Walking Tall

Grant has become totally mobile and walks everywhere. He's still kinda robotic, especially in shoes, but he's getting the hang of it more and more each day. So cute!

My Canning Triumph!

I'm so absurdly proud of my canning efforts this year that I had to take a picture of some of the things I had done. My first project was tomatoes, oh they are so yummy! They came from my own garden as well as from the overflowing garden of some kindly neighbors/ward members. The pears are the Asian variety and came from our next door neighbor's tree. Linda had never canned them before so I gave her a quart so that she could see for herself how they turned out and if she'd want to do it herself. (She was impressed! :) Finally, I did apple pie filling. I've never done any of these fruits before, but I'm ridiculously happy with the look of the finished products. Hooray for me!

Spaghetti Dinner

Grant really enjoyed his spaghetti one night. We all enjoyed watching him enjoy it. (I made it with my home-canned tomatoes...more on that later.) :)

Guess Who's Queen of the Potty?

So, will Grace cheerfully kill me when she's older because I published a picture of her on the potty? Who knows, but I'll die a happy death because we finally got the potty training job done. The problem wasn't Grace, it was me. First I chickened out of training her because we were doing traveling in the summer...Sandra and Keith's house - yeah! Then I had a wicked bout of sciatica and I couldn't bend down without wanting to cry. Finally I tore a ligament in my foot and had to wear a gigantic Bledsoe boot for four weeks. I wasn't in the mood to potty train. In the end, she basically did it herself. What a great little gal!

Halloween Fun

So, the Davis County School District had a stroke of genius and scheduled some “teacher development day” on Halloween, which gave the kiddos the day off. I thought that was SWEET! Merritt was able to go with us to Chad’s bring-your-kids-to-trick-or-treat-at-work event. They got so much candy it was almost obscene…almost! Grant was too tuckered out to go out later that night, but Grace and Merritt braved the warm weather and light rain to collect more goodies. Gracie lasted about 45 minutes before sitting down and declaring that she wanted to go to bed. Merritt and I (along with our neighbors) stayed out till 9pm and went through the local haunted house (care of Timothy…totally awesome!) THREEE times! We went home exhausted and with a backbreaking load of sweets.

You're going to poke someone's eye out!

For FHE on the Monday before Halloween we carved up our beautiful pumpkins into scary jack-o-lanterns. Okay, Merritt and Chad’s pumpkin was scary…Grace and I went for happy. This might sound weird, but the pumpkins smelled AWESOME! I am not kidding. Pumpkins fresh from the garden (they did “cure” for a few weeks) have now become a thing I would actually consider eating and not just cutting up for some freakish Halloween fun.

The Totally Awesome Garden

So, I’ve been having technical difficulties with this blog (that would be me actually) and I’m only now really getting started. Please excuse me while I backtrack a bit and get caught up. These garden pictures are from October. We had a wonderful garden this year. It was small because we didn’t get going until June (you know, moving in and all that had to happen first…plus, the garden was a giant weed patch that had to be got under control before anything edible could grow), but it was a mighty garden and gave us lots of yummy things to eat. The children were particularly excited about the giant pumpkins we managed to grow, so this was our harvesting the pumpkins day.