Thanksgiving, Getting ready for Christmas, and Officer of the Year!

This year for Thanksgiving, Josh's older brother, Bryan, invited us all to have Thanksgiving at the church that he is the Bishop over in Rigby. I took my usual candied yams and pies. Stacey drove up here for the weekend and went to Thanksgiving dinner and then Black Friday shopping with us the next day. I didn't really get too crazy with my shopping. We went out early Friday morning and went to Kohls, Target, and a few other places. Then we went to lunch at Rumbi and then met Josh, who had come to Idaho falls with Avery, and Stacey took her home while Josh and I stayed and went a few more places. We had decided that our Toyota Highlander was causing us more headaches than it was worth. It had stalled on the highway on me a few weeks earlier and it looked like it may have more troubles down the road. So we decided to a start looking for another vehicle. We test drove a Buick Enclave that night and I really liked it, but sadly it sold to another family the very next day. So we kept looking over the next couple of weeks and ended up buying one by mid-December. Some may say that a Buick is a grandma car. I saw that it's quite comfortable and has a place for me to organize all my change... haha okay so maybe that is a grandma car quality. Who uses change these days?! lol But anyways, it's nice and hopefully it lasts use for a while.

Also on Thanksgiving weekend, Josh got to go out and do one of his favorite things: going fishing down the river with his friends (well actually his cousins - Steve and Devin.) I legitimately thought he had died he was gone so long. I even went online and made sure his life insurance was paid for the year. I tried calling and calling him and he wasn't answering. Finally, as his dad and Devin's wife, Charm, were about to go out and look for their bodies, he did call us back and tell us they were alive and just getting off the river. I expected there to be a really good reason for his unreasonably long amount of time fishing, such as a problem with the boat or an injury. His good reason? "It was the best fishing I've ever had in my life." I'm so glad. Because he probably won't be going fishing again for a long, long time.

The Mighty Fisherman

Goodbye Toyota Highlander

Hello Buick Enclave

In between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a few fun things we did included going to see Santa at the carousel (The carousel closes on Labor day and Avery is always so sad, so this is a nice opportunity for her to get her fix again until Memorial Day)

Avery and I went swimming one day at a local hotel. She LOVES swimming and often asks to do this. I always say no, but one morning when the boys had just left for school and she happened to be awake early that day, I said "Let's go swimming!" She about fell off her chair. She was so excited! We just went from about 8:30-10:00 and then we had to hurry home and get to school by 10:45! But she had so much fun. We had the whole pool to ourselves!

Avery got this new dress that has a fox face on it. Here she is modeling it one Sunday:

Our ward had a Polar Express Party for Christmas on a Saturday morning (the 16th) and our bishop dressed up as the conductor and punched the tickets as the kids arrived. It was so cute! They had made everyone pancakes and hot cocoa. It was lots of fun and everyone came in their pajamas!

Kitty loves the Christmas tree...

Christmas shopping at Walmart:

A project that Josh build and I painted for the boys' room:

Playing in the very first snow for the season 

(we have gotten a little more since that day, but still not too much!)

Making Christmas cookies:

My "ugly" sweater (I actually really like it! And it lights up!!!)

I helped out with Avery's class party this year. I had helped with Caleb's for Halloween so I had promised Avery I would help with hers at Christmas. We had the kids make these cute ornaments with their pictures in the middle. I think I overestimated the skill level of the kindergarteners and the moms had to help wrap the yard around each one. It kind of turned into a scene of chaos trying to get each child's ornament done before the timer chimed and they had to rotate. LOL (Please note Avery's teacher in the background of the picture. Yes, I feel ya lady. It was a loooong day. haha)

Josh had quite the honor bestowed upon him. It's kind of funny how it all came to be. So every year the Police Department does a Christmas party. This year, the K9 division was in charge of it. That basically is just Josh and one other guy named Ryan! So they ended up doing a lot of work. One of their tasks was to collect some prizes to be handed out for the raffle at the party. So they went around to local businesses and were asking, "Would you like to donate a Christmas present to a police officer to be handed out at our party?" A lot of businesses donated things. They had tires, oil change passes, flashlights, remote starts for a car, movie passes, gift cards, and so on. But the biggest prize was that a local bank donated $1000 to be used as a vacation getaway and they had talked about Vegas specifically (since you can usually find flights there for about $100 a person). So when the Chief heard about this big prize donation, he said, "Why don't we make this an award for an officer of the year? We can send out a survey to everyone who works at the police department by email and they can submit their answers anonymously and then we will find out who the peers vote as the officer of the year." So they sent out this survey that had about ten questions on it, things like, "Who would you most want for backup on a call?" and "who is always willing to help without being asked?" and "who establishes positive ties with the community with his actions" and so on. The winner was then announced at the Christmas Party and only the Chief knew the winner ahead of time. Well guess who it was... yup. Josh. He actually even said to me before the party, "I really don't want to win" just because he knew there would be a new article involved. He's so shy about that sort of thing. But I think he is excited to have the extra $1,000! The bank manager, who is also our neighbor, said he didn't mind if we used at at Disney World so we may just do that. Josh is also talking to his dad about going to Alaska in June, so we will probably need to extra money to cover that also! Here is Josh accepting his award:

