Snowman

Merit made her first snowman at my mom's the weekend before Christmas.  It was a pretty good time, Chap liked eating snow, which freaked me out, but oh well, he hasn't died yet:)

My Birthday

As usual, I am bad at taking pictures of my own life events, but I turned 29 on Dec. 9 this year.  It was fun because it was on a Friday, and Logan gets off early on Friday's, but it was also the ward party and he had to cook :( Chapter also guilted Kristy into ordering me a birthday cake since I didn't have one.  And that, is the only picture I have...

Raking Leaves

The leaves finally came down on Dec. 5, it took forever this year!  As usual, we raked them up into Logan's truck and fed them to Grandpa's cows.

Christmas Tree

We went to Sevier County for Thanksgiving, and while we were there we went to cut a Christmas tree with Justin and his fiance's family.  I was negligent and didn't pack snow clothes for the kids and it was pretty cold, but luckily Logan found a great "corner" tree pretty quickly and it was a memorable time.

7 Magic Mountains

We went to Vegas with Anisa's family to take their family pictures and have a little fun.  She wanted them taken at a place called 7 Magic Mountains just outside of Vegas near Jean, Nevada.  We stayed at the Goldstrike in Jean and it was super sketch.  Bad.  Ugh.  Just thinking about it makes me shudder. But catching happy hour at Hash House a Go-Go was fun.  You can get a bucket of chicken tenders and fries for only $5!  And the 7 Magic Mountains were pretty cool.

Halloween 2016

I learned a couple things this Halloween.

#1: You don't do the face painting at the ward carnival.  They got paint on Merit's costume and I ended up staying up the night before Halloween and redoing 1/3 of her candy corn, and of course, it was the hard 1/3.

#2: You absolutely take pictures in the morning instead of right before trick or treating.  With little kids, they are all worn out by the time 5:30 rolls around, and you are wasting precious daylight with the pictures.

This year Chap wanted to trick or treat at Daddy's office, so Logan took candy and passed it out before we came and the kids loved it!  Anisa also invited us to trick or treat at her school and it was AWESOME! The kids got so much candy and had so much fun.  The best thing about this was the kids were dressed up in the morning and I took their pictures.  They turned out priceless!  So much better than in years past.

The theme this year was "Classic Halloween" and I was a total slacker and Logan and I didn't have costumes...I was supposed to be a Jack-o-lantern (I even bought LED lights to "glow" with), and Logan wanted to be a ghost.  Nope.  I ran out of time and energy.  Oh well.

Chap was a bat.  He just had black clothing and I made him wings and ears.  Simple, and he loved it, even if no one knew what he was unless they could see his wings.

Logan was the mastermind behind Merit's costume.  I will admit, I didn't catch the vision at first, but she was the cutest little candy corn anyone has ever seen.  I used a summer dress that fits her to make a pattern for her candy corn dress and she wore a long sleeved white shirt underneath.  I made her hat out of felt, a party hat pattern, stuffing and a headband.  She was so proud of her hat and wore it almost the whole time.

Things to remember from this Halloween? Probably the fact that Merit wouldn't ride in the stroller and insisted on walking and carrying her basket by herself.  She didn't even want to hold hands and a couple times she even ran away and yelled "Catch!". Little stinker.  I'm sure her independence will come in handy someday, but right now it is so frustrating.  Good thing she's cute:)

Pumpkin Patch

We drove up over Chapter's fall break from preschool to go to the pumpkin patch in my hometown.  Unfortunately, Daddy didn't come with us, but we had a good time anyway.

Chap turned 4!

All Chapter really wanted for his birthday this year was to go bowling with his cousins and a Pokemon cake.  And we made that happen.  And it was AWESOME being able to haul 7 kids to Fiesta Fun all by myself in the van:)  Chap is blurry in most of the pictures, which is fine, because I want to remember him like he was, so excited he was bouncing all over the place!

 Then we went back to our house for cake and ice cream.

 He got more Lego Duplo's for his birthday.  And he has been Mr. Lego almost daily since then. He mostly builds hotels.  Watch out world, this one might be a structural engineer:)

Las Vegas

After picking me up in Vegas, we went to Trader Joe's and then to the Mandalay Bay Shark Exhibit. The kids (and us) were mesmerized!  What a cool place.  We wanted to go there on our honeymoon, but the line was INSANE!  Now, 9 years later, it was much better and we had a leisurely trip through.  

