A bit of randomness

I guess I kind of dropped off the face of the earth since Halloween, just been crazy busy I guess. Life is great being back in Utah and near family, tho we miss our Texas family everyday. Chloe still says she wants to go back to Texas.

Lets see what have we been up to....last November we dropped the girls off with Grandma Loene in Delta for the weekend and took off to St. George with my brother Josh and his wife McCall. McCalls family has a way nice condo there that we got to stay at. This was the first time Aaron and I have had a get away without the girls in over 3 years. It was very much needed! We had so much fun! Josh and McCall taught us double tennis, we went hot tubbing, watched football in the theater room, stayed up playing games and watching Hot Rod, went to the movies, and you can't go to St. George without shopping at the outlets. Plus on our last day we went and visited the St. George Temple and then took a drive around beautiful St. George and all its red rock. We came across the Tuchan theater which was closed but we snuck in anyways and walked around. It's pretty cool, I hope I can see a play there someday. Thanks Josh and McCall for a great weekend!

Living in my parents basement apartment has its perks, such as sneeking out after the girls have gone to bed and going to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter in DBox seats no less. I've never seen a movie in DBox seats and if you ever get the chance it's worth the extra money. Of course the guy in front of us couldn't handle the intensity of the DBox seat and threw up all over the floor, disgusting!

Then there was Thanksgiving, we got to have two, one in Delta with Aarons Mom and then again in Orem with Aarons Dad. It's always a challenge to fit everyone in for the holidays, we don't just have the common two grandparents houses to visit, we have four, but it sure makes it fun :)
The girls have loved all the snow and building snowman's, as for me I could do without the scraping the ice off the windshield every morning before car pool ugh!

Totally random, but hey that's what this post is all about....I finally got my thimbles up. I started collecting thimbles when I was about 6 years old. My first one was from our trip to Zion National Park. Most of these I have collected from the different places I've been able to visit but a lot of them are from family and friends who will pick one up for me on their crazy adventures, love it!

And I recently inherited this fantastic dresser from my father-in-law for the girls room. It belonged to Aaron's Grandma and we have a picture of her standing next to it in the 1930's. I can't wait for spring, Im going to haul it outside and give it a nice paint job.

Lastly we finally got some family pictures taken over Thanksgiving by sister-in-law Heather. We were at my family's cabin in Mt. Pleasant and we went into town by this old shop. Heather is a fantastic photographer and I love her style and how she uses natural light and no flash and doesn't tell the girls to smile, just takes natural shots. If you need pictures for any occasion look her up. Well that's all for now but I already have Christmas stuff to blog, so stay tuned.

My Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Family Night Pumpkins

I have been sick today, I have had the stomach flu twice now in 2 weeks and I have a head cold on top of it. I woke up and couldn't get Emma off to school, but luckily Aaron was able to stay home with me and take care of things. On the plus side Chloe and I watched Anne of Green Gables all day and Chloe actually sat through the whole thing with me. With Halloween days away and I promised my girls we would do our pumpkins for Family Night I pulled myself together and we got it done. Plus Aaron roasted the pumpkin seeds which were so good!
Aaron's is the Boo Owl one, mine is the mummy and Chloe's is blue and Emma's red. I saw this cute idea for a safe way for the girls to decorate their pumpkins in a magazine using paint, different colors of felt and craft foam.




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Hiking

One thing that I really missed about Utah while we lived in Texas was the mountains and how pretty the leaves are in the Fall when they change colors. Yesterday my brother Josh and his wife McCall invited us on a little Sunday hike. It was really fun, the girls made it all the way through the hike with no problems and then as were walking to our car they both biffed it on the sidewalk within 3 feet of each other. We all felt really bad for them but we couldn't stop laughing either. Emma got first hurt and was screaming pretty bad and then Chloe biffed it and Emma just laughed. It's interesting how when Josh and I were younger all we ever did was fight or ignore each other and now it's actually fun to hang out with him. Hahaha funny how that changes.




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Fall Festivities

I love when the Holiday season starts and all the fun family activities. This week I helped my mom throw a Halloween Party for the grandkids, we have 14 grandkids so it was a lot of fun! The girls dressed up as clowns this year, Chloe is wearing an old clownsuit my Mom made for us when we were little and Emma is wearing one my sister Kerstin made for her girls. I hate clowns, they scare me, but my girls sure make cute clowns.
Emma just chillin waiting for her cousins to arrive.
My sister Kerstins kids and my Mom as a crazy scientist.
One of the games we played was Mummy Relay. We divided up into teams and gave each team a roll of toilet paper and let them at it. Emma wanted to be mummified, it was hilarious!
Another game was freeze dance. We put on Monster Mash and the kids had fun dancing and striking poses and then they started a conga line. We played some more games like put the bones on the skeleton and guess how many candy in the jar and then we decorated Halloween cookies. The girls just love seeing their cousins all the time, I hope we make this a yearly Halloween tradition.
Emma is out of school for Fall Break and my sister in law Heather invited us to go see Ramona and Beezus at the dollar theater today. I read all those books when I was little and I loved them. I hope Emma will someday love them too. The movie was fantastic! It was so cute and so funny, I loved it! Later we went to the Pumpkin Patch with Heather and her family and my brother Josh and his wife McCall.
It was a pretty cool pumpkin patch, the pumpkins are way cheap and they have all these tractors for the kids to play on and a corn maze and hayrides.
We let the girls wander around until they found their special pumpkin. It didn't take long for Emma to find hers.

