"Business Trip"

Last week Taber went on a "Business trip" to Utah to do some recruiting for General Mills at BYU's MBA school. I use the term" business trip" pretty loosely since from the pictures I've seen it looked a little too fun to classify as business : ) Still, I'm glad he got to go and super jealous that he got to see so many people that we love out in Utah. Here are some of the fun pics he brought back on his phone.

Goodies they gave out at the info session. I love that they use the full size boxes instead of the sample sizes. That alone would make me want to sign up for an interview!

Taber had some leftover boxes of cereal so he took them over to my sister Rachel's house and got to visit with her and her family for a bit. Aren't my nieces and nephew the cutest?

While he was there he stayed with my younger sister Sarah who just had a baby in July. I haven't met the little guy yet but Taber took this scrumptious picture of his squishy little rolls for me and I LOVE it! What a sweet little nugget!

Taber also got to meet up with his niece Tessa, and nephews Jordan, Devin and Devin's wife Stephanie. They're all going to BYU right now so it was great that he got to see them and have dinner together. We saw those guys quite a bit when we lived in California. They seemed so young then, crazy that they're all college kids now!

Another big highlight of the trip was hanging out with one of his best friends from Alaska who lives in Salt Lake. Dave and his family took Taber up to their cabin in Park City for a day of four wheeling.

They had an awesome time and Taber said it was so gorgeous up there.

Dave has twin boys that are just turning two. I think hanging out with them definitely got Taber excited about having a little guy of our own. : )

The rest of Dave's cute family.

He also hung out with some of our old friends from Living Legends but I guess they had too much fun to take any pictures : ) Anyway, as you can see, in 4 short days and with all the "business" he had to do, Taber managed to have quite a bit of fun and see a lot of great people. Just wish we could've gone with him! Maybe next year...

Halloween Crafts

A little while ago my friend Tara posted these crafty decorating ideas for Halloween. I've never really decorated for the holidays (besides Christmas) but I was inspired after reading her post. I remembered as a kid when the decorations for each holiday would go up at school I would just get so excited. I wanted my kids to feel that same excitement so I found some kid friendly Halloween crafts we could do together. Here are some of our projects:

Spooky Halloween Wreath: Got the idea for this Here.

It was really easy. Just spray paint a wreath black and use hot glue to add on spooky decorations. You could use ghosts, spiders, skulls, whatever you can find. I found these skulls for a dollar each at the craft store.

The girls had fun helping me and wanted to pose with it making "spooky faces". Definitely worth clicking to enlarge those facial expressions!

Bat-O-Laterns: Detailed instructions can be found Here.

Brinley was napping when we tried these out but we saved a pumpkin for her to do later.

These were awesome because kids love painting pumpkins, and you can't mess them up, they're ALL black!

After paining we cut out wings and eyes (there's a template on the website) and stuck them in the pumpkin using toothpicks and skewers. The website says to use crafting foam for the wings but we used black cardstock and they came out just fine.

Here they are with their finished bat-o-lanterns. Teya's making another one of her hilarious "spooky faces" since apparently that's the only way to pose with a Halloween project : )

They look pretty cool on top of the t.v. in the craft room!

Cheesecloth Ghosts: Detailed instructions are Here.

So this was the most involved craft we did and Brinley wasn't really into it. Teya had a blast though so I think if you have preschooler or older they would like it. Basically you just cut up cheesecloth into squares, dip it in fabric stiffener and drape it over balloons.

Once they're dry you pop the balloons. I thought Teya would be scared to pop them but that ended up being her FAVORITE part!

Love that reaction!

Here's how they came out. I thought they were pretty cute.

Here's a close up of Mr. Spooky pants.

And one more view from the door complete with spooky spiderwebs!!

The house is starting to feel much more festive and it's been so fun seeing the girls get all excited about Halloween. : )

Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday before General Conference we decided to hit up a local pumpkin patch. Since we're on the East Coast, Conference doesn't start till noon so we had plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful Fall morning. We didn't bring our camera but we had our phones and they take pretty good pics outdoors. Here are some of the cute shots we captured.

The girls on pumpkin mountain. Isn't Brinley getting big? She just seems so grown up lately.

Brinley and the pumpkin she picked. They were in love with the tiny pumpkins.

No farm is complete with a Tractor to play on

They loved taking turns being in the drivers seat

A Lady saw us taking pics and offered to take one of the family. I'm not a huge fan of being photographed right now but she captured a rare shot with all four of us where everyone is looking at the camera so I can't complain : )

Posing by the giant 300lb pumpkin (it's halfway in the shade so you can't see it that well but it was huge!)

They also had apple orchards, a pick your own pumpkin patch and sunflower gardens. We only bought pumpkins but it was fun walking through all the growing fields.

We had a great morning and came home with 4 good looking pumpkins and some happy Fall family memories : )

Omi Time

Last week my beautiful little sister Naomi drove out from Chicago to visit with her two girls and her best friend Jennie. They came out to run the half marathon with Taber so it was a pretty quick visit. Still we managed to have some fun times with a house full of 7 girls (poor Taber) while she was here.

We sidewalked chalked

The girls played hopscotch.

I got to bond with my ridiculously adorable newest niece, Lily. Who happens to rival Brinley for world's best baby. Seriously she is the EASIEST going most pleasant baby on the planet.

