Thanksgiving 2013- Utah

We went to Utah to spend Thanksgiving with Dana's family again this year. It was a fast, fast weekend but very fun too.
And I'm not going to lie- seeing this this angel on the way there and back definitely helped make the trip!
 
Berkley's six months already and so full of smiles! Such a sweet age.
 

Even breaking up the drive by sleeping in Vegas, we all felt like this when we finally got there on Thanksgiving Day.
 

But we arrived to all of Dana's side of the family and a beautiful table set just waiting to seat our hungry bodies. We were all starving because we had eaten few snacks, but didn't want to stop for lunch and ruin our hearty Thanksgiving appetites.
 

Sadie and her cousin Sophie were connected at the hip the entire time. Even sleeping...
(Is this not the sweetest?)
 

Friday morning we woke up bright and early to make it to the Spanish Fork Costco for black Friday. We got a new Dyson vacuum! Yay!!
I visualized people rushing in and grabbing them because they were $100 off. But we got there 10 mins. after they opened and were probably the first ones to get one. LOL :) Anyway, we LOVE it so far. So nice to finally have a vacuum that sucks! (That joke just doesn't get old).

Then we drove up to Provo and hung around awhile waiting for everyone else to meet us up there. It was so cool to see the new temple they're building out of the old Tabernacle.
 

Then we drove over to the park at the bottom of BYU- which was much nicer than it was when I used to walk through it on my way home from campus everyday.
It was a pretty day (besides being COLD) and there were tons of ducks there. They weren't shy and must have been used to being fed constantly.
 

After that, the rest of Dana's family arrived and we all hiked the "Y" together.
 


I hadn't done it for years- probably last time was when Dana and I were dating.
This is about half way there...
 

It was a challenge for almost everyone- but the kids all did it!
 

It was awesome. After that, we ate at the Cougareat and then went bowling at the game center.
 

Saturday was a much more relaxing day. All the kids' cousins on Dana's side now are teenagers, besides Sophie, so there was a lot of "hanging out" involved.
(Dean and Kris' house)



Then Saturday evening we left back to Las Vegas and then all the way home Sunday. We were so happy we didn't hit any holiday traffic on the way home :)

It was so great being with family! We are very grateful for all our blessings :)

Sadie Loses a Tooth (The Saga)

In Sadie's mind her 2 front bottom teeth had been "wiggly" for at least 2 years. At one point the dentist had made some mention indicating something along those lines and ever since, she waited. And waited. I felt a little skeptical since her baby teeth had come in late and that usually means they'll also come out late.

These cute little baby teeth no longer appreciated...


Finally, this year in 1st grade, one actually really wiggled. Unlike Emma who would relentlessly pry and twist her teeth as soon as she realized one had started thinking about coming out (which always generated surprisingly fast results), Sadie is more of a bide-your-timer. Not really a recommended method when you're eager.

Well, one night last month she decided enough was enough. She apparently was the ONLY one left in her class that hadn't lost a tooth and it was game time. First she came to me and begged me for help. I tried wiggling hard which hurt her, which resulted in me telling her to keep working at it herself. She was not happy with this answer so I tried the one method I know. Getting a piece of floss, wrapping it around the bottom of the tooth, pulling it down to get under the tooth to the roots, crossing the floss in the front and pulling one side right and one left. This did work with one of the first 3 but I can't remember who. It usually fails as it did in this case. I made it bleed though and I was done. Feeling more desperate she went to dad. Dana had to chose between the lesser evil of 2 things he really does not like: Making Sadie unhappy (which included crying and begging for his help) or hurting her. He gave into the begging but as soon as she'd say "Oww!" He was very affected. Both results were ending in tears and I decided to start taking pictures to document the girl's stubbornness. (Sidebar: Dana has never spanked the kids once during his career as father). His final effort was a try with the pliers. This lasted about as long as the picture did.
 

Next she took matters into her own hands and formulated a plan involving yarn, her tooth, and a door slam. She may or may not have heard about this from me. And Holly the helpful big sis :)
 

But without adult help she soon realized she was (or the tooth was) going nowhere (for example tying the yarn around the tooth). Now with my job obviously as photographer, she went back to the person she always has the best luck convincing anyway.
This time with a piece of floss.

Those tears...:(


Maybe kleenex?...
 

And FINALLY...VICTORY!
 

Determination paying off :)
 

And you know our forgetful Tooth Fairy didn't dare forget this time. And she didn't! Whew!

The icing on the cake- Campbell lost her first tooth about 2 days later! Good thing they didn't NOT match for too long.

More wigglers on their way out soon-ish. Hopefully with less dramatic exits  :).

Halloween 2013

Halloween came and went before I could say "Bibbity-bobbity-boo". All I really had a chance to do was get or make (by "make" I'm not referring to sewing here. Think tying and fabric glue.) costumes for the kids. We didn't even put up decorations.

