Abundant Recompense Copy

Halloween was fun this year. We carved pumpkins for fhe on Monday and although the two girls made it slightly stressful (sleepy and picky about the pumpkin design), they turned out great. Addison was beside himself with excitement.  Halloween cupcakes. They're supposed to be owls . . . They were SO excited! Flying gargoyle Silly face Joy school party. L-R Zoey, Bryn, Addison, Ben  Our ward does a Halloween hot dog dinner and costume parade/trick or treating every year on a street near us. It was a highly anticipated event in our house. Addison got pretty freaked out by some scary-mask clowns that were walking around getting in people's faces, but he calmed down and had an okay time. After the fact Nate took the kids to do a little trick or treating while I stayed and cleaned up. Leah went as a bunny. The original plan was a banana, but I didn't have time to get it done, so bunny she was. And a cute one at that. Addison told me the day after Halloween last year that he wa...

October 25th has always marked the end of the nice weather in my book. And today proved me right by dumping a little snow on us. The kids all decided that 6:30 was the time to get up today, and my darling hubby who had been fighting with Leah to keep her asleep so I wouldn't have to get up, ran outside and scooped up some bowls full of snow for Addison and Bryn to eat/melt everywhere so I could stay in my nice warm bed just a little longer. What a guy. Add and Bryn got ready lightning quick and got all bundled up and headed outside. We may never see them again (until it melts or they lose their mittens). And what better way to celebrate the first snowfall of the year than with soup for dinner. What kind? Well let  me just tell you: Yeah. Chances the kids will eat it? Pretty much zero. Chances that they're cute while talking about it? 100%.

I am so stoked for the holidays with the kids this year! Now that they are three and four, it is so fun that they are big enough to really anticipate Halloween. They've been talking about their costumes and our plans for at least a month. And this is the first year they've really caught the vision of the jack-o-lantern cookies. Leah hasn't quite caught the vision yet, but she did respond well to Dad walking around and around the downstairs in an attempt to keep her from yelling the whole time we were frosting cookies. But she'll be so cute in her costume. And don't look now, but Christmas is coming up, and who doesn't love a snuggly baby by the light of a Christmas tree?

The first weekend in October we made the three-hour trek up to Rexburg, Idaho to visit Megan and Sam and pick some apples. BYU Idaho has an orchard with like 120 varieties of apples and they were pick-your-own for fifty cents a pound. We had a blast picking peaches earlier this year, and were excited to take the kids to pick again. The car ride was great (thank you technology), and we found Meg and Sam's cute apartment without any trouble. Their apartment is really nice. Perfectly clean and good-smelling, with love messages written in lipstick on every non-porous surface. They are definitely living up being newlyweds, and it is just cute. We headed over to the apple orchard shortly after arriving and got excited as we hauled out laundry baskets and read the poster about the different varieties of apples, talking about apple pie all the while. But we soon discovered that something was missing.  That would be the apples. Row after row of beautiful apple trees picked completely clean....

Our sweet little angel baby is five months old already! The time is just flying with this girl! She continues to be happy and smart and learning new things all the time. She's been rolling over both ways for about a month and is generally happy to lay on the floor and roll around with toys. She's still a great nurser and we've made solids a daily thing as of this past week. I guess instead of rice cereal to start on, doctors have started recommending yellow and orange veggies. So we've been trying squash lately. She hated it the first day, but now she gobbles it up. Graham crackers are another fave. Still not sleeping through the night, but hopefully that will come soon. Addison and Brynny love and adore her, and the feeling is mutual. At her checkup last week she was just about 16 lbs (63%) and 26 inches (80%). As the doctor put it to Leah, "You're a tall woman." If she can't find her pacifier she takes matters into her own hands. Gumming on a carrot....

Addison just finished his first season as a soccer player. It was a lot of fun. He loved putting on his uniform for games every Saturday and reminded me every Thursday morning that it was soccer practice day. He was very proud that he was number 24, which happened to be the highest number of anyone on his team. Other favorite parts included running down the field behind the glob of kids that constantly surrounded the ball. Addison was pretty shy about getting in the thick of it right around the ball where there were feet kicking every which way and occasional pushing. He could frequently be seen running down the field and shooting a winning smile and a thumbs up to his adoring fans on the sidelines, though. And when the ball hit him in the foot, he did a great job of hitting it back. And he lived for the halftime snacks and game-end treats. There were six boys on his team and I swear they all looked like they could be twins. There actually was one set of twins. They were all so cute in...

Hey everybody - tune in to KSL Radio Sunday (tomorrow) at 9 am to hear my famous hubby talking about the latest Joseph Smith Papers volume! For you folks outside the Book of Mormon Belt, you can stream it online:  http://www.ksl.com/?nid=21&sid=73621

"Ahem. Excuse me. Can Brynny come out and play?" Wednesday morning Nate was up early working. All was peaceful until he heard some crazy loud chicken noises coming from outside. He and Bryn went to investigate. After some serious searching, they discovered this. He promptly took a picture and woke me up to show me. I was a little groggy and somehow had it in my mind that they were Walmart bags stuck in the tree and that the lower one was in the shape of the Virgin Mary. Nate very patiently explained (a few times, I'm sure), that the white chickens had staged a jailbreak from the coop and had spent the night in a tree! You can sort of see the ground. They are both definitely above the level of my head. No idea how they managed that considering that they have no hands and can't really fly. But I'm impressed. And when I came to my senses fully I remembered this classic:

The time has come to announce to the world that I'm running a half marathon! That's 13.1 miles for those of you keeping score at home. While I was still expecting Leah, one of my best friends in the ward asked me to run one with her and I was pretty stoked. In the painfully long last weeks of pregnancy the thought of starting my training for this race was about the only exciting thing my miserable, mopey, gargantuan self could think of. Getting started running again was rough, but I grabbed another friend and we forced ourselves to get out and walk/run three times a week until we built up some stamina. I've been good about running three times a week for several months now, and I'm at the point in my training where I'm doing two short runs during the week and a long one on Saturday morning. The race is in a month and I'm right where I want to be. I told myself toward the beginning, when running for ninety seconds straight seemed impossible, that if I could work u...