Carving Pumpkins

Usually every year we get too excited and carve our pumpkins weeks before Halloween, and then they are completely withered and the designs unrecognizable by Halloween. But this year, because October was so busy, we carved them just a few days before Halloween. We made it our Monday night activity. 

She had so much fun playing with the pumpkin guts and seeds. And it was hilarious to watch, until I realized I had one sticky baby to clean up. I always seem to forget how much the pumpkin stains your skin too, oh well, it's all part of the fun. 

She was pretty proud of the pumpkin daddy carved. 

She loves leaning her head back to look at things, so cute. 

After we cleaned up Emmeline and got her to bed, I carved her hands and feet into our other pumpkin. 

Pumpkin Patch Round 2

My sister Heather is pregnant with her third baby and was put on bed-rest for several weeks. Unfortunately her bed-rest coincided with Halloween. Their daughter Aleksa was disappointed that they wouldn't make it to the pumpkin patch this year. Since we came to town to visit the week before Halloween, we thought it would be fun to take Aleksa to the pumpkin patch to get her pumpkin. 

This pumpkin patch was the I ching of pumpkin patches. This place was insanely cool and full of harvest magic. 

There were pumpkins already cut, or you could ride their "hay ride" out to the pumpkin fields and cut one yourself--we didn't have time or we would have definitely done that. They had orange pumpkins, they had white pumpkins, they had cinderella pumpkins, but seriously I have never seen so many pumpkins in my life.

You can see the pumpkin fields in the distance.

This is not actually her pumpkin. Aleksa had to have the biggest pumpkin she could find. It was so large even I couldn't carry it very far. 

On top of that, they had a miniature maze for the littles and a large maze for the adults. Although it was a blast, the small maze was a lawsuit waiting to happen with kids climbing and running all along the top of the maze. 

And furthermore they had a giant corn-pit. It was crawling with babies sucking on kernels and kids throwing handfuls of them at each other. I'm sure there were thousands of germs floating around, but what fun!

I stayed with Emmeline in the corn-pit while Aleksa went down the slide--yes there was a slide too! This was a full on fun-house! And all of it was free too. You only had to pay for the pumpkins. 

I heard some moms talking about this being their second or third trip to this seasonal fun-house. Nothing is better than free entertainment for your kiddos. Wish someone would do something like this in southeastern Idaho. 

Straw Mazes are More Fun than Corn Mazes

Apparently we were trying to get all of our Fall fun in at the same time, because just a few days after we went to the pumpkin patch, we went to the straw maze with some of our good friends from our BYU-I dating days. And by the way, straw mazes are more fun that corn mazes--or at least this one was. There were dark tunnels, and slippery slides throughout, and it was so much more fun--though a little tricky while carrying a little one. 

Emmeline is getting pretty good at crawling, and the hay didn't phase her a bit. 

Holding each other's baby. 

They're destined to date, or at least be friends :)

Don't know why this picture is so weird, but when we got out of the maze, there was a camel!?!

Pumpkin Patch Fun

The day after our Anniversary we went to the pumpkin patch to get our pumpkins. It is so much more fun decorating a house than an apartment, but it is hard to show restraint. I wanted to just pepper the house, inside and out, with pumpkins. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny with a light breeze...if only Emmeline had left her crankiness at home. She's normally so good, and so happy. But that day, she was so uncooperative--bad day to try a photo shoot.

But we did catch a few good ones with her tutu on--which once I figured out that tulle comes in 4" rolls, it was a lot easier to make!

She was trying to eat the pumpkin, so cute!

I think she looks really pretty here. 

How we almost couldn't get married

Time is a fickle thing. Sometimes I can't believe it's been two years, and then other times I feel like we've been married for much longer (in a good way).

In the two years that we've been married: Eric graduated from BYU-Idaho, I worked full-time for over a year, Eric joined the Idaho Falls Police Dept., we've lived in two apartments before buying our house, and we had our little Emmeline.

In remembrance of our day, I thought I'd share a little known anecdote about how dear old Murphy conspired against us.

About a week before our wedding, Eric and I decided to go to the temple together one last time before we got married.

