Noah's Walking-Almost

Noah is almost walking. This isn't a great depiction of it, but I thought it was adorable nonetheless.

Don't try this at home!!!!

Since October, or whenever the stores started putting out Christmas stuff, my boys have been begging for a Christmas tree. We normally go out the day after Thanksgiving and cut one down. This year, I decided I was going to do it on my own. We piled into the car, stopped at Lowe's for some rope and a tarp and of course to our friendly Ranger Station for a permit and we were off on our adventure. I was feeling fairly confident that I could do this on my own. We got to the place where we could cut trees down and parked. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to drag the tree very far, so we were limited to ones relatively close to the dirt road. I found a good one and got it down pretty quick. Even dragging it to the car wasn't a big deal, but then I had to get it on top of my car. Luckily there were two girls, oh I'd say they were about 16, and they saw me and came and helped me get it on my car. I wish I had been a little less stressed and I would have gotten some pictures of this. Luckily our tie job worked and I got it home.

It is a beautiful Christmas tree and I am so happy that I made up my mind to go get it. The boys decorated it and they did a wonderful job for a 4 and 3 year old. Then I put them to bed and moved some of the decorations up higher so the tree had some decorations above 3 feet. Once again, I love that I did it, but would I do it again, hmmm, let's just hope I don't have to!

Here's a cute picture of all 3 of my boys playing with their Little People Nativity Scene.

Sweet Little Connor

Today Brenden and Connor were playing with their zoo animals. It apparently was time to feed them and they were about to do it when Connor said, "Wait Brenden, we have to say a prayer." He then started a prayer, so we all folded our arms and closed our eyes. In the prayer he blessed each animal and their food. It was so sweet that he was thinking of praying over the animals food. All I have to say is: What a sweet boy!

Family Home Evening

Our family has a new tradition at Halloween. It started last year. Gary took the family to a pumpkin patch and we roamed around forever looking for the most perfect huge pumpkin ever. The time paid off and we found an amazingly perfect huge pumpkin. It is a fun memory, so I decided to carry on the tradition this year. So while we were at the farm for Brenden's Preschool Field Trip, Brenden, Connor, Noah and I picked out the biggest pumpkin that we could find to put on our porch. It was a pretty good looking pumpkin too.

On Halloween we went trick-or-treating with a friend's family. So we were away from our house and unable to pass out candy. I felt pretty bad about that for some reason, and I decided to leave a bowl full of candy on my front porch with the lights on. I was pretty sure the bowl would be completely empty when I got home (kids aren't dumb, I know), but I did think my bowl would be here when we got home. Sure enough when we pulled in the candy, the bowl, and our super cool pumpkin were all missing.

I was telling my mom about what happened and she gave me the idea to turn it into a family home evening lesson. So tonight we sat down and talked about stealing and how we felt when we found our stuff missing. The boys were so devastated about the pumpkin and candy bowl being gone. So we had a great lesson on not stealing. Brenden said the closing prayer and in his prayer he said, "Please bless that no one will take our little pumpkins, so that we can make them jack-o-lanterns." and "Please bless that we can find our bowl," that is when Connor interjected, "Don't worry Brenden, I'm going to get Mom a new one and it's going to be red."

I thought it was a sweet prayer and a sweet opportunity to turn something unpleasant into a great learning lesson that hopefully they will remember.

My Big Little Boy

I thought I would post some pictures of how big my baby is getting. He has been crawling for a while, but I haven't taken a picture of it yet.

He has been pulling himself up on anything and everything he can get to for the past week. It started a while before that, but he has had it mastered for about a week now. Needless to say, I can't take my eyes off of him.

What a big, sweet, adorable boy!

Trunk-or-Treat

Last night was our ward's trunk-or-treat. The boys have been so excited about this for days. This year was the first year I let them pick out what they wanted to be. Brenden chose Batman, and Connor chose a dinosaur. We had a little bit of trouble finding a dinosaur costume in his size. Thanks to Erin, we were able to pull it off. Poor Noah had to wear a lion head, but it didn't last too long.

Here is Brenden showing off his cape, that was his favorite part of his costume. Doesn't he look so Batman?

Connor is roaring for the camera. He told me that he is a nice dinosaur. Not a mean one.

Noah is being a good sport about the Lion head. I just didn't have it in me to get him all dressed up. I think we were both okay with that.

Here they are eating their goodies. They were so excited to get home and eat their treats. Brenden loved his costume so much he didn't want to change out of it.

One of their favorite "treats" of the night was a glow stick. They loved them so much. They turned off all the lights last night and wandered around the house with them. They even slept with them in their hands. It was so cute!

Conversations that Melt my Heart

On Fridays, it is show-and-tell at Brenden's preschool. The letter of the week was "F" so whatever we bring should start with the letter "F". The only thing I could think of this morning was our monstrous firetruck. It really is rather large to be bringing to preschool. Anyway, it fit in Brenden's backpack, so I decided it was a go. After I strapped Brenden and Connor in their seats, Brenden asked me where the firetruck was. I told him it was in his backpack and this was the conversation as follows: Brenden: " Oh boy, that will be heavy." Connor: "I'll carry it for you." Brenden: "No, thanks. I can do it."

I thought it was so cute. First of all, that Brenden said "Oh Boy," and second of all that tiny little Connor offered to carry Brenden's backpack for him. It was so sweet.