Deck the Halls!

By the time September rolls around I'm itching to decorate for fall. Then it seems like 4 weeks later I'm ripping it down and itching to get Christmas out.

This year we started a new tradition. Elf on the Shelf. I thought this might help keep someone in line... No names mentioned...

I looked all over for the dang thing. I finally found one and ordered it online and had Donavon pick it up on his way home from work. I called the neighbor and had her run a covert operation for me. I told her Donavon was dropping off a package and left a note with it, and told her to come set it up on our front porch in 15 minutes, ring the bell and run.

Worked perfect.

For those of you who don't know about Elf on the Shelf its a newer thing, and Santa sends one of his Elves down from the North Pole to observe you and then he flies back to the NP each night and reports to Santa. You can't touch him, he'll lose his magic and cant fly. Our Elf has naughty tendencies... He came with a story book, and there is even a movie. Every morning (almost) when Issac woke up Fred was doing something else, so he knew he'd moved.

Meet Fred. That's what Issac named him.

 

 

Just for fun, I asked Siri a few questions one night. Donavon and I got new Iphone 5's for Christmas... a little early since my old 3GS died on me. I was cracking up at her response.

 

And we did a ginger bread house this year. Issac had so much fun. Katie just wanted to eat it. Surprised? I'm not.

 

Thanksgiving

Well I touched a bit on pre-thanksgiving. This year was my family's year. However, we don't really go to Seattle for it. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it, but my brother and his family moved  to Gillette, WY last June so they are only 8 hours away, instead of 14. My sister inlaw asked if they came would I host? Sure! My Grandma moved to Salt Lake last July, and I've got 2 Aunts that live in the area too.

We ended up having my brother and his family stay with us and my Grandma, Aunt Julie & Uncle Jim came over for dinner. My sister inlaw Stevie's mom, Karen came over too. Even Donavon's Dad and Ruth came over. We had the whole meal deal at our house and it was great!

It was nice to spend some time with family that weekend. Issac and Jack had a blast playing, as did Katie and Marlowe. Although it was a short weekend, we managed to get in a lot of visiting, some sight seeing and a little bit of black Friday shopping.

{Milk tea party for two!}

{Jack & Issac played dirt bikes upstairs most of the time}

{Sunny enough for a day outside!}

{A trip to Scheels in Sandy... Don't go on Black Friday FYI}

{Stevie & Jack waited forever to ride the ferris wheel inside Scheels}

He got hitched

Continuing on from Halloween in February....

Donavon's Dad got remarried right before Thanksgiving. Yup. We met Ruth on the 2 month anniversary of Brenda's passing and they got hitched not to long after. November 15th I think.

Now before you whip out your judgement, this is definitely a very personal choice and Donavon and I have had many conversations about it as well as with other family members. It breaks down like this: Everyone is different, everyones circumstances are different, we all "move on" in our individual ways, and we as a couple, along with most of his siblings are ok with it. Of course I'd be lying if we didn't have mixed emotions on the whole thing, but this is HIS life, he can do whatever he wants. He is our Dad, and we will support him if this is what he wants. We just lost Mom, we dont want to lose a Dad too because of something silly like this.

We knew, before Brenda had passed he had a strong desire to start dating again. That had already sunk in before she passed. If you think about it, Donavon was just a little guy when he started getting chats from his Dad about "mommy might not be here with us long". Donavon was prepped his entire life that his Mom would not be there throughout his childhood, her time was very limited. Thankfully he got her for 32 years. So as you can imagine my father inlaw had to prep himself that his wife would not always be around, and I'm sure had prepped himself mentally that one day he might have to find another mother to raise his kids with him.

So when he created an online dating profile that wasn't a big deal. I think we all thought it might take awhile, but when you know, you know right? The funny thing is, when I saw her picture, before ever meeting her, I knew it was her. Weird huh?