The temple worker scanned our recommends, I was about to start walking back when I realized, the worker hadn't given Eric his recommend back yet.

After a few seconds, it was clear that something was amiss. The worker then said, "There seems to be a problem, will you wait in the waiting room for the temple president."

!?!?!?!?!?!

We had just both had our interviews so we could be sealed/married, so this was extra baffling. 

You can imagine the questions that went through our heads...

"What's wrong with Eric's recommend?" "Was the recommend not filled out correctly?" Did they think Eric was unworthy?" "Were we going to be able to get married?" "Is this a sign?"

Yep my brain went there. And it kept going in circles while they kept us waiting for 20 minutes or more.

There we sat amongst happy family members waiting to see two people sealed/married, while we sat worried that we wouldn't be able to have our own wedding.We completely missed our session, but forget about that, I was more worried about what this would mean for our sealing--I know we--er me--was overreacting, but it's what I do in this kind of situation.

Finally, the Temple President came to talk to us.

There are two different kinds of recommends, there is a living ordinance recommend and a regular recommend. The Living ordinance is for doing your own temple work and is a one-time use kinda deal, whereas the regular is good for 2 years to do work for the dead. (If you would like to know more, go here http://mormon.org/beliefs/church)

Eric's current recommend still had one year left, so he opted to not renew his regular recommend and just get the living ordinance. Well apparently,  you can't do that and the Stake President didn't know that. So when his living ordinance went through it changed the bar code for his regular recommend and didn't match the one he was carrying. The Temple President had called Eric's Stake President to figure out why the bar codes didn't match.

So, Eric would have to go back to the Stake President, and redo his interview and get the recommend with the matching bar code. Phew. I was so relieved. We were able to go to the next session and enjoy our evening. But just thinking about all the ways our wedding day could have gone wrong makes me ill. What if we hadn't decided to go to the temple a few days before our sealing!?! Would they have let us be married that day? Thank goodness, Heavenly Father was on our side and prompted us to go the temple! We were married October 8, 2011 without any hiccups.

It has been a great two years! And I'm sure life will be full anecdotes, mishaps and trials, but I'm glad I'm doing it alongside Eric.

Playing in the Garden

We had some BEAUTIFUL weather the first week of October so we took advantage and spent most of the afternoon cleaning out the garden. Emmeline had so much fun playing in the garden. She loves to be outside, and to get dirty. 

I took these pictures in a sequence. As soon as one picture cleared, I took another. It shows how far she moved in between each picture. She thinks the camera is an even better toy than Mommy's phone, so whenever she sees it we have to take our pictures fast, before she's in our face trying to grab it. 

                      

That is One Good Lookin' Mustache

"That is one good lookin' mustache."

So Shelley has been begging me to write this blog to explain this piece of artwork here. As some of you know I am a police officer for the city of Idaho Falls. The city has gas pumps that we use to fill up our cars whenever we need to. I normally have a routine when I get gas, but one afternoon while I was pumping my gas I decided my windows needed cleaning, so I walked over and got the squeegee to clean the windows, when I was finished I needed more paper towels to clean up the drips that were all over my car. So I walked back to get some more towels, at this point my car was full and the gas pump had stopped. After I threw my paper towels away, I got in my car and began to drive off. Very soon I heard a terrible noise, like something big was broken. I got out, looked and realized I had not taken the pump out of my car, as you can clearly see from the drawing. Luckily for me, the pumps are designed for people like me and break away with a certain amount of force. I expected gas to be flowing everywhere when I realized what had happened but there wasn't any. Of course when I saw how easily the hose came off I thought it must be fairly easy to put back on too, so I made my attempt and that is when I got gas everywhere. Needless to say, I did not attempt it again, notified my supervisor, who told me to send an email to the Cpt. to give him a heads up and to put the hose in front of the maintenance door.

The next day I showed up to work and found this drawing in my box, which was drawn by one of the other Captains at work, and also multiple copies which were hung around the office for all to enjoy. Since the awesomeness of my mustache was such a popular topic of conversation at role call everyone knew who the drawing was depicting immediately.

