Nov-Dec 2013

Let's start this post off with a bang!  What does this look like to you?!?!

When I turned and saw him like this it gave me a start!  How in the world did he manage that!!!  We were at our friends house playing games and he had been eating a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie that we had brought and we told him he had to stay in the kitchen with it.  He wanted to still be able to see the movie so sat just barely in the kitchen!  I don't know how he managed to drop and squish it so much right there, but man was I glad when I realized that was what it was!!  I still crack up about it every time I see this picture!

We had a birthday party for my dad in Kanab!  Kira made him a cute cowboy hat cake, and all the grandkids loved helping grandpa with the candles!  I love how excited Talee looks in this!

Hunter had his first field trip with Head Start.  They went to a park in Cedar, they encouraged parents to come to it, so me and a couple of the other moms drove up with them (in my friends vehicle, parents can't go on the bus.)  The park was really cool!  But I think Hunter's favorite part was riding on the bus!

This was right after we ate lunch!  Aspen and the younger kids of the other moms that went were also there, there was a bridge at one part, Aspen was terrified of it!  I had to hold her hand or she would completely freeze!  It was pretty wiggly but it had walls on the sides of it, so I didn't think it would be scary since you couldn't see down but the movement was too much for her!

Our 1 picture of Thanksgiving!  Brandi brought stuff for us all to play turkey tag!  If I remember right I think she said cooper made the game up.  It was kind of like flag football meets freeze tag.  They would call out a color and that was the flag you had to try to grab, my kids were hilarious!  Hunter would get so mad if someone would grab his, and Aspen thought it was pretty and would cry because they were ruining it!  Finally we had to just put her on the tramp so she could keep all her flags!

Time to play in the snow!!!

We only really got this one snow storm this winter, but it was an awesome one!!

They loved it!

Ben was gone playing in a softball tournament (which ended up getting cancelled early because of the snow) so me and the kids made us a snowman!  And my prego belly was already starting to make it harder, I huffed and puffed a bit, but we rarely get snow here so I was not going to let it be wasted!!

This was how Aspen was for most of the snowman making...

She loved eating the snow!!

Hear he is!  Ben's mom gave us this snowman kit before we even had kids and this was the first time we got to use it!  Are you impressed that I still knew where it was after all those years???  The kit was missing something though...

Arms!!  There is a tree in the empty lot behind our house that has been dead since we moved in and it finally blew over a few weeks before this, so we hiked down through the rockiness and broke of the perfect snowman arms from the fallen tree!  If it hadn't just fallen I don't think we would have been able to find arms for him, there's mostly just tumble weeds around us!

If you look closely at the 2 pictures of our snowman you can tell his head looks different, I went to do something and turn back around and Hunter had knocked our snowman over!  I was so annoyed!  So after having a talk with Hunter, we re-built our snowman, and this time Hunter decided it needed some ears!  Later that day someone threw a snowball at our living room window, I just ignored it but then when we went outside a little later someone had knocked our snowman over!  Grrrr.  I really wish kids had more respect for other peoples stuff!  In this snow storm our neighbors also built a huge snow fort!  So huge in fact that several of the husbands had to help build it!

I thought this was hilarious!  It only took a few days for our snowman to look like this, and you can still totally tell what he was!  At least when the kids knocked him over they left all the pieces so we still have our snowman kit ready and waiting for the next big snow storm!

Getting our Christmas Trees this year was a lot colder than usual!

This was us waiting on the snowy hillside waiting for Ben to return with the chain saw.

Cutting it down!

And our frozen kids getting warm back in the truck!

This was the best we could get for our usual family with the tree right after we cut it down, the kids are peaking out of the truck.  We ended up not being able to go with the family this year so it was just us.  We got Joslyn's tree for her though, she hadn't been able to go with the family either.

The lights got put on...

Then a couple days later we decorated it.

Both of our kids have done this at this age, hang all of their decorations in the same exact spot and usually on the lights not on the actual tree, haha I love it!

I had to show her cute ruffle bum!

I loved her ranch stache!

And in our house you can't take a picture of just one of the kids!

At the ward Christmas party Hunter got in to see Santa before we were even in the room!  So no picture of him with Santa but here he is right after.  The primary did a little program after the dinner, and we had the ones that weren't a part of the nativity wear those choir collar things.  Most of the kids gave theirs back after but Hunter thinks he needs to keep everything!  So it stayed at our house for several months until it got destroyed, then I had to sneak it into the trash.

Aspen with Santa at the ward party, she looked a little nervous.