Now I will say we were all totally blown away that they were getting married so fast. We thought maybe early into the new year they might. So we quickly got to know her and met some of her kids after the engagement. Ha! We were pretty nervous about meeting her kids, I mean they've already decided to get married so uhm, ready or not, you are now stuck with new step brothers & sisters!

It went great. Phew. Ruth has 6 kids. 3 boys and 3 girls. We still haven't met all of them, slowly but surely. Maybe? We have officially met 4. Her oldest, Amy, is awesome, I'm sure the others are too but we just spend the most time with Amy since she lives local, and has kids to play with... and she is a hairstylist and we have hair that needs cut a lot. She's got 4 kids, 2 of which are Issac and Katie's age, Courtney is actually ONE week older than Katie, how awesome is that?! She's become Katie's new BFF. She asks about Courtney all the time! Issac was so thrilled he got NEW cousins, and not just one by one after new babies, he got TWELVE new Aunts and Uncles and a bunch of new cousins instantly! Bam!

So as you can imagine, the 32 something of us has increased just a tad.... Should make for interesting holiday family get togethers! Mike and Ruth have TWELVE kids now, throw in spouses and You've got a crowd.... then throw in grandbabies! YIKES!

Anyway, its been 6 months since they got married. Ruth is a great addition to the family. She's sweet and makes Mike happy. My biggest concern was whoever he picks, this will be my children's Grandma. All of my nieces and nephews are older, Grandma Brenda was with them throughout a majority of their lives and they are teenagers now, they will forever have those memories. My kids? Not so much. We'll be lucky if Issac remembers much of her. Katie wont. So yes, I was very concerned who he picked, because we needed a Grandma. The first time we met Ruth, she changed Katie's diaper. She played with them and they had a great time. She's a great Grandma, and that's all I wanted. Oh and now we don't have to worry so much about Mike, she takes care of him pretty well :)

So here are some pictures from the wedding. My camera was freaking out big time that night, I was so frustrated. Most of my pictures were super blurry. The flash would go off way after I took the pictures. These are the only good ones I got.

{Katie loved the "loons" and dancing in her princess dress}

 

{Frist Dance}

{Color station thanks to new Aunt Amy!}

{Aunt Vonda & Uncle Bryan - Brayn is the Oldest in Donavon's family}

{Busting a move... Actually I dont know what he's doing, but it looks like he's dancing!}

{Grandpa & New Grandma w/ Katie & Courtney}

{This time w/ Issac!}

{Two tired kids, Issac ran around the church ALL night with his NEW cousins!}

Happy Halloween!

........4 months late.... meh.

Go grab a drink, go potty and get comfy. This is a long one...

One thing I love about our little city is that there are some people who grow pumpkins here, and you can pick however many you want, for whatever donation you feel is right. Every year they pick a new charity to donate to and they just set up a jar by the patch with a bunch of scissors and you on your own. I love it because its right down the road, and its not a mud hole, and they aren't in it to make money, just for fun and to help a charity.

We hurried and went down there on a Monday evening. I cant remember now what it was but with Donavon's schedule and working weekends it was our only night to get it done before Halloween came. Typically we don't like to do family things on Mondays because in Mormon land that is designated as 'family night' where you teach a spiritual message to your family and then a lot of times people like to do an activity as a family. So here in Utah Mondays are just bad days to try and do things, everything is always way more crowded. We luckily went during dinner time and there was no one there! We passed a neighbor coming out of the lot on our way in and they had the same idea, go early!

The kids had fun, we got our 'kins and headed home for some dinner.

{"Found mine!"}

{Found mine! I got it!}

{Orrr maybe I might need brothers help...}

{Whats wrong with this one?}

{Ouch! It poked me!}

{Right here! This one! I'm ready!}

Eventually we carved those pumpkins. If I remember right it was the night before Halloween. Not that we procrastinated but I just remember being super busy. *ding ding ding* A light bulb just went off. I remember now why we had to get pumpkins picked so early in the month, that first Monday, and why we had to wait until the night before to carve them. Donavon was HUNTING the entire month of October. No, he didn't kill anything. Surprised? I'm not. Carry on.