I later found out that the Cpt. who drew this has also pulled the gas hose out himself a time or two and also many others in the department, so I wasn't too worried about it.

Shooting with Kevin and Tori

The weekend before General Conference, my little sister Tori and her new hubby Kevin came to visit. I'm so glad they were able to come for a long weekend. We had so much fun. 

Since Kevin loves to shoot, but doesn't get the chance very often, and Tori had never been, we felt it was high time we took them shooting. 

Tori and I had fun shooting my .22--which doesn't kick and you can actually focus on aiming :) And Eric and Kevin had fun shooting all the other "big guns" like the black powder that I won't shoot. 

We all took turns entertaining Emmeline in the car---some activities just don't mix with babies :)

We love you guys and wish we could see you more often!

Emmeline's First Camping Trip

Thanks to the Government furlough Eric's drill weekend was canceled at the last minute. He had already rearranged his work schedule for drill, so instead of switching it back we decided to go camping. We've been meaning to go all summer, it just never happened. We wanted to go at least once before winter hit, so I'm glad we were able to make it happen. 

We made tinfoil dinners and then sat around the fire eating smores and listening to daddy play his harmonica. 

Emmeline had a ball through all of it. She stayed up with us until almost 10:00--which is super late for her. Going to bed proved to be a little difficult. But after about 30 minutes she was down for good. Not sure how great we slept with Emmeline in between us, but we were all warm (thanks in part to the many wool blankets--this is Eric's contribution to the post). We all woke up around 7:00 and started on breakfast--which was sausagey, eggy, cheesy, potatoy goodness.

We then packed up and headed home to watch General Conference. We were annoyed that his drill weekend had to be rescheduled, but as least we got to go camping, and watch Conference together (Every year drill is on Conference weekends--obviously there aren't enough LDS members among the people who matter to get drill changed to a different weekend...)

She got sooo dirty... but she LOVED the tinfoil dinners, mashmellows, and our mountain man breakfast!

Emmeline at 8 Months (Sept. 22, 2013)

This last month she has grown so much. She seems like such a different baby than the one she was just even a month ago.

• Teeth! She got her first tooth on Sept. 7, and then just two days later, she got her second tooth on Sept. 9. It has been so nice, she can eat a lot more things now. It's been cute watching her learn how to use them. 
• Crawling! She was so close for several weeks, but was hesitant to actually go for it. She would move one knee forward, but wouldn't go further. It frustrated Eric to no end because he was convinced she could do it. Well on Sept 16 she finally started crawling small distances. She still cries if you make her crawl very far. 
• Around labor day she started pulling herself up (entirely by her own effort) while holding onto someone's hands. But within a few days, she started pulling herself up next to furniture. And now she can pull her self up next to most things, including her crib rail. This makes bedtime and naps a lot more difficult, as any parent can attest to.  .  
• Trying all sorts of new foods. This month she tried potato salad, plums, raisins, crazins, squash, frosty (daddy daughter dates), chick fil-a, cheetos, jello salads, peas, and more
• Eats her plums like an adult. She grabs the plum out of my hands with one hand and starts eating it like an adult--just bites right into the skin. She eats the whole thing in about a minute. You have to be quick to grab the pit from her--she actually swallowed a pit once. She stashes the skin from her plums on the inside of her mouth, and freaks out when you take it out--it's like she's stashing it for later--weirdo...
• Loves to scream and shout--when she's happy! She loves to make noise, and the louder the better. I love taking her shopping because she's a hoot with other people. She "talks" to them, smiles at them, charms them, and if they don't look at her she shouts until they do! It's hilarious.
• Once she figured out how to stay sitting up the bath, she refuses to lie down--which makes washing her hair a challenge. She loves to play with her rubber duckies and splash. 
• LOVES being outside! I don't think I say this enough. She loves anything outside. We can go on outings later in the evening and she'll be on her best behavior--if we're outside. 
• Loves to pull on grass; play in the mulch; eat dirt, grass, rocks and everything else she gets her hands on. 

Her smiles are the best!

Remember that time when she spat up in her sleep and then slept on it? 

This happened this month and things haven't been the same since.