Beginning of Vacation

Thursday we left for Ogden, Utah. We headed down in anticipation of seeing Andy's sister, Tiffany, come off her mission on Tuesday. We have been busy running all around doing the things that we like to do. Here are a few pictures from the beginning of the trip:

Kids asleep in the car (I was the only one awake at the time)

Once we got there it snowed the next day. I made sure to have all the kid's snow clothes so that we could do some playing in this foreign concept of snow...Charlotte liked it but got cold quickly.

Andy must have missed it so much that he wanted to do some shoveling...

Jesse acted like he was born for the snow! Throwing snowballs, making angels and just generally being a boy.

We decided to build a snowman and he turned out to be huge!!

Here is our finished snowman...mustache and all..

Coming in from the cold. Katie was with us because she was flying to Oregon to do some hunting with my dad.

Saturday night Andy and I headed to a BYU home football game. It was chilly but fun to do something we had never done together! They won 42-7.

We even got matching hot-chocolate mugs. YUM!

Cosmo even came up close to us!

Sunday was an experience- Charlotte was grouchy pretty much ALL day! Andy and I didn't get to sit down for one moment until she went home before sacrament for a nap. Jesse was good so that made up for Charlotte's grouchy mood.

Jesse got a hold of Grandma's camera and figured out how to use it. :)

And our weekend ended by playing a game of Settlers of Catan- one of our favorites. Here Andy is in one of his more "normal" poses :)

More pictures to come of Tiffany's return on Tuesday!

Fall adventures

So we carved our pumpkins a week after Halloween. It was a busy week for us...Jesse got to do his own pumpkin this year for the first time (with the exception of the knife). He LOVED it! Except getting his hands dirty in the gook but he did a good job. Here he is with his personally designed pumpkin:

Andy helping me with my pumpkin:

Scooping out the guts. Jesse actually touched them this year. In the past he wouldn't at all!

And the lit masterpieces.

A couple days later Jesse and I did some leaf rubbings and made a garland. He was pretty proud of it. :)

Jesse is into a phase where he loves to help with EVERYTHING! He has gotten really good at pulling the chair away from the table to step up and help in the kitchen. Here we are making pancakes. Bad lighting...

My mom and I went to the temple together on Friday for a much needed break. SO lovely! And all the trees were in their fall splendor. So we couldn't help but take some pictures.

And my little man got some new church clothes AND a hair cut. This makes him look so grown up!

I just finished this about an hour ago. On to the next towel!

And this week will be just as busy! We are heading to Utah on Thursday for a much anticipated homecoming of Andy's sister Tiffany.

Autumn

It really has been an uneventful week. Lots of relaxing due to the fact that we are all sick. There is a terrible nasty cold going around and we ALL have it. Even my poor Charlotte who doesn't understand why her nose doesn't work properly. When she can't drink her bottle she looks at it like there is something wrong with it. Poor thing.

Anyway- We ended up at my parents for a Halloween gathering of sorts. It was fun just to be around everyone. We didn't do much besides eat and play video games. Now I am not usually a gamer but every holiday we pull out "snowboard kids II" on the Nintendo 64. It is SOO fun to play it with everyone. We were all rolling in laughter at the end of each round :) So we didn't go trick or treating which may sound lame, but Jesse had loads of candy from the ward trunk or treat and other events. And he didn't notice or care much. And had plenty of time to wear his costume to other events. Here is some of the [horrible] candy that Jesse got. We have been slowly working through it and he is loving it! (Obviously)

'Tis the season for pumpkin food! We made these delicious whole wheat pumpkin pancakes for breakfast one morning and we all LOVED them! Go here to see the recipe. I had mine with molasses which I don't usually do but oh my it was just yummy. And now my mouth is watering.

So that is my week. We have Christmas music playing nearly all day now and are counting down the days to getting our first REAL family Christmas tree. Happy Holidays everyone! :)