Visitors!

We are blessed with company more often than we deserve around here! It's wonderful! Here are a few visitors we had the pleasure to host during October.

Great Grandma, Great Grandpa and Aunt Jana!

Great Grandma let the kids each choose from a bag full of beautiful hats she made.

 They took us to dinner at Union Grill. Grandma and I stayed inside to wait for our table (I'd had foot surgery the day before) while everyone else headed out to see the cool trains.

Dinner was great. I love being around all these guys. Great Grandma and Grandpa consistently make you feel like you are the best, most wonderful, smartest, kindest person in the world.

And all the kids latched onto Aunt Jana within about 30 seconds of her arrival. She's so fun and energetic!

Grandpa!

We had a great time seeing Nate's Dad for a few days while he was up in our neck of the woods for some work training. He packs a lot of fun and spoiling into a little time, I tell you what. First thing after he arrived, he scooped up the three oldest and headed out treasure hunting (geocaching) for hours.

He took us to Zaxby's for dinner and gave it his official Grandpa stamp of approval, and then we walked around the Ogden temple with him. Bryn hinted at ice cream on the car ride home and under Grandpa's direction we turned directly around and hit up Farr's. He then gave us all French lessons on the way home. What a fun and memorable night for the kids.

The next morning we headed down for lunch with Nate at City Creek. We took the opportunity to look at the fancy and impressive new display at the Church History Library.

The temple square gardeners were digging up summer and planting winter. And we even saw one tree with the Christmas lights turned on!

We found the fish at City Creek.

And played at the extraordinarily crowed dino playground.

So glad we're a forever family. Come back soon, Grandpa!

INTERMISSION

Aunt Jenna!

The original plan was to have Jenna down for her birthday, but tummy bugs and elusive shuttles changed things around a bit, so it was a bit belated. But we partied anyway! Nate and Jenna cooked up a giant pot of Mom's potato soup during piano lessons, and we downed it, followed by some chocolate cake. Post-bedtime we painted fingernails (sparkly black! We are so radical), sang, and chatted it up. I even got to meet "the boy" via Skype.

Should've gotten her a fire extinguisher for her bday.

She got to participate in our pumpkin carving family home evening, which was chaotic and messy, but the kids loved it. P.S. ALL OF THESE PUMPKINS CAME FROM OUR GARDEN!! I'm so proud.

Leah stayed busy frosting sugar cookies. Usually I make them, then we frost them and put jack-o-lantern faces made of candy corns on them. I didn't have the time nor the inclination to make them. So we bought them from WalMart. And they were all about the size of a quarter, so the faces didn't really happen. And they were gross. Fail on Mommy's part. But Leah spent a lot of time frosting them and loved it. And Addison and Bryn each did a few too. The rest found their way to file 13, if you know what I mean.

A window into the insanity. That boy has crazies in his eyes.