our majors were Health and History too.

It hasn’t been long since we were students with books,

Now they collect dust in corners and nooks.

You’ve heard of the saying, “To thine own self be true,’

And that’s why we’re loyal to the white and the blue.

We’re fans of the cougars, through and through

And to the athletes who play for BYU.

Have you narrowed it down to a half dozen families at best?

If this clue doesn’t help you, just wait for the rest!

Day 5: fall basket of apples and carmel dip) 

Day 6: given with pumpkin dish filled with candies)

The man of the house has a truly ‘green thumb,’

While She is learning just how gardening is done.

We’ve grown all sorts of food in our garden,

This year, we grew lots of pumpkins for carvin’

We have plenty of pumpkins, we’d love to share,

But you’ll have to come move it yourself if you dare!

Our pumpkins are too big to move within reason,

Instead is a dish you can use through the season J

(Day 7: reveal ourselves with "last act" of box of microwave ACT popcorn) 

Our oldest boy is clever and funny

He likes to do chores and spend all his money J

Our girl is active and never a bore,

Appropriate for her age, she’s almost four!

We have a boy who just turned two,

He copies what other people can do.

Our youngest just started to solid-food eat,

He has rolls and a laugh that can’t be beat!

The man of the house works in Lindon, not far,

You might see him in a red truck- not driving a car!

His wife cooks and she cleans and gets the kids dressed,

All on less than a full-night’s sleep of rest! J

Have any clue yet as to who we are?

If you have—you’re a real shining star!

Calvin is 5 months!

The big milestone Calvin hit this month is starting solid foods! 

I was planning to wait until Calvin was six months to put him on solids (since he's had signs of food allergies and it was recommended by our pediatrician to breast feed until 6 months to minimize potential food allergies), but he was just starving! I had to nurse him every 2 hours....so I caved and gave him some rice cereal and he's been the happiest baby since! 

He can't get enough. We've tried bananas and butternut squash and he's been happy with them all. He's chunking out and has fun rolls around his legs and arms. He's cooing and making a lot of fun vocal noises. I need to record that on video, because he's got the happiest baby sounds! I love it! He's also starting to roll around. It's very fun to see him try so hard. He loves his jumper and rattles and toys.

This is the stage of babies that I really enjoy and from here until their first birthday, they grow up so fast! 

Look who's TWO

I can't believe it's the end of September already AND that Eli is Two! His birthday was yesterday, and we celebrated with a family party at the park, luckily the rain held out for the time of the party, although we were sandwiched between a hailstorm and showers on either end! Eli loved the birthday song and began leading the group on singing....so we all knew he was ready for blowing out the candle and digging into the cake! I made a bear face for his birthday cake this year because Eli is my little bear. He's big and cuddly like a brown teddy bear, but wild and ferocious sometimes like a grizzly- and no one wrestles better than he does!

My brother Brandon got his mission call yesterday too! He leaves January 30th for Xalapa, Mexico mission. We're super excited for him...maybe Brian and I will have to take a visit down there?

Over the weekend we visited a sidewalk chalk art competition. Some of the artwork was really neat. Here are a couple of our faves: 

 Jackson liked this one of toothless and hiccup

 Zoey loved the one of Ariel

This one of the red rocks and bald eagle was amazing... and the one below of the swimmer was amazingly detailed!

Just a fun outing!

Family Photos 2012

We recently took some family photos. I love updating our family frames and since Calvin is the new addition since last round of family pictures, I thought it would be a good time to get it done again. 

Before I share my favorite photos, I'd just like to share the brutal honesty: family photo shoots are A TON of work. We took over 400 shots of the family and only two turned out OK. Which is fine, I'm only looking for the ONE that I can enlarge and frame, but this year was hard to catch even the one. The picture above was one of our best, and Brian and I are the only ones smiling! arghhh! It was so frustrating!

Most of the time the kids were like this: Tired and bored, or hungry and crying. 

BUT....we did catch some cute candids and single shots.I love this candid shot and the way Eli is looking at me! 

 I loved this arrangement if only we could have gotten great smiles and Eli to look at the camera...or even have a normal face without looking at the camera!

Favorites of Jackson: 

Favorites of Zoey: 

Favorites of Eli:

Favorites of Calvin: 

Favorites of the kids and other candids: 

Pumpkin time!

We harvested an onion that was the size of a large baseball...it was huge! I've never seen an onion so BIG!

Our large pumpkins were ready to harvest too. We didn't think they would actually grow. We stopped watering them for a while, believing the plants had died, but sure enough, they survived and thrived! The biggest pumpkins we've grown! Pumpkins are the kids' favorite thing to grow in the garden, they are so fun to watch get bigger and bigger, and turn orange at the right time....they love the harvest too!

For FHE we rotate turns on picking the treat for the evening and this week was Jackson's turn. Guess what he chose? Pumpkin Pie! I guess the season is upon us, whether ready or not! Can you see our tree already starting to change colors in the background?

Fall Harvest

 Brian listened to a story on NPR about how we are losing the flavor of foods; how farmers are concerned that some varieties of produce will become extinct because the fruit is not engineered for a long shelf life and pretty looks- things that grocers want in their produce, but come at the price of less-tasty foods.

 A few callers called in to share their experiences with food and described the tastiest peach or apple or corn they had tried and how the bite of good tasting food reminded them of their childhood, something that has been hard to replicate in today's markets. One caller described this apple orchard that was cut down to build an elementary school...all but one tree was cut down, and he remembers this tree bearing the most delicious apples as he in his childhood would pick them in the schoolyard with other kids and eat the fruit. 

