[ trunk-or-treating and pumpkin carving! ]

On Saturday we had our ward Halloween party, which John and I were in charge of helping out with. It was a success! We had hot dogs, chips and homemade root beer for dinner and then went trunk-or-treating in the parking lot afterwards. We were trying to help Angie with saying "trick-or-treat" and every time we'd come to the next car we would say, "What do you say?" and she replied, "Help please?" which is what she usually says at home when she wants something. So we had to re-train her! After the fifth car she was opening up her back and saying "trick-or-treat" like a pro! We were so proud! The only thing is that she wanted to start eating the treats right then of course! We then had to stop for a minute to enjoy some of her treats, so I think now that she'll be really ready for tonight!






We had lots of fun carving pumpkins with John's family on Sunday night. Here they are all lit up! Mine is the silly face, John's is the scary face and Angie's is the spider of course! John has a tradition of carving intricate designs in his pumpkin every year, this year wasn't as extravagant, but still turned out great! John is so fast at it that he was able to carve his and Angie's in the same amount of time I carved mine! I'm a bit of a perfectionist though, so maybe that's why it took so long! :) Angie didn't care to help out on the carving, but thought the outcome was great and of course gave the pumpkin a kiss! Seems to be Angie's new thing! :)





HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

[ cookies for daddy ]

This is Angie's first time helping me bake cookies, or do any baking for that matter! We decided to bake Daddy's favorite cookies... white chocolate chip! She did a great job pouring and stirring the ingredients in without a huge mess! :) Here's a couple of pictures and a video clip of Angie helping out. My favorite picture is the one with the egg... she has a kissing fetish right now and apparently that was the thing to kiss! Funny kid! I'm not sure where she gets her ideas from but they keep us entertained!

[ what these daisies say about me... ]

What These Daisies Say About You

You have a spirt of pure optimism. Your view of the world is eternally cheerful. You are bold and vibrant. Incredibly striking, you always stand out in a crowd. You are adaptable and flexible. You can thrive in almost any situation. You are often under estimated. Your critics and enemies are in for a surprise.

What Do The Flowers You Pick Say About You?

[ what color crayon are you? ]

You Are a Yellow Crayon

Your world is colored with happy, warm, fun colors. You have a thoughtful and wise way about you. Some people might even consider you a genius. Charming and eloquent, you are able to get people to do things your way. While you seem spontaneous and free wheeling, you are calculating to the extreme. Your color wheel opposite is purple. You both are charismatic leaders, but purple people act like you have no depth.

What Color Crayon Are You?

[ it's official... ]

John has officially graduated! He got his diploma in the mail a few weeks ago, but I kept forgetting to take a picture of him with it... so here it is! I'm so incredibly proud of him! It was a long haul, but we made it! I know there were many times that we both thought we'd never see this day... but now it's here and we couldn't be happier! All of his hard work has paid off and now we're ready for the next adventure, whatever that may be. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough, but for the moment we're content with working hard towards our next goal! Congrats Johnny, Angie and I are so very proud!

[ "ti-ee-pigs" ]

Angie always has some kind of stuffed animal in each one of her hands everywhere she goes! These are her new favorites... guinea pigs that her aunt and uncle let her have. Although Angie calls them "ti-ee-pigs" instead, which is really quite amusing to hear her say! The other night just after dinner she was playing with them at the table and were making them kiss! This is also something that she's discovered lately. I wonder where she got that from? :)

Here she is making her guinea pigs kiss and showing us how it's done, complete with a hug too... the picture of her closing her eyes with her lips puckered is her "kissing face". You can see just how animated she is in these pictures! We love our quirky little red-head!

[ so glad when Daddy comes home! ]

I realized the other day that I haven't taken any recent pictures of Angie and I. This one turned out pretty good considering I was taking it too! It's funny though how Angie is so much more excited in the picture of her and her Daddy! She's always glad when John comes home as you can see! She is definitely a Daddy's girl!

Also here are a couple of videos that I took the other day when I was trying to get her to sing some songs for me. We ended up with bits and pieces of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" while she's winding herself in the drapes... she's a funny one! Spiders are her new favorite thing recently, every morning she looks out the window for spiders and says "Oh Scary Spider!" as she shakes like she's scared and then smiles ear to ear! Also every time she goes over to Nana's house she finds all the plastic spiders that my Mom has out for Halloween decorations and then wants us to hide them again so she can find them again!

The last video is a new obsession of Angie's... she loves to just flip through books, particularly "grown up" books of course instead of her books. We have to really watch her though because she has found our scriptures lately. So we decided to give her an older copy of her very own so that she can learn how to gently flip through the pages without damaging ours. She's doing pretty well as you can see in the video, it's funny though because she just gets in her zone and that's all she focuses on and completely tunes me out of course! Just more of Angie's little quirks that we love!