She did a little better with Santa at the library though!  We had her friend Suzy with us when we went to the library and this "helper" happened to be Suzy's grandpa!  I was a little panicked when I realized it, but when I told her mom she was smart and tells her kids that grandpa is a helper for Santa, so it was no worry of her realizing what was going on!  Phew!  That could have been bad!

We had Derrick for Christmas and this is what I decided to do for their kids.

I wasn't sure if Casey and Sophie were too old for hooded towels so I just did their names.

Then did this cute hooded one for Jack.

We made these cute Christmas presents for all the kids in Hunter's preschool.  He went through and wrote his and their names on ever single one!  Me and him painted the faces on with frosting while Aspen was napping, and he picked out which marshmallow he thought each kid would like!!  It was pretty cute!

We love hooded towels at our house and I get them one most Christmas's this year though since I was making Derrick's kids theirs I decided to make our kids one too.  This is Hunter's Angry Bird.

And here is Aspen's.  I think they turned out pretty cute!

Christmas Eve!

Time to open jammies!

This was what they woke up to!

They both got new fishing poles, bikes, and sleeping bags.

I think she's excited!

They loved and still love their bikes!

Opening stockings.

They both always want to play cards with us so Santa gave them each their own cards in their stockings.

The floor has disappeared!

Cutest Angry Birds I've ever seen!

Ben opening the tie the kids picked out for him.

The tree looks so sad without all the presents under it!

This seems to be the only picture I have of opening presents at Ben's parents!  Not surprising at all that Aspen is in her candy already!

We headed over to Kanab after our quick stop at Ben's parents.

I think Hunter looks tired in this!  A long busy day!  Here you can see baby #3 is starting to show!

These are their new jammies from my mom, they love them!!!

Hunter showing that it even has a cape, I love that his toosh is pooched out!!

We had a pretty calm New Year's, we put the kids to bed like normal, then Tyler came over and the 3 of us watched a marathon of Studio C, we were so distracted by the show that we missed it even turning into the new year!  That's it for 2013!  It was a great year!

October 2013

So right after we got called as a Primary Presidency we had a kid graduate from primary, then a baptism, and only 3 weeks before the primary program!  It was a pretty crazy month trying to figure out everything to do with my new calling, and trying to stop doing my old one!  I definitely think that has been the hardest change of calling for me, just because I work so close to the person that took over my old calling, it was very hard to not do what I used to be doing since I was still in the middle of that kind of stuff!  So for a little while there I kept trying to do way more than I should have been!  All other calling changes have been when we have moved out of a ward so I wasn't anywhere near the old calling!  It's been good though, it definitely forced me to learn to delegate better!  My 1st counselor is the same lady as before, which was so lucky that she stayed the same since she was in charge of the primary program!  It could have been very crazy if she would have changed callings!!  Also since it was close to the end of the year right when we finished the primary program we had to jump right into the plans for next year, birthday gifts, baptism gifts, getting new manuals ready, this years Christmas gifts, etc.  Then on top of all those we also found out that we were in charge of the board in the primary room, the one with the theme for the year and also spots for us to put of the months theme and scripture!  It was a busy crazy couple of months for us as a new presidency!

This primary program was Hunter's 2nd and he sat up there a lot better than the year before!  This year since I was the president and not just the secretary I was up on the stand too.  We had practiced with him his line (I can be honest, or something close to that, I can't remember for sure) but when he got up there he had to have my counselor tell him what to say.  I still don't think he did much singing either, but he definitely did better with it than the year before!

Well on to some cute pics of my kiddos:

This was how Aspen decided it would be best to clean up toys!  She was cracking me up!

This is where I found her one morning after I got out of the shower, sitting on the counter eating chips and candy!  She is a candy-holic!  I swear she can sniff it out!

First time in underwear!! This attempt didn't last long!  She kept having accidents every half hour or so and would come running through the house to find me, screaming about it, with a trail of pee left behind her.  I don't handle those kinds of messes very well... So we only tried for a couple times then went for pull-ups instead.  Ya... I'm a terrible potty trainer!

I had my first doc appointment and we were 11 weeks so we decided it was time to let people know we were expecting!  We sat the kids down and handed them these papers and proceeded to take pictures of them while we told them about them:

This is when we were reading the papers to them, Hunter was like ya I'm getting even bigger, and Aspen with her recent attempt at underwear thought that's why she was a big sister, Haha!

This is after we explained what they meant!  I think they look pretty excited!

Then to tell our families we took them over some cookies and an envelope that said "Guess what's cooking in our oven?!"  then the collage above was inside.

The next day I realized I had taken all the pictures on my camera and I needed one on my phone so I could text it to the family that lived out of town, so they got to pose for me again.

