Monday, November 25, 2013

November catch up

A lot of fun has been had to this point in November and I thought I should record some of it.
I will start off with the November first, William gave us a small scare when he dove into the couch straight into a metal Tonka truck! He came up crying and then moments later there was blood running down his face. Luckily it was a really small split in his head.... and it was nice that Billy was actually home to help me with a bloody episode. (He always misses them!)


The first weekend in November I hosted an early Thanksgiving dinner for the "Wrenn" family. Billy's Dad and Grandma came for a visit and picked up Nathan on the way down. I called Ian & Stephanie who now just live in San Luis and told them they had to come for dinner so the whole family could be together. This hasn't happen in at least a couple years. I cheated and picked up rotisserie chickens from Costco... but I made a yummy squash gratin dish, salad, pumpkin pie muffins, fruit kabobs and a dessert. I asked Ian to bring a drink and some bread rolls. It was fun to be all together for an evening!



Billy made a super cool fort for the boys and it actually stayed up for a few days! (I didn't think I would be able to survive the "mess", but, I did it!) We all watched a movie in there and then the boys slept in it for two nights in a row. It was really fun for them. We will have to do it again.


The boys had another monthly book club, and this time we hosted! Some of their little friends came up and each brought an assignment. One brought a story of the a turkey with a temper, one brought a craft and the other brought a snack. Fun was had by all :)


Lastly (except for Disney Land which will be a separate post) we got a wood burning fire place insert and it is lovely! The house was really starting to get cold with no heat source. We had broke down one night and started a fire in the regular fire place, only to have the house fill with smoke and set off all the alarms and linger for days! The new insert is awesome. Our house is warm once again and everything is nice and contained, and it looks really nice too. It even has a blower to really get the heat back to the bedrooms.  With all the free wood we can imagine from the ranch, this was truly a wise investment for our home.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Utah visit

I finally have time (and energy) to sit down and write a little about our trip to Utah in October :) Billy is on a small fire tonight, so I'm solo and finally have my chance.
I did remember my camera for the trip... however, that doesn't mean I actually used it much. Oh well. This is me.
We had a smooth ride to Mapleton, Utah on the 14th of October. I got up about 430am and had everything and everyone loaded for a 5am departure. When we got to the bottom of the pass, I had to stop and put air in one of the front tires. It was during this first stop that Jameson threw up a little. I thought it was a little strange, but luckily there was little damage done and on we went. Around 745 all boys were waking up and getting a little hungry for breakfast. I had packed TJ's cereal bars and bananas for what I thought would be a perfect car breakfast. Unfortunately I packed the seasonal pumpkin bars and this did not go over well while in motion. Both William and Zachary had a couple bites of their bars and then felt sick. William was first to throw up and then Zachary followed. (Yes, I do carry a barf bucket in the car and yes, they both made it!) I tried to settle their stomachs with banana and Zachary ended up throwing that up as well.
So, by Victorville, all three boys had thrown up and we required an 8am stop to use a restroom and freshen up ;) Haha.
After all that, the drive went fine. We had planned to stop in Vegas at the children's museum for our half way stretch break... but it just so happened the museum was closed on Mondays. Bummer.
We made it to Grandma and Grandpa's by dinner and enjoyed having the drive behind us.
The boys played all week with their cousins and had SO MUCH FUN. William, Zachary and Grant were almost inseparable!  For the most part, everyone got along perfectly.
Our outings for the week included; lunch with Grandma great, pumpkin patch fun, a visit to Farm land at Thanksgiving point, playground fun by Provo temple and lots of play time with the cousins.
The big boys had their first pony rides at Farm Land and they were pretty siked about it!


Jameson got to watch from the fence... but he didn't mind. He loved looking at all the animals they had there. Maybe we will have a few of these animals at home one day ;)
The cousins made instruments one day and put on a parade... it was cute. I didn't capture it very well.


Jameson and Irelyn met for just about the first time on this trip. My brother and his wife came for family dinner on Sunday while we were there so we got to spend an evening with them also.

William was really good about doing school each morning. Luckily Grant is in Kindergarten, so it made it easy to do school with William while Grant was at school. It was so nice to be with the family for the week. I even got 3 nice (cold) runs in during the week which was awesome. Spent 3 days with my Grandma (a big reason I wanted to go out there) and got a lot of quality time with my sister Kristy. Would have had more with Tracy except she had an awesome backpacking trip to Havasupi planned for the weekend I chose to come. I know she will be out to SB to visit me soon enough though.... Tracy knows how to travel! :)
Our drive home was easy as well. I ended up leaving Monday night about 830pm and drove to Mesquite, Nevada. Got there about 1130, checked in, unloaded boys into beds and got a little rest. Woke up next morning about 7, fed the boys a little food and loaded them back into the car. We got home just after 2 in the afternoon, right behind Billy who had been out golfing all morning :) It made the trip seem SO much shorter to break it up like that.
I'm so glad we went and it was sure nice to break in the new car and test her out on the open roads :) Loving the Pilot.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Halloween Fun

This year for Halloween was the most low key costumes we have done for a long while. When we were driving through the Virgin River Gorge on our way to Utah a couple weeks ago, William was the only boy awake. I asked him what he thought of the neat mountains and rocks as we drove. His response " Mom, I wish I was a mountain climber so I could climb up there and find some really cool rocks!" From that point on, he had it set in his mind that he was going to be a mountain climber for Halloween. When Zachary heard that William wanted to be a climber, that is what he wanted to be too. So, 3 mountain climbers and a ballet we were.
We went to trunk or treat briefly, Jameson learned quickly what he needed to do to have people hand him treats. Billy got dropped off and joined us for about 10ish minutes. (Just long enough for someone to steal his backpack from under our car)
Then it was off to a neighborhood for the boys first "real" experience of trick or treating. We went to Foxen drive mostly to see all the work Anne Wright did on her front yard. Wow. She really went all out. We chatted for a while and got a laugh that she made all the older trick or treaters work for their candy. They had to tell her a joke!
The boys walked to about 10 houses or so on the street and then we went home. It was a nice Halloween overall.
Of course I didn't bring the camera on Halloween.... so we had a small photo shoot today. I should have found a rock, but the front of the house was good enough :)
Billy took on the project of making the boys harnesses! He took the belts we found at the thrift store and cut and sewed them at work and did a great job. The boys love them. All I did was drive us down to Carp where Justin Shuman (Billy's co-worker that climbs) let us borrow a bunch of his gear.
He are the tough rock climbers!