Merry Christmas!

We didn't quite get our Christmas cards sent out to everyone on our list this year. We have a stack of them sitting on our table, unaddressed, because I can't seem to find any of my lists of addresses and I haven't had time to email or call everyone to track those addresses down. So, if you are a close friend or family member, please know that one of these cards was printed just for you, because we are thinking of you at this special time of year . . . and maybe next year I'll actually get one sent your way!

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin-Carving

Brian - Porter - Dana - Dawnia

Annual Halloween Dinner with the Nye's
(Sunday before Halloween)

 

We hope you all have a very happy Halloween full of treats!

pumpkin patch

Even though we moved out of Davis County, I couldn't bring myself to give up our favorite pumpkin patch just yet. So we packed into the car on Saturday and made the hour drive up north to get ourselves some pumpkins! Dawnia came along with us . . . and I don't think her riding in the back with Porter won him any points for her favorite nephew award. He's a tough cookie to sit next to!

We met Brian's parents and Porter's cousin, Tre. Then we all headed to the pumpkin patch! And it did not disappoint. We had such a good time! Here are the pictures to prove it:

 After the hayride and choosing our perfect pumpkins to take home, we went to see what activities the farm had to offer. Since Porter was just a baby last year, we didn't even go to this section of the farm. We had no idea what we were missing!

 Yes, they DID throw him. Crazies.

 And what better way to end the day, than sitting in a giant sandbox full of dried corn?!

Dino

Porter has become a little obsessed with dinosaurs. It all began a couple months ago, when I decided he should be a dinosaur for Halloween. I bought his costume and immediately began training him in how to be a dinosaur. First, he learned how to roar like a dino. It's the cutest roar I've ever heard! Then, he got to start trying on the hood and roaring at the same time. Now his current favorite book is "Dinosaurs Love Underpants." I bet we read it 20 times yesterday. He carries his little dinosaur figurines around with him all over the house. And he loves to color in his dinosaur coloring book. Yesterday, we decided to take him to the BYU dinosaur museum. He loved it! It was small, so it was a very short trip. But he roared his little heart out while we were there.

Now we'll just have to see how he handles wearing his whole dinosaur costume on Halloween. Even with all his training, he hasn't kept it on for longer than 30 seconds yet. Wish us luck!

Happy Apple Day!

No, I'm not going crazy declaring random fruit holidays. Today is a sacred elementary school day-- the day we celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday and turn everything possible into an apple activity. It's a wonderful excuse to do math games with apples, read stories about apples, make graphs out of which apples are your favorites, drink apple juice, eat apple pie, make applesauce in the classroom, do apple art projects . . .  you get the idea. Because I have school off today, we celebrated Apple Day on Friday. Just thought I'd share a little taste of it with you. Enjoy your apple day!

And Happy Birthday to Dawnia-- my lucky little sis who gets to share a bday with Johnny Appleseed. ;) I swear it's totally coincidence that I'm making her apple pancakes for her bday breakfast today!

Artist

Once upon a time, I wished that Porter would show some interest in drawing or coloring. I bought him twistable crayons, put a special notebook full of paper permanently on his playroom table, and carried coloring supplies to and from church each week. But he never cared to even try. On the rare occasions when he would humor me, I would watch painfully as he would drag the capped end of a pen across the paper, then give up because nothing came from it.

Now fast-forward a couple months-- the crayons are put on a high shelf and pens/pencils left within reaching distance cause a big debate over who is at fault for being so careless.

Yes, Porter now loves to color. The walls, the furniture, the mirrors, our clothing, his skin; everything shows evidence that Mommy's wish came true. Yikes!

change of address

it happened! we're thanking our lucky stars. here's how last week went for us . . .

Saturday: guy calls, interested in renting our condo
Sunday: guy sees condo, signs contract, asks to move in Saturday
Monday: search Utah County for a new house, submit application to rent
Tuesday: sign contract, move 1st load into new house
Wednesday: pack & move, pack & move
Thursday: pack & move, pack & move
Friday: in-laws come to help move big furniture, clean, clean, clean, sleep at new house
Saturday: renter moves into our condo, we drive back to get last item: vacuum (woops!)


yes, it was all done in 1 week! one crazy week. but we are so grateful. we now live close to school and work and won't have to start commuting an hour back & forth each day. phew!

So goodbye 3rd floor condo! We'll miss the clean wood floors and painted walls and pretty black doorknobs we recently replaced. But we won't miss the 3 flights of stairs and 1-hr drive to Utah County.

And hello, new home from the '70's. We love your backyard and kid-friendly neighborhood and lots of extra space. And whatever we don't love, we'll patiently endure. It's only temporary!

Is this normal?

Porter is a hoarder. I hate to say it, but he is. He collects things from all around the house and stashes them behind the subwoofer (did you know that's how it's spelled? I had to look it up just now-- never written that word before. interesting.).

Brian and I slowly started noticing that things were disappearing, then one day Brian caught Porter throwing something back there. When he looked, there was a whole mound of objects. Since then, we've been cleaning out his "stash" every couple days. We find all sorts of things: goldfish crackers, remote controls, toothbrushes, toys, keys, shoes . . . basically, anything that Porter finds interesting and small enough to fit. From now on, if we can't find something, that's usually the first place we look.

As I was taking this picture, he took the Nikon lens cover and threw it into his pile. Sneaky kid!

Sadly, though, I'm pretty sure he has another "stash" somewhere that we haven't found yet. There are LOTS of things disappearing around here.

Park City

Just got back from a week in Park City. Why are we not living there? Seriously, it's so much greener . . . and there's good food and the shopping is wonderful. I loved it there!

Chocolate Raspberries

While we were at Bear Lake, we bought a bunch of chocolate-covered raspberries (I don't think Brian's family ever goes there without buying them). They were delicious . . . but Brian still had some ideas on how they could improve. So as soon as we got home, he decided to make his own. And, of course, I was in full support of this idea! Since we've been back (for about a week & a half now), I think I've eaten close to 100 chocolate-covered raspberries. Oh my goodness! They are so good!

If you want to make some, here's what you do:

First, buy some yummy raspberries.

Second, melt some chocolate. We already had a bag of melting chocolate for fondue that happened to have microwave melting directions-- pretty simple.

Third, using a fondue stick, dip the raspberries in the melted chocolate and set them on wax paper to harden.

Last, put them in the fridge to harden them up even more. Then eat them!

In case you were wondering, Brian's only problem with the Bear Lake raspberries were that they had too much chocolate around them. These new ones have a perfect chocolate-to-raspberry ratio.

Richfield Week

During the last week of June, I did a workshop in Richfield and Brian & Porter got to come with me. Where is Richfield, you might ask? I honestly had no idea before we actually went there. It's a tiny little town off the beaten path, about halfway between Provo & St. George. Although the small-town setting left us trying hard to come up with things to do, it was absolutely beautiful. I have a weakness for small towns. Here's why Richfield won me over:

Reason #1: Richfield has some BEAUTIFUL parks. (Brian & Porter spent a GREAT deal of time at the parks while I was in workshops all day.)

Reason #2: Wouldn't you just love to live in a town where this was your public library?

Reason #3: Beautiful scenery

Reason #4: Small diners with good, old-fashioned, homestyle cookin'. The plaque behind our heads says that Stephen King sat at that booth behind us. Man, we should've sat there!

Oh, and while we were there, Porter took his first picture with a camera- we're so proud of our budding photographer!

The biggest downside (yet again) was staying in a hotel for a week. Porter made various attempts to escape our tiny room!

We'll definitely have to visit Richfield again sometime!