Chloe on the other hand took a long time to find her special pumpkin. She went up and down the rows and when she did find it she held it above her head and yelled, "I found the perfect pumpkin!"
I love Fall time and Im looking forward to all the festivities.



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First Day of First

We had our first semi normal week here in Utah. Our house is mostly unpacked except for our room, you have to jump over boxes to get to the bed but we are getting there. Chloe is finally adjusting to living in a new place. She is a Texan, lived there since she was two months old and she struggled with the move. The first week she would be up all night crying saying she wanted to go home. She once asked me if our house was gone and I said no that we moved and this was our new house and she got all upset and said "No it's not!" So I made their room a priority to get put together hoping it would help Chloe feel more at home. She is starting to do better, but the other day she asked me, "Mom I want to go back to Texas, how about you?"

She is still adjusting to change of weather from Texas, she still puts on a coat and scarf and carries around her gloves, anywhere feels colder then Texas, lol. One morning we went outside and Emma said, "Mom is it winter!?!" It's 90 degrees people! I think it feels fantastic! It was really funny, one day I was standing outside the school next to some other moms waiting for our kids to get out and they were talking about the weather and one mom said, "The news said it's suppose to get up to 90 this week, oh my gosh!!" "I know that's so hot!!" Come on people are you serious?!? I wanted to chime in and be like excuse me I just came from 105 plus humidity this is heaven, instead I just smiled to myself.

Emma started first grade this last week at the same Elementary school I went to. The school is right down the road, it's so nice being able to walk her to school everyday. I teared up on my first day walking her to school I was overwhelmed with fun school day memories with all my friends, it doesn't seem that long ago, ya know? It's so weird! Emma was a little nervous on her first day, her tummy was upset so I couldn't get her to eat very much breakfast. It's a new school and a new teacher, but her teacher is really nice and she is enjoying it now. I can't believe she is in first grade already. I didn't think I would get emotional this time, that you only cried when they started Kindergarten, but no it doesn't get any easier. After dropping her off and watching her walk into the school without me I went home and cried to Aaron. Chloe and I miss having her around all day. When I pick her up I can't help smothering her with kisses and hugs.

She is growing up too fast!





My Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Celebrations

To celebrate Aaron's graduation I threw him a surprise Welcome Home/Graduation Party with his side of the family. We had it at Los Hermanos which is the restaurant where we had our luncheon after we got married. Everyone was already at the restaurant when we got there so Aaron was totally surprised. I thought I had given it away so many times, but thankfully he had been totally oblivious to it all. He kept saying "Did you know about this!?!" Um yeah I planned it haha
Here we have Aaron's sister Cheree and her family along with Emma.
And then we had Grandma Bell and Aaron's sisters Sheena and Karley and her two boys and his cousin Markai and her husband Wes. I was so glad everyone was able to come, it has been forever since Aaron and all his sisters have been together.
Sibling Love :)
Cheree and one of her cute twins, sadly I still can't tell them apart so I can't tell you which one this is, I know that's terrible.
Aaron's sister Karley was so awesome and drove 10 hours from Oregon just to come visit us. We haven't seen her in two years so we were really excited to get to spend some time with them. For Aaron's graduation present Grandma Bell and Aunt Karley bought our family tickets to go to Lagoon and we had a blast!

Here we have Ty Ty, Chloe, Karter and Emma being crazy kiddos.
Bumper cars was my ultimate favorite of all the kid rides to watch. Chloe was hilarious, she just kept going around and around in circles.

These cousins get along so great, it's like they have never been apart. Emma and Karter are exactly one month apart to the day and Ty and Chloe are about a year, so it works out great. Karley and I have plans to get pregnant at the same time for our third babies, it is just so much more fun that way :)
You can't go to Lagoon and not ride on the cars and boats.
These two are concentrating so hard on making it around that turn lol!

This was one of their favorites because they could all sit together, they could have ridden it all day if we would have let them.

We also had a game night, where we had pizza, roasted smores, played on the trampoline, Aaron and Karley battled it out in ping pong and we all had fun playing games with the kids. It was such a nice visit with the Arritt family and we can't wait to take a road trip out to Oregon and spend some more time with them.




My Family from WiddlyTinks.com