And finally, in these days leading up to Christmas, we had been spending a lot of time as a place called Gravity Factory. It is an indoor trampoline park about five minutes from our house. The kids LOVE it. We bought the boys some Winter Break passes so they can go as many times as they want over these two weeks when school is out. I probably should have just bought Avery one too since she always wants to tag along! We all went as a family the first time to check it out. But the boys have been back every day since!

Well, Christmas is just two days away now! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we plan to go to church during the day and then relax in the evening and get to bed early! (Well that is my plan anyways.) Today we went to Josh's parents' house to have their celebration with a breakfast and then some outdoor fun. The boys (and Avery a few times) got pulled around on the sleds behind the four-wheeler. Then Avery and I left by about 11:30 and she went to her friend, Kendalin's, birthday party at the gravity factory! (We can get enough of that place!)

 (Bryan and Jada's family got a new puppy!)

 I am just finishing up some last things for Christmas while they are away! Next blog will be Christmas stuff and then start prepping for Disney World! Soooo excited!!!

Halloween Fun!

We had so much fun this year for Halloween (Well at least I did! I think everyone else did. Josh is kind of a Halloween grinch but whatever...) Caleb had originally said he wanted to do some sort of Star Wars costumes this year. But then he saw Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 and thought it was the best movie ever and the whole plan changed. We also found him a Rocket Raccoon costume at Target one day for like $17 so I figured I should support this decision.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of doing group Halloween costumes that match. I think the first time I did this was in college when me and my room mates went to a Halloween party as the cast of Beauty and the Beast. (In case you were wondering, I was the Beast.) Then there was the year that our family and my mom and Jesse and Rachel and Jasmine did the Wizard of Oz thing (I was the wicked witch and my mom was Glenda the good witch... wearing my prom dress... let's not talk about it. lol)

But anyways, in the past few years Avery has kind of run the show when it comes to the costumes. She wanted to be Princess Peach one year... therefore Gabe and Caleb were Mario and Luigi. She wanted to be Tinkerbell one year. Therefore Gabe was a pirate and Caleb was Peter Pan (he wasn't super happy.) So this yea, Caleb said "Mom, it should be MY turn to pick the costumes." Gabe is kind of getting to that age where he's not sure if it's cool to still dress up or not. A few of his friends said they weren't dressing up (and then later did so... haha) but Gabe was going through this kind of inner debate about what to do. So I think when Caleb wanted to take the reigns on costumes, it made it easy for Gabe to say "Okay... I guess I will... for Caleb... you know, not cause I want to... but cause Caleb and my mom are making me" (but secretly he wanted to dress up anyways.) So Gabe ended up being StarLord and I ended up being Gamora. Caleb of course was Rocket Racoon. We wanted Avery to be baby Groot but there was no way she was agreeing to be a little brown ugly tree person. She instead just went her own way and was "Shimmer" from the show "Shimmer and Shine" (a pink haired genie girl.) Her next door neighbor friend, Kendalin, was "Shine" (the other genie.) I wanted Josh to be Drax so bad (and everyone knew he would've been perfect) but he didn't want to because, like I said earlier, he is the Halloween grinch.

So my costume was actually super easy. I had the black leather pants (this surprises anyone? lol) and I found a cheap black tank top at Walmart and a long sleeved green shirt in the boys department. Then it was just a matter of painting my face green and putting on a wig from Amazon! I think we turned out pretty amazing. See comparison below:

We even ended up winning second place at the school carnival! We wore our costumes that Friday before Halloween for the carnival, then again on Monday night for a church party, then again Tuesday (actual Halloween) for school parties and trick or treating. This year we just stayed in our neighborhood for trick or treating. By the time it got dark it was so cold we just wanted to come home and relax. I also helped out with Caleb's class party this year and so I was in charge of some minute-to-win it type games. We did a eyeball ping pong type game (basically beer pong... thanks Wisconsin upbringing), throwing spiders into a web on the wall, tossing a ring around a pumpkin stem, and assembling a skeleton. So it was pretty fast-paced and fun! I had to wear my pirate costume from a few years ago to school though because heavy makeup at school was not allowed (and I am not a rule breaker.)