There is a group of us stay at home moms that get together either for park days or at someones house to learn something new every Monday.  I was way excited for this week because one of the moms her mom owns a bakery so she was having us decorate cupcakes with fondant!  Kira has done fondant and after I made Hunter's dog birthday cake I called her and told her I needed her to show me how to use fondant because his frosting was melting off him and he would have been way cuter with fondant!  So even though I knew Ben was going to be home that day (it was Columbus Day and he just had to do rounds then was going to be home) I still went!  I couldn't miss my opportunity to learn to use fondant!  I had a blast!  Her and her mom rolled out the fondant so really all we did was put it on our cupcakes, then we got to help with all but the baking of the cake pops, which were not fondant, they were dipped in white chocolate, then drizzled with it.  I'm sure I probably drove her and her mom crazy, I wouldn't stop asking questions!  The black on my cupcake mummy's eyes hadn't dried yet so it smeared all over him when I put it in a bag to bring home, but I think they turned out way cute!

This was how Ben decided to shave his hunting beard after the hunts!  Can you tell who he is???? Wolverine!  This was pretty funny, luckily his beard grows in pretty fast, so this only lasted about a week, then it was trimmed back to normal.

For Hunter's Headstart preschool there are parent officers, ya somehow I ended up getting put in as the secretary.  It all happened kind of fast, I can't even remember who nominated me then all of a sudden it was getting seconded!!  I really wanted to get to be involved in his school so I accepted, and at that time nobody (except his teacher, since his teacher is Dixie) knew I had just been called to be the Primary President, and I don't think many of them knew I was pregnant either!  It definitely became pretty busy between all three of those things!

For the October parent meeting (we had to plan one for every month) we went to the local Pumpkin Patch/Corn maze.  When you get there you had to park along the road then walk down to get tickets, then they had a trailer hooked up to a tractor that would take you to it.  This is Hunter and Dixie on the trailer.

Aspen was scared to death!  She was not wanting to get on the trailer and had been crying until it started moving!  She liked it a lot better on the way home, when she knew it wasn't scary!

The headless horseman would ride along the side of the trailer to guide you in.

They had all the animals right where they dropped us off so that you could pet and feed them.

I've always been curious what a pig felt like, I finally got to find out!

They had this hay tower, Hunter loved climbing to the top of it!

Then they had a kids hay maze as well as the larger corn maze.

The kids had a blast, then we even got to pick out a pumpkin from there pumpkin patch!  I'm pretty sure they had more people come than they had expected (it was their first year doing it) because most of the pumpkins had been picked so it looked like they had gone and bought some from the store and just set them out in the pumpkin patch so you could still go pick one.

Cute purple frosting mustache!  For one of my duties as Primary Pres. I went to the 11 year old scouts Tuesday activity, and since Ben's calling is in the Priest group I had our cute kiddos with me.  Lucky for them the Young Women were decorating cookies that night so they both ended up getting one!

Practicing for her Halloween costume, this isn't how it ended up looking, but can you guess who she is?

Hunter made sure I took a picture of this rainbow!  It was very pretty and very clear!

And this cute little thing slept through seeing the rainbow!

Halloween day arrived, and Princess Leia was ready to go!

We went to the library's Halloween party in the morning, with Tucker and Brandi.

Then in the afternoon we quickly carved our pumpkins!

I love the faces every year as they first go to pull out the insides of the pumpkins!

Mom I found a seed!!

I'll pose for a picture...

but this is what I really think about it!

Here is Aspen's completed pink angry bird!

And Hunter's trio of angry birds!

Hunter's preschool wasn't allowed to do any holiday things this year, so instead they had a pajama party!

I think they turned out way cute!

Leia and Vader ready to get some candy!!!

I thought she was too cute with her guns!  They looked huge in her hands!

Family picture complete with Darth Maul, Vader, Padme and Leia!  Can you tell I was already getting a little baby belly?!  Ben's brother took like 10 pictures and this one turned out best...

Most of them Aspen looked like this, she kept blowing raspberries at Cason!

She was definitely doing a lot better with Ben this night!  When his costume first got here she was terrified of it!  Even when she watched him put it on she was absolutely terrified!  When he first put it on I was going to the bathroom and she backed into the room shaking and backed into the little space in between me on the toilet and the wall!  I had to have Ben shut the bathroom door just so that I could convince her to come out so I could even wipe!  It took a lot of working with her for her to finally be ok with that mask!

They made it through the night!

This was my hair at the end of the night.  It didn't turn out as good as I had hoped but close enough to the movie.  I had to keep re-pinning a couple of the pieces throughout the night!

Haha, I thought her hair was awesome when we took it out!  Happy Halloween!!