Spooky House

Tonight we decorated a spooky Halloween house. Brian even got out his drill and made structural adjustments to make sure everything stayed in its place.

Pumpkins and Snow

Our garden gave us 6 gorgeous pumpkins this year. Brian returned home from work yesterday, and we've been waiting for him to carve pumpkins with us. While trying to decide what to do with a particularly short and fat pumpkin, I told him how some day I wanted to try drilling holes into the pumpkin as I had seen on Martha Stewart's show. He jumped right up, got out his drill, tracked down a spade bit, and set me up to drill to my heart's content. What I didn't expect was Kylie's interest in running a drill. That girl went to town on that thing! It wasn't long before she was handling the drill on her own like a pro. If anyone cares to know, some of the holes go all the way through the wall, while other holes go 3/4 through so the light glows through the remaining pumpkin wall. Make sense? No? Well, let me buy some candles and I'll try to get a picture.

I have noticed, in the past week, that Kylie's reading and writing skills have increased tremendously. It's like a switch flipped on. It's been so exciting to watch her progress and learn. Tonight she sat down with her dad and read him a Halloween book with minimal help.

We got our first snowstorm of the year. I'm quite sure that this Halloween will not be as nice as last Halloween. In fact, last Halloween was a complete fluke. This is more like the standard Northern Utah Halloween--wearing your costume over your snowsuit. The only person in our family upset by the snow was Sallie the cat. She has cabin fever and has protested quite loudly. The rest of us are enjoying the cozy day at home with hot chocolate and pumpkin cookies. My only lament is that I did not get out to take pictures of the fall colors before the snow fell.

This Week In Pictures

My baby girl is growing up so fast! I was blown away by how much she has progressed this past week with her reading and writing. I sat down and watched her write sentence after sentence, cherishing that moment with her. I am so grateful that I am able to be home with her. I am even more grateful to my husband who works so hard so that I can be home.

I am loving my new calling as Laurel Adviser. It's a volunteer leadership position in our church for a group of girls ages 16-18. We have classes every Sunday after our Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School, plus we get together every Tuesday night for an activity. This past week we teamed up with the Priests (16-18 year old boys) to do a service project raking leaves for a couple families up the canyon. Kylie gets to come with me to most activities since Brian is at work.

Birthday Party Extravaganza

For Kylie's 7th birthday we had a super girly party where the girls had their hair, nails, and make up done. Kylie's super cute cousins came to help with the makeovers and made the party a huge success! I couldn't have done it without them. We had Hannah Montana music blaring, glitter flying everywhere, and lots of pink tissue flowers--which I made. The cake decorations are just melted white chocolate chips which I piped into various sizes of star bursts then sprinkled with white sugar crystals.

My beautiful birthday girl!

Some of the cute girls

Kylie is 7!

Red Rover!

After the party:

Happy Birthday To Us!

October 13: Katie and Kylie's birthday. I am so lucky to share my birthday with my best friend! 7 years ago I was anticipating the birth of my first child. She was due Oct. 10, but we all know that those babies come when they're good and ready, regardless of calendars or expectations. The night before my birthday we went out to dinner and I was having random contractions. The waitress asked when I was due. I replied, "Two days ago. I'm having contractions right now." Her eyes popped open with panic and she begged me not to have the baby right there. I laughed and told her I had a good 24 hours left. The next morning, October 13, I went into the hospital around 6 am, having been up off and on through the night. My beautiful baby girl was born at 7 pm that night. When I finally came out of the haze of labor, the nurses brought me a piece of cake with a candle to celebrate my birthday. But I already had the best present of all: my little bug named Kylie, all 6.9 lbs of her.

The night before her 7th birthday Kylie slept fitfully and woke up a number of times. Finally at 4 am I took her temperature and realized that she had a fever. To her great delight, she was too sick to go to school and would HAVE to spend the day at home watching cartoons with her mom and dad. Afraid that she would be disappointed to miss the school's birthday celebration, I arranged for Kylie to go to class for 10 minutes so they could sing to her and present her with their previously-made cards. Brian surprised me with yet another gift (after having already bought me a computer plus little kitchen luxuries like a new skillet, cutting board, and strainer that I've been wanting) by scheduling me an hour massage with my favorite massage therapist. Later that night we went out to dinner, and Kylie insisted that we have sushi. We have decided that Takara is a suitable sushi restaurant to replace our favorite one that closed. Later we went to my parent's house for some amazing chocolate cake and presents. Sadly, I forgot my camera throughout the day, but managed to get one picture of Kylie holding her gift from us: a rocking pair of walkie talkies. It's been a great day and I have appreciated all the calls, texts, cards, and messages from everyone! I focus so much on Kylie's birthday and making it special for her that when someone wishes me a happy birthday, it catches me by surprise and I get a little excited thinking, "Oh yeah, it's my birthday too!" The best part of the day was waking up to Kylie whispering, "Happy Birthday, Mom!" Kylie was especially sweet, singing to me and calling me her birthday girl. All day long one of us would say, "Happy Birthday!" and the other would say, "Happy Birthday to you too!" I love sharing my birthday with her!

Finally--An Update!

I finally got a new computer! But for some reason it's underlining everything...hmm...well, while I figure that out, here's some pictures of what we've been doing. Kylie participated in a dance camp put on by the high school and she got to dance at the high school football game.

And now it's not underlining...whatever. One week that Brian was home we went to the American West Heritage Center.

Buffalo!

Brian sliding down the hill on a potato sack.

We picked gourds for the gourd launcher.

Corn Maze

They have a fun hay fort for the kids to jump on and around.

This was definitely Kylie's favorite part of the whole day! Kitties!

I love the farm house. The right half is the original house, which my grandma grew up in. The university added the left half after it was donated and moved to the Heritage Center.

Feeding apples to the mule.