Take a look at these pictures. I hadn't looked at them on the computer until now, Katie's face is hilarious! The kids loved carving pumpkins with Daddy.

{"ewwwww what the heck Dad?!?!?!"}

{"Oooooooh this is SO freaking awesome!!!}

{"Let me have a look Dad"}

{'Ew what is it?"}

{"I'll fling pumpkin guts at you!"}

{Cookie break}

{Helping Dad color/carve the pumpkin}

{"Issac told me I couldn't color it blue!"}

{"I'll show you who's boss! Don't you tell me what to do! I'll beat you with my crayon!"}

Still not done.... don't leave yet! You haven't seen their costumes!!!!

So this year I made Katie's costume. Holy glitter. After I got done it looked like a glitter bomb went off in the kitchen. Then whenever she had it on, there was glitter everywhere. Katie was Tinkerbell and Issac was a pirate. I didn't make his, someone in China did. Sometimes you just have to outsource. These pictures are before our Church's Halloween party. They did a chili cook off and then trick or treating from classroom to classroom. It was decided that it wasn't safe doing trunk or treating in the parking lot with that many kids.

{Halloween night}

{After actual trick or treating on Halloween, I kept catching this girl sneaking off to check out the "nandy" bucket for a treat}

{Before Church Party}

Cute huh? Thanks. She was the cutest Tinkerbell ever.



Still not done. Figure while I'm at it and we are talking "Halloween" I better just get it all out. One post or 5, whats the difference?

Our niece Carissa had her sweet 16 party at a farm type place in Syracuse. My sister inlaw Jennie wanted some help setting up and Donavon was gone hunting anyway so why not? Gives us something to do and I know it was exceptionally hard since Grandma (Brenda) wasn't going to be there for it. Lucky for Donavon, they came home from hunting and him and his Dad and his little love interest came too. It was quite fun, the kids loved all the activities, and we got to spend some time as a family. Not to mention my niece has hundreds of friends, yeessh girl. There were literally hundreds there. She's swapped between private and public schools and is quite the social gal.

Before we met up for decorating we decided to make a day of it and stop by the Air museum at Hill Air Force Base. Every time we drive by we think 'we should do that one day', and we never do. So we did. Issac thought it was pretty cool... sort of. Not much of a hands on museum for kids, looking at planes got old after 10 minutes.

{Slightly annoyed my camera was wigging out big time and the pics are lousy, sorry}

{Ok, back story time here. This is the plane that Donavon's Grandpa Yates, Brother Dean flew in. I'm sure I'll get something wrong so long story short, he was shot out of the plane, and survived. While he was in the hospital his buddies came to see him and told him they had one last mission. He snuck out of the hospital and went with them. He was shot out of the plane again, and perished. His body is somewhere in France, it wasn't identified until a few years ago - so it was cool to see this plane and have a history with it. Below is a little globe looking thing, that is where he used to sit in the belly of the plane, next one is a whole shot of it}

{Carissa's Party, exploring the farm!}

{Watching pig races!}

{Sharing Daddy's cake mmmm!}

{I'll just help myself thanks!}

{They had a DJ, Issac and his cousins Caden and Kyler dancing}

{Checking out the crowd}

{Happy birthday Rissa!}

{We took Caden and Kyler on a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch down by the Great Salt Lake, beautiful sunset!}

 {Rides behind the 4wheeler in the pitch black...}

{After we did the corn maze we grabbed a bite to eat. Katie LOVED the corn on the cob.... and yes... yes I am posting a million pictures of it... it was hilarious!}

The girl can make anything look cute... ;)

annnnnd thats it!!! I'm done! Stay tuned for more on what else has been happening lately! Or not so lately...