Family Pictures

Emma had a really hard time with it being so cold - and it show on her face in this pic!

Photos courtesy of Utahphotographicmemories.com.

One of our very favorite Christmas traditions that we have started with our friends is to make Gingerbread Houses. Typically we pull out the grahams and have at it, but this year we pushed ourselves a little further and made actual gingerbread. It was easier than I had ever anticipated with a great recipe from the Food Network. Emma was very proud of her creation at the end of it all. Matt typically gets to the house pretty quickly to satisfy his sweet tooth, but this year Emma wouldn't let him! And so, our gingerbread still stands as a centerpiece on our table for all to admire!

P.S. For more fabulous pics, visit Sean and Sarah's blog listed on the blog list. Their gingerbread house is seriously cute!
P.P.S. I posted about four blogs within the last half hour, so don't stop reading with this one...there is more fun below!

Our Tree

This is our Christmas tree. It is fun this year because we got to use some ornaments that my Grandma Margaret gave us. They are old fashioned car ornaments. I feel like with the addition of these, our tree really represents myself and Matt fairly. We also had to apply some kind of protection from the toddler. Our answer: put the tree on top of a table. It has worked wonders. I positioned one lone silver ball at the bottom and Lucy gets a kick out of seeing her reflection in it. Other than that she has stayed pretty well away! We are super excited about Christmas this year. The fact that Emma is really getting into it has made it that much more special. Every morning she puts an ornament on our advent calendar Christmas tree and asks when Christmas will be here. Most importantly, I have learned to effectively use the "naughty list" to get her to behave!

More Thanksgiving Fun

Emma digs in!

Cousin Stephanie and Marilyn

Matt enjoying the turkey

Matt's family has a pie tradition - that is, every year they try to beat the record of the most pies ever brought to a thanksgiving dinner. This year we had 23 pies. The record is 29. The men also have an unspoken contest on who can eat the most pieces. Not sure where Matt stands on that once since it is, you know, "unspoken."

Exactly How we Did It

If you heard about our Thanksgiving plans, you may have heard that we were planning on hosting around 50 people. So, in answer to the question many of you asked, this is exactly how we had a sit down dinner with 50 people in our front room! Some of you attended...I hope that you had as great of a time as we did! This picture reminds us that we are thankful for the extensive family that Matt and I are both so blessed to have in our lives on both sides of our families!

Sarah

Mover and Shaker

Lucy is all over the place now! This video was actually taken long enough ago that Lucy doesn't walk with her hands in the air anymore. Her new trick is actually to clap and walk at the same time! She is so funny! I love this video!

November

Fall is almost over and I almost didn't post these adorable fall pictures of my children playing in the leaves. Classic.

With November comes occassional snow, Thanksgiving Dinner, and my favorite: November Sweeps. I have to say that, as pathetic as I may appear, I am thoroughly enjoying the smorgasborg (sp!) of television entertainment that has been available this fall, namely Survivor: Samoa to start. If you are a fan: Can you believe that after a million and a half seasons they still have the craziest stuff happening? And...it's new, never before seen, novel type stuff. Its insane! Another one: Vampire Diaries. If you aren't watching this show and you are at all interested in the vampire craze sweeping the nation then you should be watching this show. It blows my mind every week. At the end of last Thursday's episode I audibly gasped. Audibly. What else? So You Think You Can Dance, The Office (Dwight against Dwight), The Mentalist, America's Next Top Model....good stuff. In honor of it being the week of Thanksgiving, I will again give thanks for the greatest invention since the television itself: my beloved DVR. Thank you Comcast.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Don't forget to garnish with my all time favorite Thanksgiving staple: Jellied Cranberry Sauce from a Can. Love that stuff.

Party Pics

Me and Matt - I went as a pink lady and Matt went as my Grease Lightning, but people kept asking him why he didn't dress up! We will work a little harder on our costumes next year when we don't have three missionaries coming home the same weekend as the party!

Lucy went as a Halloween witch. Her costume changed continually until I found an adorable witches hat at Shopko!

Meggan won the award for Most Relevant costume. I loved it!

Marilyn and Joel were very authentic!

The Howard clan won the Best Group costume award - of course - coming as Ramalamba zombies! They also kicked off the best dance party ever with the official Ramalamba zombie song and dance!

Jack won Best Child - Boy costume, Emma won Best Child - Girl costume, and Londyn won Best Overall Costume.

Here are my other Pink Ladies - Jami and Jenny! Thanks to Jenny for the costume idea!

Lastly, Sean, who made a very convincing Wolverine!

I am sorry I did not see more of you there, but I was really bad about sending out invitations, I only emailed and facebooked! I had a lot going on. So, just remember that you are invited every year, the Saturday before Halloween from now until forever!

Hale Missionary Trio Return!

We are so excited to have the Hale family complete again - at least for the next nine weeks! Above is the first sighting of Marilyn and Joel at the airport. And below are the reunion of Emma with her Grandma Marilyn and Joel's first introduction to his new grandbaby Lucy.

We also were so privileged to be at the airport upon Cameron's return. I took a million pics for Marilyn and Joel's arrival, but forgot the camera for Cameron! I felt awful, but it doesn't diminish the excitement we felt! He looks great, glowing, skinny, taller....yea for our returned missionaries!