Except for spiderwebs...
 

Sadie had decided to be "Cleopatra", which is a costume we already own from Holly. Then I saw this Flapper costume- only one left, the right size, and super cheap from Gymboree- and couldn't resist. All those sparkles...I knew she'd love it!

And I thought her costume "clues" she wrote at school were perfect...
The bottom picture in the collage is from the tri-ward/neighborhood Halloween party this year. I selfishly hope we go back to a regular ward party next year. There were just way too many people there.

Holly was a gypsy. Other than her jewelry from "Party City", and the shirt we had, her costume was completely put together with a few things we got at "Savers". It was funny because we were both looking at her in the mirror after she tried it on, and I was kind of thinking her costume was a little thrown together and feeling a little guilty. Then she suddenly said, "I think this is my favorite costume I've ever had!" with a big smile. I felt much better after that.:)

This is at school before the kids' costume parade they do for the parents.
 

Eli didn't go to school that day. He started saying a couple days before that his lungs were hurting when he breathed in deep. I took him in and she said he has "walking pneumonia". I think today he's finally totally recovered. He did get to go trick or treating though. Here's Halloween night. He was a ghost pirate (like on Pirates of the Caribbean) and Emma was a living pirate. :)


An older lady asked him if he was "Paul Revere" which was pretty hilarious.
 

Emma didn't trick or treat this year, but she and Jane (we happily ran into the Froerer's) had fun coming along anyway.
  

Our beloved "witch head".


The kids did pretty well and topped off the night with the "candy trade".
 
To their dismay, it was all dumped into the same bowl and put on the fridge an hour later. To my dismay, I missed the "candy buy back" at the ortho on Nov. 1 because I was subbing.

Now my only hope is that the next 2 holidays (my 2 favorites) don't speed by me like Halloween did!

Fall Break/Sedona 2013

Before I start on fall break, I have to throw in a few pictures of a Sunday in Sept when we had a potluck with my cousin Kristy's family. They moved out here a couple years ago and we just don't see them enough!
Love these kids!
 

And the "Funny Face" picture!
 

And these girls...

Hopefully we'll stick to our plan of getting together a lot more often.

We kicked off fall break this year with our annual "Fall Breakfast". Boy do the kids LOVE this tradition. We had to put it off a couple weeks because we had things going on, but it worked out well because the day we did it, was really the first day it felt "fall"ish.
And best of all, it was Conference weekend!


It was also Campbell's birthday! So many reasons to celebrate:) Now they'll get to be "6 " together for a few months.


For Conference, we did my own version of "conference bingo" this year. I printed out small pictures at Costco of the apostles faces (they were all on a 5x7) and the kids cut them out and glued them on blank spaces. Then when the apostle spoke they had to write the main message in the space and put a candy corn there. This is Sadie's :) Love those nibbled-on candy corns!


The squares without pictures are spaces I let them pull an apostle off to add the General Authority that was speaking instead. So they all got BINGO. Softie, I know.

There was a lot of hair brushing and fixing going on and Emma and Holly worked on some puzzles...(I think this pic is Sunday)
 
Conference weekend feels like a holiday doesn't it?

For most of the rest fall break we were here enjoying non-scheduled time. Ahh- even sleeping in a little. Such a treat:)
Then on Friday Dana took the day off and we went up to Sedona for the night. Here are some pictures from our trip:


It was a little cooler up there but not too cool for swimming in the Best Western's pool!
 

Window shopping (with a few small purchases mixed in).
 


We went to a pizza place for dinner which was a big treat for everyone! (Especially me and Eli)
 
Another treat: Staying up late and watching "The Avengers".
 


The next morning Dana woke up early and went running as we all slept. He ran by a yard sale. It was an awesome find. They were selling this grill for $25!
 
We've wanted one forever and it's just been one of those things that's continually gotten pushed down lower on the priority list. Getting it here was a little more tricky but where there's a will there's a way! We also got an awesome sleeping bag for $5. Leave it to Dana to find deals wherever he goes!

It was a pretty busy day in Sedona. There were extra people there since the Grand Canyon was closed due to the government shut-down. It was a trick to find parking where we've hiked before so we tried a new area by a stream...
 
It was beautiful but we couldn't find a hike around there. So we got back in the car and thought we'd try a new section of hiking in Sedona. Pretty soon we realized why the other section is so crowded. The terrain was very different. These hikes were similar to hikes around where we live. Not quite what we were looking forward to with big trees and fall leaves. But we were there, and once we switched our expectations, it was a nice hike. And like I kept telling the kids: "Life is about learning. Next time we come here, we'll know for sure where we want to hike." But ya- we were all kinda bummed at first.




By the time we got to the end of the hike we all had better attitudes and were glad we made it to the end.
 
We made quick time back and from there, we headed back home. It was a really fun, short trip. We love Sedona! Such a great staycation place!