Over the river and through the woods . . . . .

This is what awaited us the morning of our departure to Grandma's.

Yikes.
We braved the weather and the roads and after a long journey we made it for the Thanksgiving holiday.

We had so much fun eating good food, playing games, and catching up.



Christopher says that his favorite part was dancing to Christmas music with Grandma and Grandpa.
I have to agree ;)


It was a blur of fun and crazy moves.
We made some great memories.

We have so much to be thankful for.

Did you make some new memories this Thanksgiving?

Things We Love Lately

We love sweet potato fries.

CANNOT get enough of these things.

They have the most beautiful color.


I love cutting into them.

They also seem to be the same color as a wall in my family room.


Who knew.
(Thank you Grandma Eva for supplying us with a box of these beautiful sweet potatoes.)


I love this little man


and his has me rolling on the ground laughing personality


I love how brave my Andy was at the doctor the other day when they had to poke his little arms 3 times to draw blood.


This boy did not utter a peep. Amazing!


Both boys also got flu shots so it meant going to the Dollar Store for a prize.

I love that Christopher picked out the most girly thing in the store and was not ashamed.


Pink and purple dollhouse furniture for his manly, terrifying dragon castle.


Awesome.


And, something I DON'T love.
Can I do that?
I am not loving Facebook.

Apparently, right now they think that I am

A. Not a real person



and

B. Highly suspicious



Soooo, they decided to terminate my account. WHAT????!!!
Okay, so maybe I am hardly EVER on there.
I haven't posted a status in a year.
HOWEVER, I do communicate with a lot of people through it.
So, I am petitioning at this moment and I will keep you updated on my non-creepy, non-suspicious Facebook happenings.



What are you loving or hating (hem hem FACEBOOK) lately??

I didn't understand

I feel bad.
I feel bad that I hadn't understood before now.

I was waiting at the doctor the other day with my boys.
There were a few other people in the waiting room that morning.


My Christopher is a good good boy.
If you know him, you know that he tries so hard to be good.
Even to a fault.
He was getting anxious and excited about seeing the doctor.
He was wondering what kind of toys she would have this time.
He was wondering if she would give him a treat, or a sticker.
He was excited to talk to her and tell her about Scooby Doo or some other silly thing he was fixated on at the moment.
His arms began flapping a little and he got squirmy.
It's just something he can't help.
His little body is just trying to deal with all that stimulus.

A man and his wife were sitting near us.
He leaned over to his wife and said "I have a great idea how to make money. For 100 bucks we will spank parent's children for them when they can't behave in public places."
My mouth dropped.
I was shocked.
I felt my body standing involuntarily - ready to defend my little one.
Just then, the nurse called us back.
A saving moment for that gentleman.

I never understood before.
I never understood what it was like for parent's with a special needs child.
While I always felt sympathetic towards them, I never truly understood the pain they feel in a "normal" driven world.
While, with my Christopher, I only get a taste of what those parent's feel - I now feel I have a better understanding.

I am having more and more of these experiences every day.
I guess I have to look over these little incidents and chalk it up to ignorance.
I now offer my forgiveness to any parents who I may have misjudged.
I didn't understand.

Snow

We are home.

We had such a fun time in Utah.
Sorry to all you Utah friends and family we didn't get a chance to visit.
We had just a few days and lots to do.
Okay, maybe not LOTS, but when you have kids with you it FEELS like a lot.
Ya know what I mean?

We finally got our annual BYU game photo.


It was so incredibly warm and sunny that Mr. Sun was invading our shot.
We won't complain.


We took the boys to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.


They had a fun time looking at the dinosaurs, digging for bones, and trying all the fun displays.
I love museums. LOVE them.
If I had the option of going to the Smithsonian or the Bahamas on vacation . . . . I would pick the Smithsonian.
That's how much I love museums.


Although, the Bahamas sound nice right about now.
When we returned home from our sunny weekend in Utah it began to snow.
Goodbye Fall.
It was lovely to have you around for awhile.

Isn't the first snowfall one of the most magical days of the year, though!!!?
The anticipation.



The snowflakes tickling your eyelashes.



Trying to catch them on your fingers.



Or your tongue.




That first taste of snow.



Definitely a magical day.




What day is magical to you?? And, how do you feel about museums?

I know, I know . . . .

We are leaving in about 6 hours to go to Grandma Eva's house.

The insulation guy is coming (should be here by now) to insulate the space above our garage (aka the floor of our freezing bedroom.)

I need to take Christopher to preschool in 1 and 1/2 hours.
I need to get packed.
I need to clean.

I need to give the boys a bath.

I'm procrastinating.

So, while I am procrastinating, I will wish my baby sister a Happy Birthday (it was on the 2nd)!
She's 21 years old.
Amazing!
I still think of her as a little girl.




I made her this chair for her birthday.


I'm sure it was what she has always wanted ;)
I had fun making it for her.

Love you Jamie!


(found this picture on your facebook, Jamie. Andy saw it and said "JJ!!" So, I figured it must be a pretty good representation ;) )

Okay. Done procrastinating.
What are you procrastinating (while reading this post)??

Good times . . . .

Don't you hate those braggy blog posts?

The "We have amazing lives!" and "Don't you wish you had as much fun as we did?" posts.
Puh-lease!!

This post is about

HOW INCREDIBLY AWESOME OUR HALLOWEEN WAS!!!!!!!

Ya, you heard me. We are awesome.
Okay, maybe not.
But, our Halloween was seriously really fun.

Davin and I love the Amazing Race tv show.


Have you seen it? It's, well . . . amazing!
Teams racing around the world, completing tasks to win a million dollars.
It's intense stuff.

Our neighbors hold an annual Halloween party - Amazing Race style.
Picture 90 people in teams of 3 couples, racing around Blackfoot ID.
SOOOO much fun.
The neighbor is the head of the Chamber of Commerce so he has a lot of ins with the businesses around here.
There was a lot of digging, running, speeding (luckily no tickets), yelling, and laughing.
Such a blast.
As you can probably tell from this picture,


by the end of the night we were exhausted.


Christopher had a Halloween party at his preschool.
He was so excited to take treats to all his little friends.



We carved pumpkins with some very fun people.



We had a Halloween party at our church.
I didn't take any pictures because I was busy reminding myself why I don't like taking a child with severe sensory issues to an event with candy-hyped children, carnival games that he insists on doing perfectly, and balloon popping games (ugh, his worst nightmare!!)
Was that sentence long enough? :)
We always end those nights with us running out of the building with a screaming child.
I really could write a whole post on how sad this makes me, but I really am trying to stay positive about our situation.
We will try again next year.


We had a blast trick or treating.
Andy was so excited this year.
Christopher's job was to ring the doorbell and Andy's job was to pound on the door until they opened it.


Lovely.
I'm sure the neighbors loved that.
We loved walking in the cool night air with our boys and waving to all the friends and neighbors on our way.


We had fun.
Did you have fun???