Drift by the Window

Today Lucy and I joined Emma and her preschool class at the pumpking patch. I was so excited to do something fall-y...fall-ish? I have decided that fall is my favorite season - I love going to the pumpkin patch, I love dressing up for Halloween, I love stuffing my gut full of turkey...I LOVE FALL and I don't care who knows it! Anyway, we had a good time and picked out some great pumpkins. Then I came home and decided to make some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to further celebrate the awesomeness of Fall. This is a great recipe if you are looking for one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/george-duran/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe/index.html I topped mine with Cream Cheese....so good. Oh, and I didn't have nutmeg so I played around with the spices a bit - I used pumpkin pie spice plus some other stuff.




Oh, one other thought - when we were at the pumpkin patch there were only about a hundred other preschool kids running around and I heard a fellow mother tell her child "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." I found it funny since my mom totally used to say that to me when I was growing up. Weird how those old sayings stick around.


If you haven't heard, we are having the annual Hale-o-ween party on Saturday. I would love for you to come! Comment with your email if I forgot to send you an evite and I will get it to you with all the details...should be a good time!


Yea for Fall!


Sarah

Lucy's One!!!

Today is Lucy's 1st Birthday! I would say "I can't believe my baby is one year old" but...I kinda can believe it! It has been such fun to have little Lucy in our family. She is a riot - every minute. I love her glistening, penetrating eyes; her excited shake; and even her whiny yells of "Mommm-eeee." Her newest tricks relate to her trying to walk and sing. This little girl loves to sing! As you can see from the video above, she is making progress towards the whole walking thing, but I think Grandma Marilyn has been faithful in her prayers that Lucy won't walk until she gets home - Lucy hasn't taken a step yet, but she cruises around the furniture and stands very well. I anticipate that she will walk on Saturday when Grandma Marilyn finally returns!

Anyway, we love her - she is a great addition to our family - the opposite of Emma in so many ways! She has a little tomboy streak - she loves balls, blocks, and driving cars around the room while she says "vroom, vroom!" But she also loves jewelry and loves me to fix her hair! She is a Daddy's girl - I love to watch her stare at him adoringly. She loves to pester her sister - but they also share a great bond. And lately she has randomly been giving me kisses - so I think she likes me too!

Happy Birthday Lucy!

Mom

The Beautiful House

Last weekend our good friends Sean and Sarah generously invited us - okay, there may have been a little encouragement on my part - to their condo in St. George. Our other good friends Kevin and Melissa came also. It was quite a party with the 5 kids and 6 adults! We spent the first day at the Wildlife Museum. To save money on tour guides, they give you a radio that you can listen to, but you can't hear anything unless you put it directly to your ear - as pictured to the left! We all looked pretty silly, as you can imagine. The kids liked looking at the animals and just spending time together! They were really good, actually!













After the museum we headed to Main Street to stop at my favorite place in St. George, Twenty-Five on Main. We ate lunch (their food is delicious!) and ate an infamous cupcake (I shared a coconut and pumpkin chocolate chip with Matt - DE-lish!). !













Then we took the kids to the water fountain by the tabernacle. Emma hates being splashed in the face, so we found this other water feature that was more her speed. It was a cool little stream. The kids loved playing in the water and getting wet - especially Lucy, who has no fear when it comes to getting splashed, unlike her sister! After we took the kids home to get cleaned up and rest, we had a make-shift BBQ at the park and played games the rest of the evening. It was a really great trip!

Emma's absolute favorite part of this trip was just playing with her friends! She didn't want to leave "the beautiful house" which is what she called the condo - she just wanted to stay inside and play! Even now she talks about how much fun she had!

We are so grateful for good friends and for the times like this where we get to draw closer and create memories! Thanks so much Sean and Sarah and Kevin and Melissa for a great weekend!

Belated Labor Day Getaway

Tuesday night Matt decided that Wednesday morning we were going to "get-away" for a couple of days. I was at the ready, since our chances to get away will be getting fewer and farther between in the next couple of months. Our first thought was to go north, to Jackson Hole - but with a last minute check of the weather - we changed our course and headed southeast, to the mountains, and Emma's favorite spot: Park City. We spent our first evening at the movie theater watching "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." I enjoyed it, Matt thought it was silly, and Emma was excited to get outside afterwards and eat the meatballs that had fallen from the sky. We are still trying to get across the fact that movies aren't real! Favorite line: "Steve, we've got some diem to carpe!"

