Thanksgiving

We had a fun and delicious Thanksgiving. My little brother, David, came from Provo, UT for a few days and it was fun to hang out with him. He was really cute and sweet with Kathryn and it was fun for her to have more time to get to know him better. She was very fascinated with all the "toys" he brought with him-like his phone, i-pod, laptop, etc. She loves books and easily got him to read to her...
David also got Kathryn hooked on eggnog! :) We are actually very happy about this because she doesn't like milk. So we have been mixing eggnog with milk and are gradually putting in more milk and less eggnog. Hopefully she'll be drinking straight milk soon. Thank you David! You're a genius! :)

On Thanksgiving, we slept in and then did a lot of cooking. We joined a bunch of other people at church for a Thanksgiving potluck. We brought a turkey, sweet potatoes (pretty much the best recipe ever-check it out!), mashed potatoes and gravy. It was the first time we had ever cooked a traditional turkey and amazingly it turned out so well! It was really fun to have Thanksgiving with friends and we definitely got stuffed with great food. Yum! Unfortunately we were working so hard to get everything ready, we forgot to take pictures of it all. Oh well.

On black Friday, David convinced me to get up before the crack of dawn and hit some sales at Target and Wal-Mart. I had never done that before and it was fun and we got in on some great sales-yea! :) Drew unfortunately had to go in to work that day because a big project had come in that week. My parents had a long layover at the Denver airport that day on their way home from a big trip to Australia, Japan, and Hawaii, so David, Kat and I went and hung out with them. We got to see a lot of pictures, hear about their trip, and came home with a lot of nice souvenirs :) Thanks mom and dad!
Later that day, David, Kat, and I went to the zoo with a friend that was in town for Thanksgiving. It was great to see her again. Her daughter is about 3 1/2 months older than Kathryn, so that was fun too. It was a perfect fall day to go to the zoo and we had fun even though some of the animals weren't out.

Kat and David

Bonnie, Sadie, Kat, Emily

Thanks, David, for coming and making our Thanksgiving so fun! We miss you!

Much Belated Summer Garden Post

I have been going to blog about this for months, but since it was kind of an ongoing project I kept putting it off. Well now that this project ended about a month-and-a-half ago telling you all about it is way overdue. So here we go. This past summer one of our friends from church roto-tilled her backyard, divided it into plots and let anyone who wanted to come plant their own garden. We had never really tried growing anything but had wanted to for awhile so this was a new and fun adventure for us. This friend lives about 2 miles away and we would rollerblade over to her house with Kat in the jogging stroller and work on the garden together. We planted starter plants of pumpkin, butternut squash, zucchini, green onions/chives, and green bell peppers. We also planted lettuce and parsley from seeds. We figured we couldn't go wrong with plants that had already been started for us, but we were pleasantly surprised with how well our lettuce and parsley did as well. In addition to the things we planted in the garden, we also grew herbs in planters out on our porch at our apartment. The herbs we grew (also from starter plants) were rosemary, basil, sage, oregano, green onion, and a red bell pepper plant (I threw that one in for fun because this was before we found out we could plant at our friend's house). It was a really fun summer project and so nice to have fresh vegetables and herbs! Now, on to the plethora of pictures! :)

Here is when Kathryn and I first planted our herbs:

Oregano and basil plants:

Red bell pepper and rosemary plants:

A couple of weeks later we got another planter and planted sage, a green onion, and more basil. Here is what everything looked like at the end of the season:

Green onion and oregano:
Basil and sage:
Rosemary and red bell pepper (yes, it only produced one-I learned my lesson:)

Now here's some pictures we took of our garden plot:

Kat had a lot of fun playing in the dirt and pulling off pieces of the big zucchini leaves

Zucchini:

Butternut squash:
Pumpkin (if you look closely you'll see the orange string marking our plot and then see how far out of it the pumpkin went!):
Lettuce (with some green onions/chives in the background):
Green bell pepper (with more growing room this one actually produced 4 or 5):
Parsley:

I think my favorite part of the garden was our pumpkin plant. It grew four good pumpkins. Here are a couple of pictures of Kathryn with some of them:

I became attached to our cute pumpkins, and since we never ended up carving them for Halloween, I've tried to make them last as decorations...
But now that we have below zero temperatures and they are shriveled and frozen solid it's probably time for them to meet the dumpster. Sad day!

Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun this year with Kathryn. We borrowed a really cute fairy costume from our friend Jessica (thanks!) and Kathryn looked adorable in it. We went to the trunk-or-treat at church, out for dinner, and then knocked on a few doors in our apartment building. Kathryn was really confused at the trunk-or-treat and just kept looking around at everyone. We had a really hard time getting her to smile, but here are a few cute pictures...
Once we got home she caught on a little better and looked so cute walking around with her pumpkin and knocking on doors.
Once we were inside she tried riding her toy zebra...
...and then just played with her candy (which fell on the floor when she fell off the zebra :) like they were toys. She held one little Snickers bar so long and so tight that it melted and had an indent from her thumb. It was really fun to watch her and we had a good time.

Pre-Halloween Snow...Trick? or Treat?

