Turkey and Pies!!!

Ever since my college days with dear LeAnne, it has been a tradition to make a "thankful turkey," in the days before Thanksgiving to remember what we are thankful for--big and little things from family and the gospel to snowflakes and chocolate. This was the first year Olivia could really participate and understood what it meant to be thankful.
Some of the things Olivia was thankful for:
Dad
Mom
Grandmas and Grandpas
Ice Skating
Our Shelley house
Her body

One of the very fun parts of Thanksgiving this year for me was making pies with my wonderfully fun sister, Miranda. We made a total of 11 pies late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Here are some pics of our masterpieces: cheesecake pie, coconut cream, chocolate peanut butter, regular apple, dutch apple, strawberry rhubarb, huckleberry raspberry, and pecan. Later, when we got to Andrew and Brenda's, we baked pumpkin and cherry (store-bought-gasp!) ;)

Oh man, now I'm hungry! The pies were great, but the company was better--we had a great time with all of David's family (minus Gram and Grandpa on their mission in New York)--thanks to Andrew and Brenda for hosting all us craaaazzzzyyy people!!!

Trick or Treat!

The week of Halloween was full of fun for us. On Tuesday we went with my mom to her ward's Halloween carnival put on by the young women. The girls had fun throwing bean bags, decorating a bag, doing the cake walk, getting their faces painted, getting balloon animals, rolling in candy, etc.! It was fun to spend the evening with Grandma. Then on Thursday we had our Bears (cub scouts) over for den meeting where we roasted "Mummy Dogs," painted pumpkins, and made the ever-classic ghost suckers. Olivia had so much fun painting pumpkins that day that on Friday we got the paint back out and painted pumpkins some more, and then we decided we should paint each other's faces (brave Mommy)! Olivia did pumpkins on my face and I did a spider web w/spider and a witch on her. It was lots of fun. After raking leaves all day Saturday while Daddy was setting up his shed here in Shelley, we went to the 3rd annual pumpkin walk at the Bingham County park. I thought it was fun and quite impressive for it being only in its third year running. We are thinking we should see about signing up to do a scene for next year. It looks like lots of fun, and the theme will be "Dreams do come true"--any ideas? :) After the pumpkin walk, we headed to town and visited with some of David's family. One of houses we went trick-or-treating to along the way gave Aubrey a Tootsie Pop and she would not let it go--she kept sucking it on it with the wrapper on, and when we asked if it was yummy, she nodded very enthusiastically (that's her new trick--nodding and shaking her head to communicate). Olivia liked practicing her witch laugh, which she has done over the last few weeks, and Aubrey also picked it up, which was really cute. Olivia liked to say to people, "Come here my little pretty!" in a very witchy voice. Altogether it was a great holiday, and our little witch and her black kitty had a blast!

A (Not-So)Recent Roundup of the Goings-On Around Here

Here is a conglomeration of pictures from various activities we have enjoyed since moving into the new house...
Huckleberry picking--we went about three times and got lots of yummy berries! There were a few challenges, though--Olivia threw up two different times, and Aubrey only stayed happy for a few minutes each time--after that we took turns trying to make her happy while the other one picked. This was when she finally just gave it up and went to sleep.

She is such a funny girl. Whenever she is mad she folds herself in half like this and cries. This time she fell asleep that way. :)

I made this flower cake for mine, Miranda's and Grandma's birthdays, which we celebrated at the same time as Aubrey's since we were moving on Aubrey's birthday.

Here is Aubrey's birthday cake!

Eyeing the goods...

Excitement is building...going...

Going...

Gone! She definitely inherited a sweet-tooth! Thanks to all the family for coming out and making it a special day!

This is the sour-face that Olivia has been giving me lately--it is hard not to laugh at sometimes:)

First day of preschool! Some friends and I are doing a mommy-swap preschool with our 3-year-olds. It has been lots of fun so far!

We went to the annual Spud Day (that's right, I said Spud Day:) celebration with my good friend Sesha and her kids and Karen and Troy and their boys. Here is a group shot of the big kids.

And the babies...

My spud princess--this is one of those outfits she wouldn't leave the house without for a while:)

An old-time fire engine

Kolter covering his ears from the siren

Only in Idaho...(well, maybe not)

Daddy, Aubrey, and Matt-bud on the motorcycle

Spudnik--need I say more?

The parade was pretty impressive, I must admit! From there we walked down to the festivities at the park, which included free yummy baked potatoes (loaded!) and chocolate milk, booths of fun activities for the kids, fair food, vendors, etc. The highlight of the day for me was when Sesha convinced me to participate in the spud-picking competition, and then I insisted she come with me. For those of you who don't know (I didn't), the spud-picking contest went like this: each person is set up with a row of piled potatoes dumped from gunny-sacks, which sacks are laid to the side of the row for re-filling during the race, and a metal wire basket. The race is simple; fill the basket with potatoes and dump them into the gunny sacks. It was harder than it looks! Sesha and I were amateurs, so we were mainly just competing against each other--I won;) Next year I'm going for the cash-prize!

We were excited to move our old firepit from the Idaho Falls house to this house--these pics are from our first weenie roast at the new house.