We headed past the Park to Midway for our first night's stay. We decided to try one of Matt's family's old haunts: the Homestead. It turned out to be a nice quiet refuge and we woke to a beautiful morning and a whole day to do with whatever caught our fancy. We grabbed some breakfast, explored the famous Crater, and then went to try our luck at horseback riding. To no avail. The offices were open, the horses were feeding, but there was not a guide or a rider in sight. So, moving on to our next plan - we headed toward Park City and checked into the Mountainside for our next night's stay. Matt and Emma had a pleasant afternoon swimming in their pools, while I spent the afternoon doing one of my favorite things - reading. I read while Lucy napped. Matt then took Emma down the alpine slide. She loved it and still talks about the "long, long slippery slide." Lucy's favorite thing was swimming, swimming, swimming! She is not like her sister that way and would dive right in if we would let her! Today we decided to make a stop at Ruth's Diner and Hogle Zoo on our way home. We got to see all of the baby animals that were recently born and we ate Ruth's famous Mile High Biscuits that I could eat daily (and thus grow happily fat). Lucy went NUTS over the animals, while Emma was distracted by her thirst, the people, and the gift shops. But, she did love the baby Elephant which I would definitely suggest seeing!

All in all, we had a great couple of days, a much needed escape - and are now attempting to rest up for the crazy weeks ahead!

As a bee...

Life has been very busy lately! Emma has started preschool and dance, Matt is building his homes in Farmington, and I have been helping Matt in the office and working as Farmington's Art Coordinator and been...being a mom! I feel like every spare minute has been taken up with something!!! I just spent the last two weeks auditioning and casting kids for our upcoming youth theater and now I have only three weeks to complete the preparations for Dinner Theater. Oh man. Its nuts! As crazy as it has been, I love that I can help Matt and I love what I get to do for the City and I love being a mom - so I am not complaining...more....explaining why I haven't blogged in so long!

So, yeah, Emma started preschool and she is really enjoying it. Here is a picture of her first day!

Every time I ask her about her day at preschool she says her favorite thing is to play with the toys. I love that she comes home and tells me "The letter A makes three sounds" and then makes them! I am happy she is learning and growing.

As a family, we recently discovered something we all enjoy doing: going hiking. Here are some pictures on a hike we took over Labor Day weekend.

It is fun to spend some time as a family, but there is a drawback: Emma is the slowest hiker in the history of hiking. I was about to go crazy trying to follow her up that mountain! As slow as she walked, she wanted to keep going when we finally decided to head down the mountain. She would have hiked to the top if we would have let her!

Lucy was also enjoying nature in her own little way! Anyway, we hope to go hiking more often as the weather cools - let us know if you want to go or if you know of any good hikes.

Also, let me know if you want to help out with dinner theater! We need help preparing and serving dinner and also my director is looking for a prop master and backstage help.

Well, don't think I am too busy to call or hang out! We still love playdates and barbeques! They are what make all the craziness of life worth living!

Swing Sets and Safety Belts

The last couple of days have been pretty jam-packed with excitement. Last week Matt had some free time since his co-worker got in a motorcycle accident so he decided to spend a day building a swing-set for Emma. I was once again amazed at his ability to build something from scratch without instructions or a picture - he is so talented. He could totally be on one of those Trading Spaces type shows where they custom make furniture. Anyway, Emma has loved it. Here is a pic:

As you can see, it is not just for Emma!

On Friday we took our girls and Boston and Jaegan to the Fish Farm and caught some trout. We really had a great time. The kids loved throwing the fish food in the water and watching the water boil as they all went after it! They all squirmed away from the wriggling fish dangling from the line when they caught their fishy prize!

We really had a great time and recommend the Fish Farm for a fun family evening!

Late Thursday night we got invited by my cousin Tyler and her husband cliff to St. George for Matt to go Canyoneering and for me to go shopping. How could we pass that up? So we drove down to Southern Utah really late Friday night/Saturday morning and spent Saturday doing what we (respectively) do best! Matt did Spry (spelling?) in Zion's and I hit the outlets and we met up that evening to share our tales. I have decided that I am going to try out some canyoneering next time we get down there. I make no promises since I am deathly afraid of heights, but, what the hey! Matt says that on that same trip we will reserve a day for shopping too - so it won't be all that bad. On the way home on Sunday we stopped at Cove Fort. I had never been there before. We got a really great tour with the wonderful missionary couple down there - all of whom could not resist the urge to squeeze little Lucy's Michelin legs! Our pic from the Fort is below:

We were excited to get out of town for a day and are looking forward to doing it again soon (can you tell!?)

Lucy Crawling

This is obviously not video of her first crawling efforts, but I am so excited to have a baby that crawls that I am posting any evidence of it that I have. We don't quite know how to handle a crawling baby since Emma went straight to walking - so it has been a fun new experience.

Silly Lucy

I often comment on how different it has been to have a second child than it was the first. With Emma, I was so overwhelmed and anxious over being a new mom that I was too preoccupied to see the fun things she was doing and take joy in just watching her "be." With Lucy, I get such a kick out of every little thing she does. For example, she likes to put things in her mouth and hold it there and just look around with the random - whatever - hanging by her new little bicuspids (or whatever you call them - I'm not a dentist people). As seen below, she is particularly keen on doing this "trick" with a diaper she has pulled out of her diaper bag:

Another thing that I just love about Lucy is she loves to play with toys. She can entertain herself for quite awhile as long as she has a bucket of toys next to her. She takes each one out, examines it thoroughly, passes it from hand to hand, drops it and gets out another one to start the process again. There are a few toys she also puts over her head every time she plays with them. Like this one:It seriously makes me laugh. Even now I am holding back a little chuckle. She is a riot. We love our little Lucy!