Birthday Fun!

Yesterday was my 22nd birthday. It started with Chris secretly going to the store to get me a box of Cookie Crisp for my birthday cereal. He's too nice. Chris came home early from work (yay!) with secret ingredients for dinner and a movie from Redbox. (We were boycotting Redbox for charging us for a movie we KNOW we returned, but it didn't last too long.) Since it wasn't time for dinner yet, we decided to do presents early. Here I am with my prizes! Chris signed up on Etsy and bought me two of the items I had marked as favorites. Here is an illustration by Kecky of a scene from The Magician's Nephew. I even got to take a trip to Walmart to pick out a frame!
Here you can see the handmade leaf earrings I also got. So cool!Here's Chris in the kitchen making dinner. We had loaded mashed potatoes (mashed potatoes, bacon, and cheese!), chicken alfredo pasta, biscuits, and raspberry lemonade. It was so yummy!Here's the set-up. I had to leave the room while he set the table and lit the candles. It was so much fun!After dinner, we went to Nielson's for some frozen custard. We brought it home to eat while we watched the movie, Get Smart. It was a great day!
Thanks to everyone else for the phone calls and messages! Kathy made me these sweet fingerless gloves for the cold weather that is on its way. Maybe one day I can be as cool and crafty as my older sis.

Gingerbread House Festival at Thanksgiving Point

Last Saturday Chris and I went to the Gingerbread House Festival at Thanksgiving Point. We got to see some really cool houses. My favorite was this first one, the plantation house. There was a lot of variety and some really good ideas. We took some pictures of our favorites. The last one that I am in is a collection of a bunch of famous buildings from around the world, which was my second favorite.

New Job!!

Big news for our family! Chris was offered a new job last week at ES3 in Clearfield. He has accepted their offer and put in his two weeks' notice at Eimco. We are really excited about all the new changes this means for us in the near future.

Halloween Costumes

We had lots of Halloween fun taking Atticus and Scarlett to our ward trunk-or-treat yesterday. Chris and I decided we should probably come up with at least some token costumes. The kids looked super cute, but we are so bad at taking pictures that we totally forgot to get some photos of the actual event. Atticus was dressed as a ninja, and Scarlett was a cute little witch. I know, I know, we need to work on our remember-to-take-some-photos skillz. I promise we are trying! Anyway, here are our silly costumes. Chris went as a police/FBI/special organization agent, complete with a dollar store gun and handcuff set. I was a construction worker, thanks to all the tools and gear Chris has accumulated from visiting job sites.


I don't know if we will have another chance to wear these great ensembles, but it was lots of fun to at least dress up this year. We were so glad we got the chance to go!

Haunted Graham Cracker House

We saw some haunted house kits at the store a while ago, and we thought it would be a fun thing to do on our own for a date. We got some chocolate graham crackers, Twizzlers, candy corn and pumpkins, Twix, gummy raspberries, Runts, and gummy worms to see what we could manage. We dyed the Royal Icing purple for a spooky feel.

Here's the overall view, except that you can't really see the candy corn roofline.
From this angle you can see the side room and the spider on the roof a lot better.
Here's the dirt pile with worms crawling out of it, courtesy of Chris.
Skull and crossbones second story.
I had a lot of fun paving the front walk with candy corn and lining it with pumpkins and orange Runts. We used the Twizzlers for the spider, the fence railing in the back, and the pillars by the front door.

From this angle you can see the worms crawling around the back of the house and out of the hole in the first-level roof, plus the Twix and Twizzlers fence running around the pumpkin patch.
Here's a close-up of the pumpkin patch in all its glory.We had a lot of fun making this for a holiday besides Christmas. It makes me realize that we could do this for almost any holiday!

It's A Girl :)

Yay! It's a girl! Chris and I are expecting a cute little baby girl on February 15, 2009. We got a couple of cute little things for her at Old Navy. We don't really have any good ultrasound pictures, but we have gotten to see her a couple of times. We hope this little pink sneakers fit her sometime, at least for pictures.

This is her baby bear outfit for the trip home from the hospital. It has little ears on top, fold-back mittens on the hands, footies, and a soft fleece lining.


This is what we are basing our nursery around when we finally get into a place with enough room for one (hopefully soon!).

Chris's Birthday & Labor Day Paintballing Adventure

Chris had his 26th birthday last Sunday. Here is the cake that I made for him.

Chris got a hold of the frosting after I was done and gave himself some icing braces.
This is a picture of me frosting the cake. For some reason, the white frosting wasn't as stiff as I was expecting, but it all tasted the same in the end.

Spencer, Jon, and Chris went paintballing on Labor Day morning. It was a bit muddy and rainy, but they had a good time.
Jon and Spencer sporting some fashionable orange spots.

This was the first thing I saw when Chris got home. Those holes in the knees of his jeans weren't there when he left. He also didn't know that he had orange paint all over his face. I thought it was a nice look.
After the boys went paintballing, we made some cheesy potatoes and barbeque chicken in dutch ovens. It was quite good considering that we made up the recipes as we went.

California Roadtrip. . . The Only Kind of Vacation For Us

At the start of August, we took a little jaunt (i.e. 14 hour drive) down to San Jose with the Mann family to visit Spencer, Cynthia, and Kaitlyn. We had a lot of fun visiting San Francisco, the San Jose flea market, and Santa Cruz. Here are a few of our pictures.

Here we are down on the wharfs getting ready to go get some clam chowder in bread bowls and look at all the old arcade games.
A few of us were waiting outside the Alcatraz clothing store.
We took a little driving tour of the steep streets of San Francisco. This is one of the ones that scared me the most.
We drove across the bridge just for the fun of it, then turned around and came back. It was lots of fun!

You can see some more of the fun at Spencer and Cynthia's blog.

Chris Has a Chip on His Shoulder

This is me, with a chip on my shoulder. We just found it, I don't know how long it has been there.

Grand Lake, CO

Chris and I recently took a much-needed vacation to Grand Lake, Colorado. We went camping and hiking. Apparently, Colorado isn't warm during the first week of June. Go figure. Here are some shots from all the fun.

Here's Chris at our campsite. It's kind of a weird angle, but I was standing on a tree stump.

Here's our little tent under what was left of the trees. A pine beetle was raging on the forest at large, and about 2/3 of the trees were dead.
This is us on our drive to Denver. Note that Chris is being safe and keeping his eyes on the road.
This is at the start of our unplanned eleven mile hike. Adams Falls were only .3 miles up the trail, and the next thing on the sign was 5.5 miles, so we just kept going for some reason.

Chris is getting ready to knife a moose. You can't see the moose in the picture, though, so it just looks like he's crazy. :)Here is the moose that Chris was supposed to be threatening with his knife. We saw him on the way up, and he was still there on the way back.
This is the canyon we hiked up. Note the mountains far in the distance. . .
This is us on a cliff that we thought was near the end. Turns out it wasn't so near.

This is where we turned around. We think we made it to our destination. We were headed for a place called Lost Pine Lake, but when we got there we couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a lake or not, and there were no signs and some pesky backcountry campers. See how close that peak is now!

This is me barely moving on the way back. I didn't really know if I was going to make it. Luckily you can't really see my face.This is me at Buffalo Bill's grave near Denver. What a cute little tourist spot.
This is Chris in front of Boettcher Mansion. We thought it was a tourist spot, but when we went inside it wasn't like a museum or anything, and it looked like they were setting up for a wedding reception, so we made it look like we were just grabbing some pamphlets and booked it outta there.