From his description, Brian and I set out one Saturday to find this apple tree. After a bit of searching, we found the one, and picked an apple, although not easy to reach anymore, especially by school-aged children! Although not pruned or cared for, the tree really did produce delicious apples! They were SO good! We picked a bushel and brought them home to mix with other apples and make into some wonderful sauce! It became a family event.

Making the sauce reminded me that Calvin will be starting solids soon, and after checking my food storage, I realized we had better put up some more fruit. SO we did peaches too (along with green beans, tomatoes, corn, and zucchini)...

Up next...grape juice! Maybe?

Summer Catch-up

We implemented "kid date nights" this summer so we can have special one-on-one time with them. They loved it and it's so fun to spend that time alone and talk with a child. They had to get 7 days worth of stars and doing nice things for their siblings, and when they reached their 7th day, we would take them out on a date.

Eli was happy to take a ride in Dad's truck, waving goodbye to the other kids and knowing he wasn't the one who was staying home! He was so easy to please!

Zoey loved spending quality time with us on her dates. She always wanted a picnic lunch, but then she would want to go to the temple, or soak her feet in a waterfall, or go on a bear hunt. She was really creative with her dates! She would chat away and tell stories the whole time and made great company to spend a few hours with!

Jackson always wanted a toy... Whenever it was his turn, he wanted to go right away, first thing in the morning so he could play all day with his new toy. He did go golfing once with Brian, though, and one time he wanted a Hawaiian ice, and he had fun doing that too. But he mostly looked forward to picking a new toy...

 For our last date night, we combined Jackson and Zoey's date together and took them to the Utah Sate Fair. We rode the Farris Wheel and some other rides and they had a blast! It was a great way to end the summer!

8 years!

Brian and I celebrated 8 years of marital bliss yesterday! We treated each other to a new SLR camera! I'm so excited for it!! I'm looking forward to learning all about it and getting great pics of all those things that our point and shoot camera just couldn't capture. We plan to do this year's family photos soon, so keep posted!

 Since we both enjoy cooking AND we know we can make betterfood than what we could buy if we chose to go out to eat (and for cheaper!), we decided to cook our own anniversary dinner together. We put the kids to bed early, used the fine dishes, and decorated the table with boquets of flowers. It was very special, and no need to leave home!

We had a chopped pear salad for starters, than made an amaranth soufflé (it was supposed to be the appetizer, but it filled us up, so our steak will have to wait for another day), and finished it off with a peach triffle (our neighbor gave us fresh peaches from her tree, so it was absolutely delicious)!

Here is a countdown to what the past 8 years has contained for us:


8- years ago (2004), we were honeymooners! I was working at Synergy Dental, Brian competed in LOTOJA with friends. We were living at Riverwoods #101 and loving our new life together!
7- years ago (2005), I went back to school to finish my associates degree at UVU- taking a killer 23 credits to finish it off in one semester! Brian officially launched Alianza, and won the BYU business plan competition in April. We visited San Miguel de Allende and we celebrated our first anniversary in Kauai!
6- years ago (2006), Brian was traveling a TON in Mexico. I certified as a yoga instructor and began teaching at Sundance resort. We moved to Canyonbrook and we were expected our first child! We took a fun trip to Puerto Vallarta.
5- years ago (2007), I transferred to BYU studying Health and nutrition. Our first boy was born! I started taking on-line classes so I could be at home and still work on my degree. Brian was busy with work travel, church service, and home "honey-do's." We got pregnant with #2!
4- years ago (2008) we had our first baby girl! I quit school and became full-time mom. Brian started classes back up again to finish his bachelor's degree. We moved to our first home in Lindon! Brian became an expert repair man in his spare time. I took up crafting to decorate the new home, and we really started enjoying family life- especially Saturday morning pancakes and holiday traditions!
3- years ago (2009), life is busy! Work is stressful and time-committing, a lot of changes at Alianza as they downsize from economic instability. We are pregnant with #3, and decide it would be fun to wait until birth to find out it's gender! I am teaching yoga from our home studio every Thursday night. Brian plays basketball on Tuesday nights with the ward, and is loving his calling with the Young Men. We sell the Jetta.
2- years ago (2010), Brian graduated with a Bachelor's degree! Yay!  We bought a minivan. We had child #3-- it was a boy (Eli)!
1- year ago (2011), I run in an Epic relay race running from Logan to Jackson. We got  pregnant again and find out it will be another boy! Brian's work is taking off and we have high hopes for the future!

Today- incredibly happily married! Calvin is now three months old. Brian's work is going really well. We stay busy trying to support each other in our health goals and make sure we each get turns to run, bike, hike, or do yoga- or any of our other hobbies we like to do (and it's not as often as we'd like, being busy with 4 kids is tough work, but at least we get something!). We spend quality time together and with our kids. Here is to many, many more years ahead.

4 months!

Calvin is 4 months! He's gaining weight, now at 15 pounds and 25 inches long, he's in the 50th percentile for his age. His head however, is in the 90th percentile! Ha ha...I guess we make smart kids or something! He is just now getting the hang of sleeping through the night! Yay! This is sweet, sweet music to my ears! He will sleep from 7pm until 6am. I've had two nights of solid sleep! The first time in over 9 months, and I'm so excited about it!

He's happier than ever, smiling and beginning to laugh. He is close to rolling over. It's amazing how fast they grow! The infant phase is already gone, and we've got a full-fledged baby on our hands! We love this little guy in our home!