An Early Thanksgiving : Part 2

 Museum Day Post

My mom, a long time ago, for the ten years before I was born,

worked at the Denver Museum of Natural History, aka

the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

It is always so cool to me, and now that Jack's 

favorite movie is Night at the Museum I thought

this would be a fun thing to do.

 Before heading to the museum, had to see

 the doggie Ellie

 

 Just part of Grammies and Boompa's 

yard for Halloween, they kept it up for us to see it.

It was spooky, cobwebs everywhere!

 In the first 20 feet of the museum, before you buy your

ticket, and Jack is content now that we've 

"gone" to the museum.

He got to see "Rexy"! Then he wondered

if we could stay until dark so he could throw

the bone for Rexy 

(everything comes alive a night in the movie,

he wanted to stay for that part).

 

 A giant something, I don't remember, 

but James liked it.

 Another favorite, baby Stegosaurus'

 Selfie with Mommy and Jack

Taking pictures of them has gotten so much 

easier when we say "make a happy face"

instead of "say cheese".

Who knew?

 By ice age animals

 Daddy and Jack hitchin' a ride

 Mummies!  Another feature from the movie

 That plane behind them was made from duct tape!

There was an exhibit by the Myth Busters guys, and that was

in it.

 More animals

 Do you see the knome in this picture?

It was painted while my mom was working there

by a co-worker, and I can't believe that I still remember

where all these hidden knomes are.

(He's in the middle, by the tree poking around 

with a green hat)

 This is from how far away you have to really find that

little guy.  So usually only if you are looking,

or have someone there to tell you will you see it.

 Nathan as a moose :)

 Grammies and James in front of the Sitka deer exhibit.

This is one where she did a lot of the grasses and leaves in 

the foreground.

She called it the most boring exhibit in the museum, but

I find it at least a little interesting because she worked 

on it.

 James was staring at this little plant for a long time.

I finally asked what he was doing.

"I found a venus flytrap mommy!"

And then he wanted his picture by it.

 At the kid's discovery zone

 We did stay until the very end, one of the last

families to leave.  It was a good full day,

but by then we were hungry!

7 Years Later

Wedding Day, May 6th, 2006

I loved him then...

November 2013

...but I love him even more now.

It was actually 8 years ago over Thanksgiving that

Nathan took me to his home in Arizona to meet his 

family.  It was there that I first said "I love you",

he took a few weeks to say it back, but it has been

love ever since.

This holiday time always holds nostalgia for me

as I think back on that time when we fell in love

and decided to be married for time and all eternity in this 

beautiful temple.

An Early Thanksgiving: Part 1

We took a trip to Denver a little before Thanksgiving because it would coincide with Great Aunt Carol's visit from Texas to Denver as well.  The more family the merrier :)  These were from the first few days there:

Dinner at Uncle Kyle's, we missed Aunt Carol Aderman (there are

two Aunt Carol's in the family!)

The whole gang

My twin cousin's Jessica and Meghan, such cuties :)

These two clowns

Kendra and the lovely GAC

 

 Grammies and Boompa and the boys

Sunday after church we stopped at the Denver Temple

to take pictures.  

Not bad for a self portrait eh?

It was pretty windy, they are pretending to fly

I love Jack's little head back looking at the 

Moroni statue on top in this picture

 Sunday dinner gang

Uncle Dana and GAC

My Mama and her Aunt

Sunday night Denver Bronco football, and if they score, 

we ring the bell.  Jack and James both get this 

tradition, and love to ring the bell for a touchdown!

 Football with Boompa

These were the first two days, and we had already 

visited with so many family members and 

had technically had our family feast twice.

Great Aunt Carol brought her new love

Ray to meet the family.  Everyone adores

GAC so we are very happy that she is 

so obviously happy with him :)

A Provo Trip

Every other week I've been headed down to Provo to see an

awesome chiropractor for my lower back this pregnancy.

It's working too as my back pain has diminished 

significantly the last month!

 While in Provo we try to have an adventure or two:)

This particular trip was very packed as we went to the doctor, 

went by and saw Kristie, then headed over to the Provo Rec Center

 to go swimming. (Very neat new rec center, very close

to where we used to live! And if it had been there

while we lived there we would have gone all the time!)

Then saw Kirstin, then to the Parks' home for dinner in

Heber before heading home...whew!

There is still a park right next to the rec center, and

we needed to find some crunchy leaves to have a 

leaf fight before it gets too cold and wet

(and on a side note, it still isn't both of those things, 

come on snow, where are you?!)

The leaf fight was a success, and these were the best

pictures that I caught:

Selfie of the three of us :)

Happy Fall!

Happy Halloween!

On Halloween we had a few friends over for dinner,

then to give candy out at our house while the kids

went trick-or-treating.

Jack had woken up from his nap on Halloween 

wheezing and coughing, but then an hour

later seemed fine and was running around.

So Nathan took the kids out this year 

trick-or-treating just two blocks and I gave the candy,

which was fine by me because it was getting pretty chilly.

Superman, Daddy, and Captain America

Both needed to have capes, and they have 

loved dressing up and showing off their "muscles"

Well, later that night Jack was still having a hard

time breathing.  He'd get better when we took him

outside to sit on the porch, so with the cold air it means croup.

But he kept getting better, then worse, then better, then worse.

We hemmed and hawed, but I thought he's going to

get really bad probably at 2am, we should just got now.

So we did.  

We ended up taking him into our doctor's (which has 

 24/7 office hours, BEST THING EVER!),

and while there his breathing got even worse and

his fever spiked at 103, even while on tylenol,

so he had a steroid shot to open his airways and

a breathing treatment, which he took perfectly.

James came down with the virus a day

later with a cough and fever, but nothing nearly

as bad as Jack.

It has taken five days, but today

 he finally woke up without 

a fever!

So that was how our Halloween ended up,

hope yours was better!

Some October Adventures

A bunch of pictures from October: 

 Jack found the bumbo in the closet, and decided it was the perfect

chair for reading.

Then James wanted to sit in it,

and Jack sat on his lap to read him the story.

 James had his last soccer game, and made a goal again!

 We went to Pack's Pumpkin Patch with the preschool, 

and we all picked a pumpkin from the patch,

and then rode the wagon pulled by a tractor back to the front.

 Enjoying the ride

 James and Jack shared a ride pulled by a smaller wagon.

 James had his arm around his brother the whole time :)

 Swingin' around 

 Watching pig races!

 In front of the giant pumpkins grown there

 Ready for the ward Trunk-or-Treat

Captain America and Superman!

I'm Black Widow though you can't tell here, 

James wanted me to be someone

from his "Avengers" bat that has the pictures of all the heroes.

 Trunk-or-Treating with Grandma

 We headed to Provo for Becca's baby shower, 

Nathan and Tom got to go mtn. biking during that time,

and afterwards we took a walk around BYU in the wagon.

Even got ice cream at the creamery!

 At the Eyring Science Building looking at all the different 

exhibits about how science works!

I love how our kids know about dinosaurs, the word 

hypothesis and that it's an idea you can test,

and that they WANT to test ideas!

(Thank you Dinosaur Train for teaching that)

 

We went to Tanner's last football game, and this was the

only picture I got.

But James and Kira are very cute here.

Kirstin and her friend Mark came up too!

That was fun, but cold, and poor Jack bumped his head,

then it kept getting colder, but I still

liked getting to see Tanner play :)