Halloween 2010

I love Halloween. I love dressing up, I love trick-or-treating (I went until I was a senior in high school and cannot wait to take Lindy next year!) and I absolutely LOVE candy! Seriously, whoever came up with the whole idea of Halloween was brilliant. I usually go all out for costumes, but this year, I just didn't have the energy. I did try though. We dressed up for Allan's work party and I was going to finish the costumes for the next day, but never did. Because our costumes weren't completely finished for the work party, I didn't take pictures and then didn't dress up after. On the 30th (Halloween in UT when the 31st is on Sunday), I ended up having problems with my pump and my blood sugar skyrocketed. I couldn't get it down for several hours. When it finally did come down, I couldn't get it back up. So like I said, I was just too tired for dressing everybody up. But I'll tell you about our costumes since I don't have pictures.

We went as Earth, Wind & Fire, one of my favorite bands ever! Lindy was earth. I put her in a green dress with brown pants and brown boots. I glued flowers all over her dress and made her a headdress with little leaves and berries all over it. She looked darling! Sadly, she didn't like the head piece much and kept pulling it off. Oh well.

I was wind. I wore a long, sparkly silver skirt with a short-sleeved, shimmery silver top and a light blue, long-sleeved shirt underneath. I also had silver and light blue streamers hanging from my arms. I also had blue eyeshadow that went past my eyes and almost to my hairline (going sideways). I drew wind bursts coming from the sides of my eyes. It actually looked pretty cool and I had someone guess what I was just by the makeup because I didn't have my costume on at the time.

Allan was fire. He had a bright orange shirt on. Our newspaper bags come in red, orange and yellow so I cut them up and attached them to his shirt. He was supposed to wear a bright orange leisure suit (ya know, disco style to matche the times of Earth, Wind and Fire), but it didn't come in time. I was sad about that.

To top it all off, Allan and I had fro wigs and all 3 of us had microphones that I made from a paper towel roll and tin foil. So we dressed as the elements with some 70's disco flair thrown in to authenticate it. It was a blast! I just wish we had pictures!

We did go to my parents' house for chili and cinnamon rolls (a Halloween tradition) and it was delicious! My mom even got me gluten free cinnamon rolls so I wouldn't be left out. She's so awesome!

Every year, my brother, Jackson, makes a haunted house. Due to the high winds this year and everything getting blown down, he couldn't do it. Instead, he built an amazing enclosure going up the stairs to the front porch with walls, caskets, freaky clowns, trees, motion sensored psycho man, black lights, etc. Some kids were too scared to come to the door and just passed by. One little girl screamed hysterically when the psycho man went off and couldn't stop crying. It was sad, but funny. He did a great job. Once again, I wish I had pictures!!

It's not her costume, butBrad did send me this picture of Lindy. How cute is she?! Miranda put her in it when they came to carve pumpkins.

After dinner, we went to Seth & Cindy's house in Provo for games.

Pumpkin Carving

Until this year, I hadn't carved pumpkins in SO long. I'm not sure why. I love doing it. This year we invited Brad and Miranda over for dinner and pumpkin carving. Brad was hysterical (as usual) and brought his bag of pumpkin carving tools. Basically, it was all of his power tools. What's even more funny is that he and Allan used them for their pumpkins!

I was lame and *didn't get pictures of the pumpkins when they were done, but got pics of Brad and Allan having fun with their "pumpkin carving tools." Our pumpkins were awesome though! We used the stencil things from the carving books and they turned out great! I did an owl in a tree, Allan did three skulls and Brad did a spider in a web. Miranda decided she didn't want to use the stencil and did an awesome mummy face. She didn't like it, but I loved it.

Brad's "Pumpkin Carving Kit" and the boys looking manly.

Brad's, Mine and Miranda's. I don't know why we don't have a closeup of Allan's. His was pretty dang cool, too.

All the pumpkins finished (Allan's is front and center)

*Brad sent me these pics of our pumpkins! YAY!

More Milestones!

So I've been a total slacker and haven't posted for a long time. Life got so insanely busy! Allan went back to school this fall, I started working again (and no longer am now) and Lindy has been cute as ever and is hitting TONS of milestones.

She started rolling over and then scooting herself backwards and is now crawling!! It's been so fun to watch her figure everything out. She also waves and gives (open mouthed) kisses. I'll upload videos later, if I can get them. She pulls herself up to her knees but can't get to her feet just yet. If we help her up, she loves holding on to things and standing. Unfortunately, she's very independent and gets sick of having to hold on and pushes off so she can stand by herself. She then falls and usually starts to cry. I'm not sure if she cries because it scares her or if she's just frustrated that she can't do it. Probably both.