Okay, so we're way behind again, but better late than never. A few days before Halloween we had a big long snow storm. Over the course of 2 or 3 days we got at least a foot of snow. Other places around here got a lot more. It just kept snowing and snowing. I have never seen that much snow before Halloween so it seemed like a trick. It was a treat though, because Drew got to work from home one of the days which was fun. We had fun taking Kathryn out in her new snow clothes. She wasn't too sure about it though, so we ended up holding her most of the time.
She probably would have liked it more if it wasn't dark and so close to her bedtime :) Here's some more pictures we took.
And here are some cool pictures I took the next day around our apartment complex.
It's crazy to think that a lot of the snow melted the same day I took the last 3 pictures and that less than a week later temperatures got back up into the 60s and 70s!

Trip to Utah

We took a trip to Utah a few weeks ago. Kat and I went early to go to my brother's wedding reception and then Drew came about a week later. We crammed in a lot while we were there (hence the many pictures) and had a ton of fun.

My brother's reception was at the Brighton ski resort. It was really pretty up there. We went on a little hike before the reception and then walked up to a little waterfall right outside of the reception to get some pictures during it.
Kathryn was a little afraid of the water, but it was really beautiful. There were a ton of rocks at the bottom of the ski lift and Kathryn and her cousin Adriana loved playing with them. They apparently tasted good too :)
Here's a picture of all of my family that was there...
And here we are with my brother (Chris) and sister-in-law (Di)...

Check out my brother's tie-it's a metal washboard and came with thimbles to play it. He jumped in with the band on a song to jam with them :) It totally fits his personality and he had a lot of fun with it.

Here's the happy couple dancing. Aren't they cute? :)
It was a really fun party in a beautiful place.

While we were out there, we got to see several of our friends. We forgot to take pictures with all of them, but here are the ones we did remember to take pictures with...

Friends from Iowa

Me with 2 of my old roommates-we all have little girls now which was a lot of fun.

Me and Kat with Renee, one of my best friends from when I taught school.

Kathryn and I spent a couple of days with my sister and her family at our family's cabin in the Uinta mountains. I hadn't been there for awhile, so it was great to be back. It has always been a place of peace for me and I have tender memories of it. In the cabin there is a spiral staircase which was Kathryn's favorite part. So this was her idea of fun...
Not this...
Can you tell? :) She was just sick of me trying to take a million pictures, but I had to include it because her face is just priceless :) I'm sure she was overjoyed when my camera battery ran out and I had forgotten to bring the charger with us to the cabin.

Drew's sister and her family got to Salt Lake the same day Drew did, so we had a lot of fun with them too. The day after they all got there, his sister was on the local NBC station's morning show which was so cool. She has an awesome cooking blog and showed how to make this amazing cinnamon caramel corn. Here's the link to the recipe and her little TV clip if you want to check it out. It is super easy, melts in your mouth and is addicting-so watch out :) The next day we all went down to Provo. We visited the BYU campus which was fun and brought back a lot of memories. Kathryn missed her morning nap, so she ended up like this...
After seeing BYU we visited Drew's grandparents who live in Provo. It was fun to see them again and Kathryn loved playing with all of their stuffed animals. They even sent her home with one.

The next day we had a barbecue lunch with some friends and then went back down to Provo with our brother-in-law and another friend to see the BYU football game against Florida State. We got amazing tickets through a connection Drew's dad has. Our seats were pretty much at the 50-yard line about 30-40 rows up and came with wristbands to get a ton of free food. It was an awesome hookup. Here we are right before the game started (which is why we have smiles on our faces)...
Unfortunately the game did not go well at all and we left with frowns on our faces, but it was still cool to get to be in the stadium for a game again.

Kathryn's First Birthday

Kathryn turned one on September 6th. It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by and we can't imagine life without her now. How did she go so quickly from this cute, quiet little baby...
...to this cute, energetic, sweet little girl?
We had a lot of fun celebrating. I didn't think she really needed any presents (besides the one I got on sale about 6 months ago--sorry Kat!), but Drew, being the sweet daddy he is, couldn't resist and went shopping for her. So she got lots of fun presents.

(She'll never remember that we wrapped them in Christmas wrapping paper, will she? :)

She loved unwrapping them, but was a little confused at first when we were giving her permission to tear paper. Here she is in her new stroller with all of her presents...
Besides the stroller, she got a new shirt for Halloween, new pj's (camo pattern with teddy bears-of course picked out by her dad), a little piano, a ball, a Winnie the Pooh honey jar w/finger puppets and a gift card to Old Navy (Drew said I can only help her use it--I got my own for my b-day :) She really likes all of her new toys and especially loved playing with the gift card. This girl is smart! :) After she opened her presents, we gave her her cake. I baked it, but Drew did the rest. This is what it looked before we gave it to her...
And this is what it looked like when she was done with it :)
She did a pretty good job demolishing it, huh :) We're glad she had a fun birthday.

My parents came for a couple of days a couple of weeks after her birthday, so we celebrated a little more with the presents they gave her.
Inside that box were a cute set of new pajamas (handmade by my mom) and this cute outfit:
Thanks mom and dad for the nice presents! They're perfect and so cute! My parents also brought with them the birthday present they had given me back in June (I didn't bring it home then b/c I was worried about checking it on the airplane)--A new sewing machine! Here's what it looks like...
I'm so excited to have my own sewing machine and keep thinking of all sorts of things I can make with it. I have a lot to learn, but my mom got me off to a great start with a lesson on how to use it. It's really nice and will be a lot of fun to have. Thanks mom and dad!!!