Christmas Decorating!

Our Christmas decorations are going to be very minimal this year. With our big move to NYC next year, we're trying to sell all of our Christmas decorations before Christmas. How is that going? Not so good, so if you or anyone you know needs some cute but cheap Christmas decor, let me know. But I couldn't let this season pass by without some decorating!
Our tree this year (first time we haven't had a real one) is a loaner from my sister, about 4 feet tall, and is decorated with the decorations we got our first Christmas from the Dollar Store. I actually love these few tiny decorations and have decided not to sell them.

I got a little crafty today! My sister-in-law, Laura, gave me this idea at Halloween to use candy corn, but I neglected my creativity until now. I just used tulle and peppermints on a dollar store Styrofoam wreath. I am obsessed with the way it turned out, and it only took me like 20 minutes! (Minus, the unwrapping of the candies) I just wrapped a long piece of red tulle around the wreath, hot glued the candies on, whipped up a tulle pouf, and tied some more tulle for the bow. UBER cute! And good thing its out of Rachael's reach, she wants to "L, L, L lick" these candies!

MERRY CHRISTMAS SEASON!!

Adam.

I'm finally going to post about this. Rewind the last few posts and insert this one after our picnic in the mountains.
We came down the mountain and went to Wal-Mart for some supplies. Well it was a pretty crazy day at Wally World, crazier than usual, and Rachael was stuck in the cart. We went to the back annex of the store to meander through the Christmas stuff. We figured it was more or less closed off so we let her out to run around, of course keeping a watchful eye out. Then, she bolted. "Nate," I said, "Go grab her please." So off he goes, and 20 seconds later comes back empty handed. "Where did she go?" "I don't know." So we each go our separate ways, in panic mode. I go to the fishy section where we had spent about 20 minutes, Nate went to the toys. After about one minute of looking, I truck it up to the customer service desk, cut in line, and tell them I can't find my daughter. They asked me to describe her. "Two years old, curly hair, black shirt, purple pants." One the intercom comes the announcement, "Attention Wal-Mart associates, we have a Code Adam." Then goes on to describe Rachael. Nate said that as soon as the announcement was made all employees he could see immediately stopped what they were doing and started looking around. About a minute and a half later, some sweet angel wearing a blue shirt brought my little stink bug back to me, still clutching her huge roll of Thomas the Train wrapping paper. She had been hiding in the Men's clothing racks. UGH!! I kid you not, people, she literally bolted across the store in a matter of 20 seconds. I was so scared I had a break down as we walked to find Nate.
Afterwards, as we're driving home, Nate brought up a few thoughts he was having. "I wish she was older so we could punish her." Haha, me too honey, never the less, she is only two and thought we were playing a game. "What if that had been the last time we'd ever seen her?" SO SAD!! But really, to be honest, if I HAD to choose a time, that would be pretty close to my last perfect day with her. A beautiful picnic in the mountains, and then she was pretty dang cute looking at the fish in Wal-Mart. "Shishie!" Obviously I'm glad to have her back, but we'll definitely be leaving her in the cart or on her puppy leash from now on.

Interesting things on Code Adam we learned after we got home:

1. Named for the son of the America's Most Wanted host who was kidnapped
2. Started by Wal-Mart
3. If a child is returned by anyone other than a store employee the police need to be called (so if you ever hear a Code Adam and see the child, maybe don't take him/her up, find an employee. I don't know how strict they are on it...)
4. The exits need to be sealed until the child is found or for ten minutes, then the police are called and Code Adam is lifted (I don't know if they sealed the exits in our case, it would have been interesting to see)

Thankful for Code Adam and thankful to have my princess back!!

Picture taken on Sunday while playing dress up

HARRY!!

We're off! Nate and I are going to sit outside of the crazy theatre for four hours and hope hope hope to get good-ish seats! I'M SO STINKING EXCITED!! I always get like this before an HP premier, because I feel like I've already seen the new movie, cuz I've seen the others so many times and read the books, but then I realise that this is going to be a completely new experience and I can hardly contain myself. I'm not looking at this movie as the beginning of the end like some people, I'm just looking at it as another experience for me to get the chills when I hear the, "dum, dum, dah dum dum, dum duuum dum" as the smokes makes the WB sign appear and the magic BEGINS!!!

