November, Part 3: Johnny the Artist

My sweet Johnny has always loved to draw. He gravitates to artistic things much more than Peter ever has. Johnny has always loved to create...while Peter is drawn to deconstructing. So, we would build a cool tower out of blocks, and Johnny would want to save it forever...and Peter would be chomping at the bit to knock it down.

Johnny's love of art comes with pros and cons. It is awesome to give Johnny some crayons and paper and have him sit contentedly for a good long while creating his own Johnny-style masterpieces. The drawback is that I can't trust this kid with any pencils (or any kind of art supply, really) by himself. He is bound to draw on walls, or toys, or himself, or make a huge mess by cutting paper into a billion pieces and leaving it on the ground.

Above: Johnny and his friend, Eli, discovered the pencils I keep in my piano bench for the purpose of marking up my music. They decided to mark up the window sill instead.

Above: Luckily, it came off pretty easily with some 409 and Clorox wipes.

Above: This is Johnny's drawing of me that he made for me during sacrament meeting.

Above: Johnny drew our house and that is me by that tree.

I love Johnny's art and that he loves to draw. I just hope he learns to stop being so messy and drawing on his toys, etc.

November, Part 2: Snow!

Lucky for me, but sad for the kids, we didn't get any snow in October. However, the kids didn't need to fear. The snow came...just as I knew it would.

Above: The first snowfall wasn't a light dusting. No half inch for us! We really got dumped on for our first snowfall of the season. I lived in dread of driving in that snow. With some well-timed naps on Daniel's part, lots of shoveling and ice melt on my part, I was able to successfully pick Peter up from the bus stop despite the crazy snow, lack of snow tires, and poorly plowed roads.

Above: This is a view of my road. One poor gal got stuck driving up it (it is such a steep road). A guy driving the other direction in a truck  ended up backing up, hooking her to his truck with a chain, and pulling her up the rest of the road because her car (even though I'm pretty sure she had snow tires) couldn't make it because the snow on the roads was so deep. Right as the guy in the truck was pulling her, the snow plow finally appeared (first appearance for the snowplow that day was around 3 p.m.). The plowed roads came just in time for me to pick up Peter from the bus stop. That didn't mean the roads were easy to drive on though. The snow piles up quickly up here. The roads were covered again in no time. I was able to pick up Peter, but the drive home was rough. I asked the boys to pray that we could get home successfully. As we pulled into the garage, Peter said, "Yay! My prayer was answered!"

Above: The next day, the boys had a ton of fun playing in the snow.

Above: Johnny has taken to the snow better than he has in years past.

Above: Nothing can keep my little snow bunny away. Peter loves the snow.

Above: Peter loves to jump into the snow. It's his favorite thing to do.

November, Part 1: Daniel's Baby Blessing

We scheduled Daniel's baby blessing for the first Sunday in November. Usually, I like to wait until my babies are three months old before I bring them to church, but we worried that it might be too snowy if we waited until the first Sunday in December. The snow can get crazy up here in Suncrest and we didn't want to make it harder for family to come to the blessing.

However, I really didn't think about the fact that the first Sunday in November was the day after Halloween. That made things really crazy. I stayed up really late on Halloween night after the boys were asleep so that I could clean my house, put away Halloween decorations, put up fall/Thanksgiving decorations, thaw the soup I had spent the past week making and freezing, etc.

We didn't have a family get together after Peter's blessing or Jonathan's. However, since our church is at 1 p.m. and because our house is so far away from most of our family, we figured it would be nice to provide dinner at our house after the blessing. Holy cow, that was crazy and a whole lot of work. Everything turned out nicely in the end, and everyone got more than enough to eat and everyone had a nice visit. I made chipotle chili, green chile chicken chili, Baked potato soup, sweet potato soup, and chicken tortilla soup. My mom brought rolls and some awesome dessert bars. Mike and Debra provided salad. However, my goodness, I sure was tired by the end of the day. I think I fell asleep at 8 p.m. that night after putting Daniel to bed.

However, when all was said and done, the day was wonderful because Daniel's blessing--the real purpose of the day--was wonderful.

Jeremiah blessed Daniel that he could stand up for truth and righteousness and defend the truth and doctrine of the gospel like his namesake Daniel, in the Bible. He was also blessed that he would be a peacemaker and a calming influence in our home.

My mom sewed a darling blessing outfit for Daniel. He just looked so sweet. I love this little boy so much. He makes me so happy. What a sweetheart. He is a blessing and an answer to many prayers.

Above: Isn't this blessing outfit so sweet? Thank you, mom, for making it.

October, Part 5: Halloween Adventures

Halloween is such a fun time of the year. We had a lot of good times this year.

