Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Gilbert with my parents and brother, Aaron and his family.  We bought a new camera the day before Thanksgiving and as you can see we were very excited to try it out!  You can see what kind of day it was – beautiful and sunny and full of fun with cousins.

 

All dressed up and ready (or not!) for the fun day…

Testing out the camera….

 

Sometimes I am so confused when I look at Stephen and see a big kid…where did my little Stephen go?

 

In the midst of my epic project…embroidery for “the quilt.”

These two are inseparable…they are the greatest playmates!

 

 

 

We did enjoy a wonderful meal at some point that day too!  Do we have pictures of that?  No!

November in a nutshell

We went to the Arizona Science Center.  The boys loved donning real lab coats, goggles and gloves to dig bone marrow out of cow bones…

Those lab coats were not designed for maternity wear.

 

About this time we decided our phone cameras take the crappiest pictures ever.

Case in point:

 

I finished sewing my new pillows!

They normally look like this:

 

We discovered that Boston makes the most adorable and charming Superman:

I mean, really.

He also makes a hilarious clown.

And a precious cowboy.  He rode a pony for the first time at the Fall Festival at Stephen’s school.

Stephen also enjoyed his first pony ride.

But really he is more of a pilgrim type.  He loves his new neon blue and orange shoes. 

I got to feed him dinner one night since he wouldn’t eat it otherwise…don’t we look absolutely thrilled??  Tinfoil dinner with chicken, potatoes, and carrots.  I am so mean.

 

Here is the “bad crib” I found on Craigslist.  I could go into the nasty details about it but we will suffice it to say that it was an epic Craigslist fail.  I had buyer’s remorse before we even had it loaded in the van.  Why did I get it?  I DON’T KNOW!!!  I cried for a few days about it.

 

Then two or three days after the “bad crib purchase” I got a phone call from Babies-R-Us saying that I had won a free crib and $100 gift card.  Say what?  Since I didn’t recall entering any contests was skeptical at first but after a little phone call to verify that I hadn’t been hoaxed we rushed over and picked up our lovely new prize!  Isn’t she beautiful?  Just goes to show that even when I make dumb mistakes, Heavenly Father still loves me.

 

Even with my bad use of precious money this month this lovely husband of mine never offered one critical word about it.  He is a keeper. 

October and the Halloween Fascination

“Mommy, take my picture!”

 

I love this haircut.  Wow, he needs a haircut NOW!

 

How does this boy get so dirty??

We went to the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Scottsdale again this year.  Stephen dressed up like a scientist.  (A chemical engineer, inspired by Uncle Stephen).  And Boston was a glow-in-the-dark skeleton.

 

Check out the ID badge I made for Stephen…I love it!  We had to make sure to call Stephen “Dr. Smith” the whole time he was wearing this costume.

We made a bad call at the festival and dragged the boys along a “haunted trail.”  A high school choir dresses up in scary costumes and pops out as you walk along.  They do it as a fund raiser.  Last year we went through the same “haunted trail” and the boys were fine but we got to ride in golf carts that time.  This time we had to walk the whole way and it was a little too intense for the boys…

Even after much explanation that “those bad guys” were not coming to our house and that they were just high school kids dressed in costumes, Boston had to sleep with Daddy’s baseball bat.

 

Pumpkin carving.  Daddy carved the big one and Stephen and Boston got to design their own with markers.

Hmmm…. slight resemblance?

Stephen was the only one willing to dig out the guts.  Boston wanted nothing to do with it.

Scary Jack

 

Halloween night means trick-or-treating with the Canters in Grandma and Grandpa Smith’s neighborhood (which also happens to be our ward!)  It was at this point that we decided a new camera was a must!!!!  Horrible pictures…

 

 

We loved watching Boston walk in the dark – his cute little “bones” were all you could see and it was so funny to watch them walking along!

I am really glad Halloween is over.  It was getting really old to have Stephen freak out about every Halloween decoration in every store and having to calm the boys down each night to get them to go to sleep.  Is it just me or is Halloween way more intense now that when I was a kid?  I don’t ever remember being that scared during the month of October.