(This is all a joke, I don't really like Harry Potter.)
(That was a complete and utter LIE!)

UGH! school...

I am so sick of school and I'm not even the one in school!! I know, I know... it will be worth it in the end yadda yadda yadda. Of course I'm glad I have a hard working husband who realizes the importance of getting education, even taking it a step further and getting a double masters, but I'm DONE! We've never not known being students. Dating: students, newlyweds: students, newly parents: students, 3.5 years marriage: students. Gaaah!! We're so close to the end and I still feel like these last two semesters are going to go on forever! And please don't tell me I'll miss them when they're gone, cuz I know I will, but really, you can say that about every situation in life. It was hard having a newborn, of course I miss it, it is really hard having a tantrum throwing toddler, and apparently I'm going to miss these days too, but sometimes I just get so sick of hearing the "you'll miss it" speech. Life moves on, that is part of the reason we're here, progression. I'm so excited for what life has in store for us, in NYC, in Timbuktu, wherever we go, I just want to go there and stop having to scrimp and stress and resent my husband for not helping more with the baby because he's sitting on the computer. Do NOT get me wrong, he is not sitting there playing around, he's doing his work, and doing amazing at it, I'm just sick of life standing in one spot. I'm also not so naive as to think that once he's not constantly doing school work and has a career that he'll be around more to relive my maternal duties, he's an accountant, and they're busy, and they have deadlines. But he'll (hopefully) have most Saturdays and Sundays to not stress about taking two two hour long tests before midnight because they just opened up yesterday. He'll have time to just be with us. Ugh. Maybe all of this is just overwhelming me right now because I'm currently babysitting my three nephews while my brother and his wife are in San Fran and I'm so tired because four is definitely more than one, and its only been 4 days, but Nate had school school school, so I had kids kids kids. I'm going to bed, this felt good.

Picnic in the Forest

(Love this shot!!)

This last Friday we went for a picnic to Dixie National Forest. I love being in Cedar because beautiful nature is SO close to us, we only had to drive 15 minutes! We're trying to live it up with the wonderful weather before we're snowed in for the winter. Boo. We were the only ones at the picnic area, swung on the swings, climbed the giant tire, went for a stroll, and threw pebbles in the lake. It was so nice to just let Rachael be free and explore, even get a little dirty. I snapped a few cute shots which I'm excited about! Come visit us and we'll take you on a picnic!! Something rather "exciting" happened after we left the picnic, but that's another blog post...

(In my un-biased opinion, she's the cutest kid on the planet!!)

(Love this smile!)

(Since there was no one around, we had to put the timer on the camera, this it what it gave us. Could have been worse...)

(Pics of the kid and her parental units)

Halloween through the years

I thought it would be fun to post some pictures from past Halloweens. I can't believe Rachael has had THREE already!! Enjoy, we sure did!

Halloween 2006 (don't worry, we won cutest couple at our ward party)

Halloween 2007
(2007, me in beauty school)

Halloween 2008 (Rachael's first)

Halloween 2009

Halloween 1987

Halloween 1991 (?)

Halloween 1987/88

Halloween!!

Here is my little Minnie Mouse! Fun story about this costume, it was one of my dance costumes when I was 5, we just had to take the hem up a little bit and throw a tutu underneath it. I made the ears and pinned on the sleeves. Isn't she THE cutest Minnie Mouse who has ever graced this planet with her presence? I think so too.

This year we went to St. George so Rachael could go Trick-Or-Treating with her cousins. Thursday night there was a party at Jace, Owen, and Liam's house which Rachael loved!! My Brother cleared out their bedroom, hung black plastic on the walls, put up a black light, and blasted kids Halloween music. So fun!

Rachael loved hitting the pinata, especially when it exploded with candy.

My sister works at a Pre-School and Rachael got to go to their Halloween party with her cousin Owen on Friday. They were pretty cute walking up and down the street getting candy from the old people :)

Classic.
Here is the whole gang in action!
Rachael and Liam, so cute.
Excited about candy!!

It will be interesting to see how Trick-Or-Treating is done next year when we're in NYC! Crazy.