She's so busy! She won't play in her exersaucer for more than 10 minutes because she gets bored. She won't do anything for more than 10 minutes for that matter for the same reason. She always has to be doing something. She'll be so blasted tired, but just fight going to sleep because she's afraid she'll miss something. My mom constantly tells me, "That's EXACTLY how you were!"

Canada Quilt

One of my really great friends from Canada came to visit this week. He came down to celebrate his birthday down here with friends. For his birthday gift, I made him a shag quilt of the Canadian flag because 1. He's very proud to be Canadian and 2. It gets to at least -40 degrees below up there so a warm quilt will be useful. I think it's so dang cool.

I found it here. I didn't get a pattern or order the whole thing from them. I just saw the picture and decided to do it on my own. Allan helped out a fair bit too. In fact, there were a couple of places on the leaf that I would've royally messed up without him. It's 54" x 72" just like the picture. This one was a lot of fun to make. I love how it turned out!

The front

The back

Closeup of front (that's red lint on it)

Closeup of back

Lindy's Latest

It's been a little while since I've updated about Lindy's milestones. A couple of weeks ago she discovered her feet. She has had them in her hands and mouth ever since. I wish I was that flexible!

Last week she started sitting up all by herself. Wahoo! She still can't roll over, but she can sit up. It makes me laugh.

And we finally got a video of her laughing. It's the greatest sound in the world! Allan was changing her diaper and jokingly spanked her. She started cracking up! Enjoy!

Here's another. This time Allan pretended to step on her and she started laughing. She laughs at the most random things!

New Calling

Last week Allan and I were called to be primary teachers. I was SO excited. Due to illness, moving and pregnancy, I haven't had a calling since we were married. We will be teaching the CTR 7/Valiant 8 class and I am thrilled! I started today (Allan was at drill this weekend so he'll start next week) and enjoyed every minute of it. There were 8 in my class today. Luckily, they aren't too roudy. Insanely talkative, yes, but respectful when I tell them to be quiet. I love them already. I don't think any person has ever been as excited as I am to be a primary teacher.

I think my favorite part was singing time. I fairly recently borrowed my mom's primary song book so I could remember the songs to sing to Lindy. This is even better! And I surprisingly knew most of the ones they sang today. There's only one I didn't recognize. I'll remedy that very quickly.

Another fun part is that all the kids love Lindy. They kept asking if they could hold her. Even one of the boys wants to! So I've decided to use her as leverage. If they can be quiet and listen to the lesson, I'll let them hold her. I usedt his on one of the boys today who was being...a boy. It worked well. He was quiet and participated in singing time afterwards so he'll get to hold her next week. Love it!

I can tell that this particular boy is the "problem child" of the class, but I adore him. He kept giving me fives in singing time after he'd answer a question right or help somehow. When he left he also (very excitedly) said, "See ya next week!" How can you not love it when little kids are so happy to see you? I left wanting to bake them all cookies & such.

After church, my new visiting teaching companion came up to tell me when we will be visiting our sisters. I was amazed at how overjoyed I was today when leaving church. I've heard that you're happiest when serving others and I can attest that it is absolutely true! I love being able to help the people in the ward and in turn make friends (I'm refering to the kids too) and feel like I belong.

4th of July Weekend

You've gotta love it when the 4th of July is on a Sunday because instead of just one day of the holiday, it becomes a whole weekend. And we certainly enjoyed ours. We went to the Riverton parade on Friday night with my family. What made the parade so fun was that it was all the adults who went crazy for the candy and were yelling for it and running out in the street to get it. After the parade we had a BBQ and played volleyball at my parents' house. We also did that on Saturday & Sunday too. While we played, Lindy sat in her Bumbo on the porch & cheered us on.

At the parade w/ Grandma

Lindy, Uncle Brock & Grandpa

Brock had this thing for the cows at the parade & so I had to take a picture of him with them. It was actually fairly entertaining. He also tried & tried to get a t-shirt but nobody would throw him one. It took a long time, but when he finally got one, it was WAY too small. He put it on anyway & it was a total belly shirt. It was pretty dang funny.

I had some really cute patriotic outfits for Lindy. Sadly, the only picture I got of any of them was her headband that my brother put on. He struggled to keep a straight face and we struggled with keeping the camera still enough while laughing to take the picture. It was well worth all the tries though.


On Monday we went swimming at my cousins' pool. Of course Lindy loved it. She was all the entertainment we needed. She was squealing and splashing like crazy. I told my mom to video it, but it didn't work so well. I'll just have to settle for the pictures this time. Videos to come later. Unfortunately we didn't get to see fireworks, so we'll definitely take Lindy to those for the 24th.