Then we finished off the night by eating "in the castle".  We had a very happy boy!

San Antonio Days 3 and 4

Sunday we pretty much just hung out and went to church.  I also found out that I am definitely a Utah mormon in the sense that I really love wards with a variety of ages.  Mandy's ward felt like a young married ward with 10,000 kids.  Don't get me wrong, I loved that sacrament meeting with almost deafening, but I really like the perspective of many age groups in lessons.  It adds depth and experience that I as a person who is still (barely) in my 20s, lack.

On Monday, Britt left around 6 for her 8 o'clock flight.  Mandy and I wend to a thrift store that is only for kids stuff.  It was SO FUN!  I'm such a mom/nerd:)  I stuffed my carry-on just as full as I could, haha.  Then she dropped me off at the airport.  I was SO EXCITED to see La Gloria at the airport.  Sadly, it is a sit down restaurant, and I was paranoid about being late for my flight so I ate at a chicken place called Raising Cane's and it was pretty good.  But then my flight was delayed, and the gates switched and we ended up leaving late.  I totally could have had a tamale for the road.  My one regret about Texas.  I'm still sad about it.

To make up time we took a "bumpy shortcut" back to Vegas.  Who knew?  And I sat by a really nice girl on the way back, it was really fun to chat with her. We arrived only about 20 minutes delayed and my family picked me up.  I was so happy to see my kiddies and my Logan!  It had been a long, tiring, fun and memorable 4 days.  There has been talk that this needs to happen yearly, I'm not so sure about that, but please, let's not wait another 9 years to all get together!

San Antonio Day 2

Saturday we were planning to go to Waco early and spend time there and in Austin, but Julie didn't make it there until about 11am because of baby troubles and we decided it was too late to spend that long in the car.  So we hit the missions.  We were planning on going on Sunday, but I'm glad we didn't wait because it took most of the day and it was so worth it!  We started out by going to see the temple and then to eat at a place called La Gloria, where I had a Texas sized tamale that was the food highlight of the trip:) 

This is Mission San Jose.  It's by far the grandest mission and is SO BEAUTIFUL!  

 However, Mission Espada was my favorite.  It's tiny, and weirdly homey.  I just loved this place.

The takeaway from this day is that I am well suited to dry heat.  I was made for St. George:)  Haha.  My hair is weird, and my heavy RayBans would barely stay on my face it was so humid and sweaty!  Yuck!

San Antonio Day 1

I basically have the best husband ever.  Even if we did have to shame him in to letting me go a little bit:)

I went to San Antonio, Texas for a girl's weekend with my high school friends/freshman roommates.

It was pretyy much a miracle.  We all had the same weekend available, all husbands/fiance were on board, and we had a place to stay and cheap flights.

This idea started brewing in the spring when Logan and I were looking for cheap places to fly for a family vacation.  We noticed that flights to Houston were affordable and I have a friend (Julie) who lives there.  I talked to her a little bit about it, but then Logan ended up taking the scouts rafting and using his vacation time for that.  Then during our high school reunion I said something about a girls night in Texas, totally joking, and Mandy and Julie and Brittney acted interested.  Then we found out flights to San Antonio were cheap too.  So we booked it about 2 weeks later.

My Friday, Sept 16 started at 3am.  I drove Logan's truck across town to catch the shuttle to the Las Vegas Airport.  We arrived there about 5am Nevada time.  My flight left around 7.  I was originally assigned the very back seat with no window, but the flight literally had like 30 people on it, and they let us sit wherever we wanted.  I chose a window seat just behind the wing, and I got to experience my first daytime flight with a window seat.  It was beautiful!  God is amazing!  I thoroughly enjoyed that.

My flight got in a couple hours before Brittney's, so I hung around at the San Antonio Airport until she arrived.  Then Mandy picked us up with a Texas sized Dr. Pepper:)

We headed straight to the Alamo.  It's small, free, and not a lot to it.  I had read a book about it prior to going, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't have known anything.  There is very little information there.  That was kind of disappointing.  So many people visit and have no clue. 

Then we hit up the River Walk.  SO PRETTY!  We took a little $10 cruise and it really made it easy to see and learn everything.  

 After that we went to a yummy mexican place called Taqueria Data Point and it was delish!

We finished the night off with some pedicures.  Day one was a blast!