Daddy and his girls chillin' by the fire

Olivia has gotten to be quite a good little roaster!

We have also been doing a lot of canning this year--green beans and carrots with the help of my friend Sesha, salsa with the help of Miranda, frozen corn from Sam's dad's garden, freezer jam from my mom's raspberry bushes, David and I worked together on the pears, Karen (David's sister) and I did peaches together, and Sara and Sam brought out a TON of apples, so we did apple pie filling and apple butter together. This shot is of one of the many times we caught Aubrey snitching a bite of apple. We could have filled a bucket with all the apples that had little nibbles taken out of them. This was also the night that Aubrey took her first steps!

I just had to add this cute little funny video of Aubrey eating Ramen--she was really enjoying it!

The BIG REVEAL Posting

Okay, so this will probably be a little anticlimactic for some family and friends, since many of you who live closeby and even some who don't have already seen the house in person by now. If I had just remembered, in my awake-for-48-hours-straight-state to take pictures of what we had done to the house BEFORE we moved all our stuff in I would have been blogging ever since. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, so I had to first unpack and organize and then try to remember to take pictures on a day when the house was actually looking decent. I should clarify--usually the house looks decent at some point every day--it just doesn't last very long, so I have a relatively small window of time in which to take pictures, and I inevitably forgot for a long time. So finally I decided that I might as well just take pictures of the house the way it is.

So without further ado...

Here are some pics of the inside of our new house, complete with all of our junk!:)

(I still have to paint the doors of the kitchen cabinets and we haven't tackled the master bedroom downstairs, so there is more to come in the next few months!)

For Better or For Worse...

We closed today, hooray! After a trying 90-day process, we finally were able to sign (and sign and sign) the papers on our new (old) house today. Then, even though technically we don't get the keys till tomorrow, we got down and dirty at the house getting the remodel started (we have the code for the lockbox). I thought it would be fun to post some pics of the in-between stage. Here is David atop the pile of carpet and other junk he tore out of all the bedrooms and off the stairs.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that there were indeed hardwood floors under the carpet in the master bedroom. The only hitch is that there are two different sections of wood separated by a line of 2x4's where there used to be a wall before. We were already planning to take part of the room to make a master bath and closet. Now the question is this:
Do we...
1. Divide the room at the line where the old wall used to be, creating a space for a large bathroom and nice-sized closet and enabling us to use and refinish the existing hardwood floors, but cutting the size of the bedroom significantly...OR...
2. Go with the original plan of a smaller bathroom/closet space in order to preserve a larger bedroom space, making refinishing the hardwood floors a non-option??? I would love any opinions on the matter--I am really torn! I know it wouldn't bother ME to have a smaller bedroom and a nice large bathroom, but for resale value down the line...I don't know--what do you think?

This wall used to have an interesting display of wood with a large half-circle mirror. David ripped it all off tonight and decided to also take out the partial wall they had filled in above some of the upper stairs.

Under all of the floors upstairs we found more hardwood floors--score! BUT, unfortunately, they all have paint on them; some are worse than others. We are going to attempt to use paint stripper and then sand and refinish up here as well (as David's dad suggested--thanks, Pa!), but we'll have to see how it goes--has anyone done this? Any advice?

As you can see, the floor in the hallway upstairs was painted completely white.

The playroom floor looks as though someone decided to paint the floor blue but didn't want to bother moving the bed, which was in the middle of the floor--weird...

The floor in Olivia's room is splattered a lot, but it doesn't have an actual coating of paint.

Aubrey's room had the least paint spots--just a TON of dirt under all that carpet, pad, and old old old linoleum.

We were planning on holding off on the back bedroom since it had that column right in the middle of the room which we wanted to take out, but which would be just one more project on top of everything else...David couldn't wait, so now there is the exposed pipe thing that used to vent the boiler heater and now is just used as a vent for the water heater, and around it there is a square hole in the floor leading all the way to the basement. I'm excited to get it all done, but I don't know how we'll ever have enough time...guess we'll just see how it goes. However, I do know that the kids are definitely not stepping foot in this house for a while--there are hazards everywhere!

Almost everything so far was David's handiwork--he also cleaned out literally a truckload of junk from the basement. My big accomplishments included taking shelves off the walls and cabinet doors off the cabinets in the kitchen. WOW--as usual when working with David, I felt inefficient--but then, who doesn't?

Here I am with my trusty screwgun--I felt so handy :)

Well, there we have it! Or progress on DAY ONE--my goal is to keep track of the whole project via blog, and then hopefully later on I can convert our blog posts into a little family journal/book--has anyone done this? I've heard about it but don't know much. Let me know...

Kids Say the Darndest Things

You know how people are always saying, "You should write that down!" ? Well, I'm finally going to try it. I wish I could remember half of the funny things Olivia has done over the last three and a half years, but I can't--only a handful stick out, and I am really sad about that. But, what's done is done. I have been trying to keep track for a couple of weeks now of some of the funny things that come out of this little girl's mouth, so here are a few:

Olivia: Mom, you're hairy!
Mom: Why do you say that? (laughing)
Olivia: Because you have lots of hair on your arm!
Mom: (noticing that the light is hitting the hairs on my arm just right) Oooooh, I see.
Olivia: (looking down) Daddy's hairy too! I'm hairy, too! We're all hairy!