Above: Some decorated pumpkins at Harmon's gave us some good pumpkin decorating ideas (which we didn't use...at least this year).

Above: We decorated our house with spider webs and tombstones.

Above: Unfortunately, the tombstones only lasted a day. Even though I staked them to the ground securely, the wind ripped them up and whipped them around our house. Luckily, I found all of the tombstones. Maybe one of these days, I can use them, but not until I find a better way of propping them up, or we move to a less windy place.

Above: We had a pirate corner as part of our decorations. It's going to take awhile, but one of these days, we are going to have a pirate corner to rival Pirates of the Caribbean.

Above: The pirate corner was complete once the little lobster puppet was added to the mix.

Above: I could use some treasure right about now.

Above: I'm not sure why, but the spiders went really crazy this year.

Above: Here's the wreath I made last year with Kristin, Angie, and Debra.

Above: Ahhh, now I understand why there were so many spiderwebs.

Above: The boys had a really fun time helping me get the house ready.

Above: We went and visited the Halloween store. What a trip! You won't be seeing me buy any of those haunted baby dolls any time soon.

Above: The kids had a lot of fun at the Halloween store though. They love to look around at all the spooky decorations.

Above: Raptor Pete.

Above: Ninja turtle Pete.

Above: Grandpa and Nana invited us over for a Halloween party, and oh boy, did they go to town on the Halloween decorations. It was really fun for the kids.

Above: I thought the ruby slippers and the homage to The Wizard of Oz was great.

Above: It was a little chilly that night, but that didn't stop the boys from playing and having a great time.

Above: Pete has finally mastered the monkey bars.

Above: Sumo Pete trying on his costume the day it arrived.

Above: Ever year, Johnny tells me he wants to be something scary for Halloween...and every year, he changes his mind at the last minute. He would have been happier had he chosen something cuddly to be for Halloween.

Above: Johnny sure makes for a cute skeleton though!

Above: Johnny was really excited for his Halloween party at preschool.

Above: Daniel and I had a good time watching Johnny perform. Johnny is standing next to his friend, Emery.

Above: My boys love to carve their pumpkins!

Above: Peter is old enough and big enough to carve his own pumpkin now. (Thank goodness for pumpkin knives)

Above: Daddy helped Johnny with his pumpkin. Johnny also painted a pumpkin for our porch as well.

Above: The Baymax pumpkin was Johnny's idea. So creative.

Above: We love to put our pumpkins on the porch and light them up to see how they turned out.

Above: The fog was super crazy and it was freezing cold outside, so we didn't take many pictures because we didn't stay outside for long.

Above: We got to go to Peter's school Halloween parade. Good times and fun costumes!

Above: Tough guy, eh?

Above: These cousins were super excited this morning. We had a morning party for the kids on Halloween where they had doughnuts for breakfast and got prizes for their costumes.

Above: Our little mermaid, Caroline.

Above: Poor Princess Leia. She is definitely over the hill and past her prime. ;)

Above: I love my mom's expressions in these pictures. She was so happy to be giving out these Halloween costume prizes.

Above: Sweet Olivia was a chick hatching out of an egg.

Above;: Sweet Daniel was my little pumpkin and I was a pumpkin patch. Gotta lose that pregnancy weight...

Above: This must be Jeremiah's Napoleon Dynamite impersonation.

Above: Peter was super excited to go trick-or-treating around our neighborhood for the first time ever. In all the years past, we have gone to trunk-or-treats.

Above: What a silly guy.

Above: Johnny wore his skeleton costume for awhile and then he stripped down to just his skeleton PJs.

Above: Sumo Pete bidding farewell to his baby brother Daniel as he prepares to embark on his trick-or-treating journey.

Above: Johnny's costume lit up with an eery green light. It was pretty cool.

Above: Johnny wasn't in the mood to pose, but Peter was happy to!

Above: See? Johnny wouldn't cooperate when it came to posing for a picture.

Above: Trick-or-treat! Pete testing out our house for trick-or-treating before heading around the neighborhood with Dad.

What a great October and Halloween we had. So much fun and so many good memories. I didn't get any pictures of our ward trunk-or-treat, but the chili I brought was a hit and the boys had a lot of fun. I didn't win a prize for my chili, but I won a special "award," in my opinion. A few days later, the gal who organized the event posted on Facebook saying that a few people had asked for the recipe for chili #17 (mine). Whoohoo! If someone asks for the recipe, that means they were craving that soup, and had to have the recipe because their lives wouldn't be complete unless they could make the chili in their own home, and make it, and eat it whenever they please. That, my friends, is a win in my book. :) We had a great time this month. I sure love doing fun things with my boys for Halloween.