Jennie and Naomi helped me make cake pops, which I've been dying to try for awhile but just needed some back up before I attempted it. Our cake pops didn't look as beautiful as the airbrushed ones from the magazine but I will say that they tasted awesome and I would definitely make them again.

We also hit the apple orchard. Always a good time and the apples were scrumptious.

And of course just had lots of fun chatting, laughing, and watching all our sweet girls play together. Thanks for making the long drive out Omi kin!! We love you!

24 weeks: Basketball Belly

Well today is the 24 week mark and as I mentioned earlier, my stomach looks like I swallowed a basketball. It seems a little early to be this big but I'm blaming it on the fact that this is my 3rd child since I'm SURE it has nothing to do with the cake-pops, cookies, cannolis and apple crisp I've been eating lately. ; )

Okay, if I'm really being honest I haven't been the best at exercising or watching what I eat for the last 6 weeks or so. I've been having a ton of early contractions with this baby and every time I exercise I have them so I backed off (more like quit cold turkey) and now I fee like I'm turning into a slug. I think I need to try again to do something, maybe just really low key walking. I still have 4 months to go and if I don't get moving all my muscles will have atrophied by the time the baby gets here! So yeah, that's my goal for this coming month, move my body and stop using my mouth as a garbage disposal for junk food : )

There is one thing I DO love about my basketball belly though, now everyone who sees me knows I'm pregnant. I LOVE how people are so much nicer to me at the store, the mall, restaurants, schools, church, wherever! People just see the belly and smile. In fact, today I was pulled over by a cop for not having my state inspection sticker but when he saw my belly he just gave me a knowing smile and said, "I'm not going to give you a ticket this time, just go get that taken care of okay?" Moments like that make carrying around 20 extra pounds totally worth it : )

Applefest Half Marathon 2010

6 months ago a bunch of our friends were signing up for a local half marathon that is famous for it's brutal hills and the delicious apple crisp served at the finish line. Taber decided to join the fun and trained diligently all summer long.

He found a great running partner who had similar goals and pace and every Saturday they would do long runs together, eventually running the full course at least 4 times to practice for race day. Here's the elevation chart for the course. As you can see, the hills are intense and plentiful, but Taber and his running partner Rob were hitting Sub 1:50 finish times on their runs so they were feeling good. The fastest they ran it was 1:46:50.

The night before the race we had a pasta feed for a bunch of people who were running. It was a great time to carb0-load and talk race strategies. My sister Naomi and her best friend Jenny drove in from Chicago to join in the fun. This was Naomi's first half marathon so it was especially exciting to have her here.

On race day we woke up to an unusually hot and humid fall day. The forecast said it would be 86 degrees with abundant sunshine. Taber and Rob had been training at 6am in 50-60 degree weather and were a little nervous about the 10 o'clock start time and the heat. Still, there was a slight cloud cover at the starting line so everyone was trying to be optimistic.

As soon as it was time to line up of course the clouds disappeared and the sun was blazing down. I was having awful flashbacks of the brutal heat during my marathon last year and was happy to be spectating this time around! I cheered everyone across the starting line then headed over to the two mile marker.

I was with a lot of the families who had someone running and we were cheering our hearts out as the runners came by. It was fun when we started seeing all our friends. Here's Taber coming through the mile 2 water station. He was always easy to spot in his bright highlighter yellow shirt : )

Most of our runners swung by for high fives. At this point they were all still smiling but I was worried that the heat would soon take it's toll.

Naomi and Jenny were playing it safe and taking it easy on their pace. They were the last of our runners to come through but probably the most energetic!

Next we headed over to mile 10. By this point the heat, hills and humidity had caught up with everyone and there were no more smiles. We heard that several runners had dropped out and a few were taken to the hospital to be treated for heat exhaustion. When we saw Taber he was hanging in there but he was pretty dehydrated and tired. Even though he had run the course several times it was a totally different animal in the heat and humidity.

We waited for a few more of our runners to come through then headed to catch them at the finish line. One of the race photographers got this shot of Taber at mile 12. Taber said he was dying at that point but I think he looks pretty good : )

Waiting at the finish line I was all ready to take a picture but my camera was on timer so by the time it took the pic all I got was a blurry view of Taber's back. Sorry babe!

Taber's finish time was 2:11:01. He was the first of our friends who ran the full race to finish. It was nowhere near the times he's logged on this course in cool weather but I think he was happy considering the conditions and that nobody out there was setting any records that day.

After crossing the line he was pretty dehydrated even though he had been drinking up at every water stop. He could barely talk but he drank 2 bottles of gatorade, 4 cups of water, and a carton of chocolate milk. When he was feeling a little better we want back to the finish line to watch for Naomi and Jenny. Soon we saw them coming down the home stretch. They had paced themselves wisely and still looked great! They were able to sprint to the finish and had smiles on their faces!

Here are the proud finishers with their well deserved apple crisp. The food tent was awesome and even though it said for runners only I think they took pity on my giant pregnant belly and totally let me have some. Yes!

I was so glad I got to come and support them and especially proud of my little sister for finishing her first half just 7 months after having a baby! I hope I can follow in her footsteps and run the Applefest next year after our baby is born. I don't know though, if next year is as hot as this was I might just skip to the end and eat the apple crisp! : )