Mom: Olivia, you have a lot of strawberry jam on your face. Careful, you're getting it in your hair.
Olivia: Mom, if I had a tongue on my forehead, I could lick the jam out of my hair!

Scene: Olivia lying straight and stiff on her bed with her eyes closed, but definitely not asleep, wearing her blue and purple dance/tutu outfit.
Mom: Olivia, what are you doing?
Olivia: Shhhh! I'm waiting for true love's first kiss!

Scene: Family together eating a picnic dinner at an old school on the merry-go-round. Olivia is swinging on the bars and going under and over them.
Olivia: I'm a pole dancer!
MomandDad: What?!!!
Olivia: I'm dancing on a pole, so I'm a pole dancer!
(I still have not decided where in the world she picked up this term--she watches Disney movies and PBS--that's it!--maybe it was just a coincidence...)

Ever cringe when you are out in public and see someone/thing that you just know your kid is going to say something rude about and not know she's being rude?
Scene: Our new renters, Mike and Betty, were over working in the garden. (We said we could share the garden this year.) Betty begins to smoke a cigarette (she has tried many times to quit but hasn't been able to yet--but she never smokes inside).
Olivia: Betty, my daddy said you look gross with a cigarette! (Of course David never said this--only that cigarettes are gross and will make us sick.)
Mike: You're right, Olivia, it is gross.
Betty: They are yucky, they make you sick.
Needless to say, when I went out there and Mike told me about their little conversation, I was mortified, but they seemed to understand it was just the way it goes with little kids sometimes. Still, I hope her feelings weren't hurt! They are really the nicest people. Of course we also had the "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" talk with Olivia later.

Olivia's favorite movies right now are the Princess Diary movies and Mary Poppins. I know she has seen all of them far too many times, because she can readily quote all of them, and does, all the time. For instance, whenever she is told she can't do something she wants to do, or is disappointed in some way, she lies down with a sad face and says dramatically, "Maybe I'm not a princess after all..." (big sigh) She walks around the house singing "Gernogia, Gernogia!" (Genovia--the fictional country of which Mia is a princess) or sometimes when I say I have a job for her she starts in on Mary Poppins singing "Spoonful of Sugar."

Olivia's favorite new phrase: "Oh. My. Heavens!"

I hope you get as many laughs as I do out of this little girl and her craziness--either way, at least I finally "wrote that down," right?

Our Fantastic Fourth!

Our 4th of July celebration was lots of fun. We started out at the church for a yummy breakfast put on by the "new and improved" 11th ward (a phrase coined by our new bishop to refer to our ward which was essentially combined with another ward recently.)
Next we met up with Karen and Troy and family to walk down to the parade. It was really hot but still lots of fun! Olivia loved watching all the floats and especially the ones that had music and dancing. She still tells people the we were in the parade rather than watching it. :)
After an afternoon break/nap, we headed out to my Grandma and Grandpa Harmon's house for some dinner and then my Mom and my sister Miranda went to the fireworks downtown with us. Highlight of the event: funnel cake! j/k--it was delish, though. ;) Poor Olivia swore that she had to go potty--really bad!!!--right in the middle of the fireworks show, so I hauled her all the way down to those port-a-potty things (all the while getting glares from the people we were passing as we were temporarily obstructing their views) only to get there and have her say "I don't need to go anymore--those potties are too dark and scary!!" No matter what I tried I could not get her to go in those scary, dark potties, so a very frustrated mommy and a very tired Olivia made thier way back in front of the crowds of people to catch the end of the fireworks. Oh well!
Here's David with his little Ethan-bud and the girls before the parade.

Which is which? I was excited that Aubrey is still little enough to wear the same cute 4th of July dress that Olivia wore for her first 4th, even though Olivia was only 6 months when she wore it and Aubrey is almost a year--little peanut!

Someone walked along during the parade passing out popsicles, and Aubrey had to have one too. She would make a face like she hated it and then dive after it again.

Fun in the Summertime

Even though things have been a little crazy the past month or so, we still have found time to squeeze in a little summer fun. Here are a few of the things we've been up to lately...

Olivia loooooooves her 4-wheeler. I wish I could say she is a natural at driving the thing--I cringe every time she gets near the trampoline or the fence or the flowerbeds...when she gets near something she does the same thing I do when I'm riding a 4-wheeler--panic! It's pretty funny to watch, but it does make me a little nervous. :)
David gets the big 4-wheeler out once in a while to keep it from being idle too long and we ride it up and down the canal bank across the street from our house.

This was Aubrey's first 4-wheeler ride, and as you can see, she found it very relaxing...

Here is Olivia posing in the hat she made at library storytime.

She did a great job on it and was very proud!

I had to get a few pics of Aubrey's first ponytail. You can see it if you squint a little. ;)

This is a shot of the goofy little toothy grin she has when she laughs.

Here she is holding her token cracker--this girl is a cracker fiend!