So what else...? Oh, we went to a fun pumpkin patch (another one) where we did a hay ride and they have this pumpkin cannon that they launch pumpkins and try to hit these old cars in the field! (Idaho redneck fun) And Gabe had a field trip one day to the straw maze in town so me and Avery tagged along to that. It just happened to be on a day when Avery didn't have school due to parent teacher conferences. That was really fun. They had this big slide that we went down at the very end. I'm glad Gabe doesn't seem to mind us showing up. Maybe he realizes that all the girls in his class think it's so cute that he's nice to his little sister. 

I think that's about all for now! It seems like winter is officially knocking at our door. The leaves are now all fallen and raked up. We put all our outdoor patio furniture away, vacuumed and washed the 4 Runner and put it in the garage (it's usually usually on the street for Summer and all our bikes are down in the garage), cleaned up all our rotting pumpkins and threw them away, and some people are even putting up Christmas lights already! (gasp) We haven't done that yet, but probably soon! We even had a tiny snowfall this morning that had the ground dusted in white. Avery insisted on putting all her snow clothes on and playing in it! Time keeps on ticking by! I wish we could fast forward to Spring again. Maybe someday I will be able to get on a plane and fly away when the first snow falls and come back in April! 

Here are some more pictures of the last of Fall 2017!

Jackson Trip, End of Football Season for Caleb, Fall Fun at the Corn Maze, Josh's New Calling

Just a few things to report on here so far for October! I expect the next post will be full of Halloween pictures in a couple of weeks, so before I get into that here are a few things we have been up to.

Jackson trip - So for Spud Harvest break (the first week of October) we didn't do any big trips this year. In past years that has been our time to visit Wisconsin, since the kids have off school for that week. And most families around here do tend to either go to General Conference in Utah or travel someplace warmer, such as Disneyland (in California, which people here just drive to.) But since we went to Wisconsin in August and are going to Disney World in January, we just kind of stayed home all week like bums! Caleb was dog sitting for our new neighbors, the Dennis', who moved in about a month ago. They are empty nesters and she is a teacher's aid at the elementary school so Caleb already knew her, but they had to go out of town to visit a daughter and her new baby, so they asked Caleb to dog-sit for their little shitzu, Mesa. Everyone in our family had fun babysitting her. She stayed at their house but came over to ours sometimes to play during the day. But anyways! We decided towards the end of Spud Harvest week on Friday to drive to Jackson and go swimming at their indoor rec center pool. It's a really pretty drive this time of year and Avery, who has been anxiously awaiting snow, was super excited to see snow at the very top of the mountain during our drive. We even had to get out and throw a couple of snow balls! So that was our first taste of snow this season... but a little more was to come about a week later for us in Rexburg!

Caleb's last official game for football really was last Saturday. But they they decided they needed to also do play offs, etc. and since his team had done pretty well they had to play in one more game. The played on Saturday the 14th against Saint Anthony and won 18-6. So it was a good note to end on for them. But it was pretty funny that morning because we woke up to about an inch of snow on the group! As they were playing their game it was slowly melting and I think by the end of their game it was about gone. But it was time to be done in my opinion because snow means no more standing outside to watch football. Caleb had a lot of fun and plans to play next year but I think he was ready to be done for now and have a break.

Fall Fun at the corn maze - One night while Gabe and Josh were at a scout camp out, I took Caleb and Avery to this corn maze just outside of town. They had so much fun that Gabe and Josh had to come back with us again the next week. So here are some pictures of that! The kids always love going down this big slide. We went there for the first time last year and it's become our favorite Fall fun place here (since we can't very well go to the Little Farmer in Wisconsin). It usually takes us about 45 minutes to find our way out of the corn maze. It's really pretty big! They even give us a map and we still get lost. They also have this little train that Avery loves to ride. I also had to post this picture of the moon. It looked so spooky as we were leaving the corn maze that I had to text my photographer friend and tell her to get her camera out and climb out on her roof (she lives by us and does this often to capture the moon haha) So this was the picture she took for me that night of the October moon! ;)

Pumpkin contest - The kids at the elementary school always decorate pumpkins for this little display in the library. Caleb insisted I paint him a rocket raccoon pumpkin (from "Guardians of the Galaxy", which he is also being for Halloween) and for Avery we did Cinderella's pumpkin carriage. They each got a book and a certificate for participating (what everyone gets. lol)

Josh's new calling - And finally, just when I got released from Cub Scouts and called as the Bulletin Board specialist and was thinking we would get a break... Josh gets called to be the Ward clerk in a student ward on campus. So basically we will be attending church Josh-less for the next three years in our ward. That sounds fun with three kids, right??? No. Not really. But hopefully we will figure it out!
That's all for now!