[ etsy shop ]

These pictures turned out so cute I had to post them! I took them a couple of weeks ago for my Mom's good friend Chris who is getting her business going on Etsy. Her business name is "Oh sew much" and she is an unbelievable seamstress! I have posted about this before but I don't think the link worked, so I thought I would share the pictures instead. She makes lots of cute kid stuff, like this art apron (which Angie obviously loved) and the Halloween tote, which she will love even more when it comes to trick-or-treating! Anyway, I would love it if everyone would go check out her stuff on Etsy and tell me what you think about prices and everything. Just look up her business name and it should come right up. She'll be adding more items soon, but just needs some input on what people think and especially moms since she makes a lot of children's items. Thanks everyone!

[ just to clarify... ]

So as I have been reading the comments everyone has left about the vintage house that we're in and I realized that some of you think that it's ours! Unfortunately it's not! We are getting an unbelievably great deal to rent it until it sells. It's on the market right now, but because of the economy I think we'll be here for a while! So, I just wanted to clarify and make sure everyone knows we're renting, although we can't wait until we can get something to call our own. Hopefully while we're here in this house we can save up a bunch so we can own much sooner than we hoped, but we'll see! Sorry for the confusion! :)

[ project completion! ]

I wanted to show everyone the side project that John has been working on. He was so excited to be using his talent and skills again since he hasn't been doing a lot of hands-on work since we were in Rexburg. So I had write a blurb about it to show my admiration for his great work of art! John has been helping my Dad do some remodeling in my parent's bathroom and here is the finished product! Doesn't it look fabulous? You should have seen it before, there was white tile from the 70's that had been collecting a lot of mold and mildew! And to top it off, the tile didn't even go as high as the shower, so this is a major improvement! I have never seen the whole tiling process before so it was interesting to see all the steps required to complete the job. I found that there definitely is a talent to laying tile and it takes a skilled craftsman to make the job look professional! I know I'm biased when I say this but John definitely is a skilled craftsman in my opinion! Great work Babe! I can't wait until you can create great works of art in our own house someday!

[ time for potty training! ]

So today I started the process of trying to potty train Angie! She's been dealing with constipation for a few months now and we have yet to find the cause of it. At first we thought she was allergic to dairy, but ruled that out, so we're thinking at this point she knows what she's doing and might just need to be retrained to go to the bathroom so it doesn't become a problem again. I know that every time she has been constipated that she's been in quite a bit of pain, so we're thinking that she relates going to the bathroom with pain of course and is now holding it for that reason. We're crossing our fingers that this will be the answer, because if not we test to see if she's allergic to wheat, which will be so hard to do, but worth it! Anyway, I'm sure that's probably enough information on that subject! I just thought I would take a picture of all the "gear" we have to potty train our sweet but stubborn red-head! The potty of course, a timer (so that she's only on the potty for a couple of minutes as to not get overwhelmed!), the potty chart with stickers and lastly glow sticks! Angie's new favorite thing is glow sticks, so it's the perfect prize if she goes! Notice there is already one sticker on the chart! She went once today without a fuss, so I'd say we're already making progress! YAY!

[ "The Vintage House" ]

Alright, here are the long awaited pictures of our "vintage" house! Now you can see for yourself just how "vintage" it really is! We start out with a close up of the blue shag carpet that's in our room- lucky us! :)

Here's a view from the carport:

The living room:


The front of the house, I couldn't get a clear shot in front because there are 3 big cherry trees out front, so this will have to do:

View from the front porch:

The Dining room:


The wall of windows... I love this during the day because it's so light! Follow this around and you're in the living room:

The view of the backyard... it's huge!

The front door, it's a split level and we never go downstairs, hence the gate to keep Angie upstairs too! We use the side entrance off the kitchen which takes us right out to the carport. I'll be sure to get pictures of the downstairs another day!

The kitchen of course:

Angie's room, I swear it's bigger than ours, which is technically the master bedroom! As you can tell she loves her room and feels right at home!


Another view of the dining room from the side door in the kitchen:

View of the side door to the carport and the kitchen bar:

Our "master" bedroom with the shag carpet:

Matching tiny blue bathroom, especially the shower! John has to duck his head in order to get his hair wet! Also to put it in perspective... I can't even stretch out my leg to shave because it's so small! It's crazy!


The hallway with lots of storage as you can see!

Last but certainly not least... the orange, tan and brown bathroom with everything matching and I mean everything!

So that's it! Hope you enjoyed the grand tour! I'll be sure to get the rest of the downstairs soon! We don't hardly ever go down there because we have so much space upstairs! There are 4 more bedrooms down there, a small family room, a bathroom and 3 different storage closets! Crazy how big this house is! Please feel free to leave comments, I'd love to hear what you guys think! This house definitely has character, wouldn't you agree?