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.