Halloween

 We started out this past week taking the girls to the pumpkin patch. Here is a picture of our little family on the hay pyramid. 

The girls got to go on a couple of rides. It was so cute to watch them have so much fun!

 We had a great time together as a family and it was so much fun. Playing around and finding just the right pumpkin.

 We had fun in the corn maze. Bryan and I let the girls pick which direction we went. This year we went in the entrance and came out the exit (last year that didn't happen).

Claire is so proud of her pumpkin. This year she drew her pumpkin's face and then she carved it.

 Mia also drew her face on her pumpkin. Bryan had to help her carve it...it was pretty heavy duty and he had to use a drill just to start the carving process. Thanks daddy for coming to Mia's rescue.

 Here are our pumpkins...Chase (paw patrol), Dora (Dora the explorer) and then fun faces.

Claire wanted to be Snow White this year. We even did her hair black for it. I made her costume and I have to say I am really proud of how it turned out and that Claire loves it as much as she does.

 Mia really wanted to be Sophia the First. She loves that show. Thanks Grandma Lois for helping us create her special dress. If you look closely we even did her hair brown to be like Sophia. 

What a fun night, but I am exhausted. Our ward trunk-or-treat and chili feed was fun and turn out great (at least I think it did). I am just glad my girls had a great time. These smiles mean so much to me.

It's Getting Cold!!

It is getting colder and colder...time to start dressing warm. That means times to get scarves. I absolutely love making these scarves, but I would love to sell them. I keep making them and I need to sell them. I have a few more than this pictures shows.

Starting from from left to right we have: baseballs, footballs, pumpkins, popcorn (the yellow is actually textured to poke out like popcorn), carrot, lemons and limes, gingerbread men, cookies, ice cream cones, grapefruit, cupcakes, pears and a rocket popsicle. I also have a pencil and a piano keyboard. I am working on a crayon too. I think they would make great teacher Christmas gifts. Let me know if you want to know any more about that. Yes I can ship them too.

Preschool

Mia began going to a co-op preschool this week. She is the youngest in the class, but I am so happy for her to be able to get out and be with kids and learn lots. Here are some of my favorite pictures from her first day. I love this one because her backpack is as big as she is. 

It is her first official first day of school picture! She is so cute!!

Here is Mia and I just before she went into Teacher Alicia's house to begin school.

And she is off....

First Grade

We can't believe it, but Claire is a big first grader. She is so amazing and smart. She loves going to school and learning new things. I love seeing her excitement. Here she is with her pack it lunch bag (which I later learned was for Mia and Claire's was supposed to be the purple and green one...oops). She is all ready to go.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Here Claire is getting ready to get on the bus and in front of her is her best friend from her kindergarten class. They are lucky enough to be in the same class again this year. They even wore the best friend necklaces they have together. We are grateful for this friend. Claire had a rough time when her best friend all growing up moved. Just can't believe she is gone all day long now.

Mia doesn't like the Claire is gone all day long. I have tried to do lots of fun things with her to get her used to being home with just mom. She will start preschool next week which she is so excited about. So for today I decided to teach Mia to ride her bike. I was getting frustrated, but as you can see from this video she finally caught on.

Trip to Utah

This will be a long post because it was 3 weeks of fun! I had a hard time selecting what pictures to use. I had so many more than this, but I had to keep the pictures narrowed down. We started out have my family reunion.

It was so much fun spending time with my family. The girls absolutely loved spending time with their cousins. Here is just a fun picture of me with two of my three sisters. Can you tell that I don't spend as much time out in the sun as they do?

Bryan was the favorite uncle while we were at the beach. He played in the sand with the kids and they loved destroying his creations.

We rented paddle boards while we were there. It was so much fun. I tried standing up with it and I didn't feel all the stable or comfortable, but it was fun to paddle out and take my girls on a ride.

I couldn't help but snap this picture because it was just too cute. These are the youngest of the girl cousins and having a moment together.

For one of our fun activities at our family reunion was some of the minute to win it games. It was a blast. Here are some of our favorite pictures from the games.

The afternoon of the last day of our reunion, we cleaned up and packed up camp and then headed over to tour the childhood home of David O' McKay. It was so neat to go through his home and see some of the original furniture, clothes and to see the way the built onto the house.

Before Bryan drove to Salmon Idaho for a friend's wedding, we took the girls to a local fish farm to let them fish for the very first time. They absolutely loved it! They were so proud of themselves for catching a fish.

This year instead of attending the Ute Stampede we went to the Oakley Rodeo. We love going to the Ute Stampede but all of us couldn't attend it so we chose to go to one that we could all attend together. We had amazing seats. Mia just wanted to sit with her Papa. She loves being with him so much.

The 4th of July was so much fun. We made homemade ice cream, had yummy food, spent time with each other, had our own firework show, did sparklers and the girls got to have fun colored hair today.

 There were way too many pictures to chose from and I absolutely loved spending time at home. I had many mixed emotions about coming back. I wanted to see Bryan and be in my own home, but I didn't want  to leave my family.

One Whole Year!!

I can't believe this was my amazing little girl on her first day as a big Kindergarten kid! I was so happy for her to start her school adventure and so proud of her for her desire to learn.

 Here is our first ever school picture of our amazing Claire Bear!!

 She has made many good friends this year, but one an incredible friend...who has quickly become one of her best friends. They even love wearing their matching dresses to school.

 She loved her opportunity to be the V.I.P. and part of this experience was to bring a special treat to her entire class. She picked to bring red, white and blue star sugar cookies. Claire and the class bear helped me make the cookies.

 This is the last time I get to see Claire get on the bus as a Kindergarten Kid.

What an amazing and happy girl we have. We can't believe how much she has grown over this last school year. It was a great year. She had an amazing teacher and she developed a strong desire to learn! We love you Claire!! Thanks for all the amazing experiences you have shared with us this school year!!

Busy but Fun Weekend.

We had two visitors in our home this weekend. The girls were so excited for both of them to spend a few nights at our house. Our first visitor was one of Claire's best friends...Lilly. The first night she was with us, I told all the girls to go get their pajamas on and then I heard them all just cracking up laughing. Needless to say I went in the room to see what was so funny and Claire and Lilly had the exact same nightgown and they were so excited to wear them together.

 The next morning I decided to take the girls to do something fun. Bryan was busy working on our sprinklers so it was just me and the three girls. I took them to a place to paint pottery. Here they are anxious to get started...which is probably why Claire has crazy excitement eyes.

 They each picked out a hot chocolate mug to paint and quickly shouted out colors for me to put on their plates so they could start painting away. It was so much fun to watch the joy they had in painting these mugs. I wish I could take my girls to do this more often! I am so excited for this weekend to come to see how they all turned out.

Saturday afternoon our other visitor arrived. My best friend Peggy came to visit us. She had run a half-marathon that morning and then drove up here to spend a few days with us. We all had a bunch of fun. Lots and lots of laughing happened at our house. Peggy and I taught each other how to make some scarfs. Peggy taught me how to crotchet a "cookie" scarf from a book we both bought....and I taught her how to knit a scarf. While Peggy was here, we also watched movies, played games, danced, read books (well Claire read books to Peggy), got slurpees from the #1 selling slurpee 7-11, visited the 9/11 memorial, celebrated Peggy's birthday and Peggy introduced us to Geocaching...we had fun finding 7 different ones right around our neighborhood.

 It was sad to see these fun times end, but glad we got to make the memories. We like having visitors...who wants to come visit us next? We love it!!!