We've been in this home 2 years now. The basement decor never seems to make the cut when it comes to the monthly budget, so I've been doing my best.

We had a coffee table that once matched this end table.


I decided to change it up.


Maybe someday I will buy some new furniture for the basement, until then, I'll just keep pretending I know what I'm doing.

I was doing laundry and asked sienna to go get me some hangers. Like a good girl, she went and got hangers . . .

by taking all of the clothes in the closet off of them.

My little guy is 1! I can't hardly believe it. Kade is such a lovable sweet baby. He is and has always been a mama's boy. He is finally walking, and "exploring". He can say mama, dada, ot oh, mmm, and no. He points to things he wants, and usually always gets them. He loves to wrestle with his older siblings. He is already trying to keep up. I'm so glad I get to be his mama.





His favorite part of the party was the balloon that Aunt Bailey brought him.

I was so glad the boys agreed to dress up as a family. I realize the I probably don't have too many more years of it.



With all of the craziness of the deer hunt the week before Halloween, we ended up carving pumpkins on Halloween afternoon. Luckily Steve got home as we were finishing up. Bronsen and Parker still hate digging out the guts, but loved doing all their own carving this year.



Perfect size pumpkin for my little guy!!



Until Next Year . . .

There has been a little discrepency about when Kade's first steps were. Mostly, me not believing that he took them when I was gone. So, here are his OFFICIAL first steps. He took 2 steps!!! He is my slowest walker, but he's getting there. Another month and he'll be crusing everywhere. I can't believe he is almost one. Where does the time go?

Sienna is my sweet, loving, wild child. She is so quick to get into trouble!
This particular day, Parker accidentlly hit her with the back swing of his golf club. And if you know Parker, he doesn't do things half hearted, it was all out!

But luckily they are still friends and although there is still a small bruise, she's healing fine.

I was trying to get Kade down for a nap. I was careful to feed him in the living room with Sienna as to decrease her unsupervised time. But I guess that's not good enough because in the time it took me to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, little star" she had accomplished much. She had got a pan from the cupboard and put it on the stove. Got the eggs from the fridge, climbed up on the counter, cracked the egg in the pan, without even breaking the yolk.

Maybe not my best parenting decision, but I decided to light the stove and let her cook her egg.

Scrambled of course. Who knows, maybe some day she'll become a world famous chef and I'll be thankful for these pictures. If not, I hope she learns how to cook a good healthy meal for her family.

This was supposed to be the year for boating in our household. But thing just didn't work out that way. We did finally get the boat fixed, and back to Lake Powell. It didn't turn out to be the best trip, but memorable none the less.

Just look how happy he is. This is the sole reason we own a boat!

Every boat needs a good flag man!

Kade loved munching on the watermelon!

But wasn't such a fan of the water that day.

And Nate, hopefully we gave him his wake boarding fix.

I know that I am way behind, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to tell Nate how proud we are of him. Back in July, my brother Nate returned from serving a 2 year mission in the Phillipines. He did an amazing job and shared his testimony of Jesus Christ with so many people. He's a great example to my boys. We are so happy that he returned safe and sound.

We almost missed him at the airport. We were all waiting in the wrong terminal. How sad that would have been.

We finally got all set up in the right spot.

I have truly never seen my parents more excited.

Our complete family!


Love You Nate!

I'm sorry for Steve that the boat is not fixed yet, but I am totally loving that we have been able to spend more time on the mountain this year. Last week we went up to Foy lake twice, the first time we just fished and cooked dinner with my family. Then that weekend we decided to pull the camper up and do it right. We had a great time both trips. The Saturday that we were camping we decided to load all of us onto our 4 wheeler and take the trail up to Shay Mountain. Good thing we have a pretty tough 4 wheeler.

For the kids, the best part of our rides are always the breaks, where they get a little snack and relax. This time the football made the ride with us.

Kade is seriously getting too big for the type of slings I've been using, but I love him being so close. I always feel like I have such a precious view from my vantage point, I tried to share.

Does this look like a good trail for a family of six? Ya, it was super rough. Needless to say, they kids and I walked up much of the trail. You can't exactly bail off if it starts to roll when you're holding onto four kids.

A mini break.

I think she loves the mountain as much as I do.

When my family came up for dinner, my mom was in charge of dessert. She decided to make donuts. Bronsen loved it. She was nice to let him help, and now he thinks we should have donuts at every cookout.

What I've learned in my 7+ years of parenting little boys, is that no matter how many times you tell them, or burn their sticks, they will always find another one to poke the fire with.

Does life get any better? Sharing a salad with a cousin.

He's always rolling around in the dirt. He hasn't been feeling well and I teased that he probably caught some virus from all of the dirt, leaves, rocks, sticks, and who knows what else he's always putting in his mouth. I truly hope I'm wrong, because #1, that's just disgusting, and #2, he's got a lot more trips to the woods before he's done with that stage.

If you can't find us at home most likely we're gone to the mountain again. . .

Now I'm pretty much wasting time. I used our home design software to give me a feel for what the room would look like. Yellow, with my original fabric, or painted blue with #4.

So this week I've been looking at drapery fabric for the basement. As most of you know, the basement has brown carpet and is currently painted a deep yellow/gold. The fireplace is a bit rustic looking I think. Anyway, I feel like it looks like it came from the 1970's instead of 2010. So this first fabric swatch was my plan, with adding some white crown moulding and wainscot. It would allow me to keep the wall color, add in some green, blue and orange to tie it all together. But then I showed it to Steve and he said, "I thought you were trying to get away from the 70's. That looks like it is straight from my Grandma's." I think that means that his grandma has good taste. Anyway, so I found some other fabrics that I like as well. I would appreciate a few honest opinions as to which is best.



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