Our First Big Snow

Yesterday it started to snow...and snow and finally it started to stick. All last night the girls were begging to go play so I let them get up this morning and start finding snow clothes. Kenda had snow pants and boots that fit and a warm coat. Kiah wore a pair of snow pants that were a bit big but everything else was fine. Now, our poor boy on the other hand, wore adorable pink snow boots, a fuzzy pink pair of mittens and a pink and purple fleece hat with tassles. He stayed warm, which I know is most important....but I did kind of feel bad sending him out in all his sister's hand me downs. I think we will head to the store this week and see if we can find him a pair of boy boots and gloves.


Kenda was first out to the snow and took most advantage of the time...poor girl tried so hard to get a snow ball started for a snowman.

Here is our little snowman dressed up and no where to go. I think he spent most of the time just sitting in the snow looking around.

No snow time would be complete without making angels.

Kiah liked to be outside but was not nearly as excited as Kenda to get down and dirty in the snow.

Gabe the Babe

Gabe finally got a boy haircut this week. A wonderful lady came over and cut my hair and then took a shot at Gabe. He held really still on my lap while she zipped him. He looks so much more grown up without all that baby hair all over. It spikes up a bit on top with some gel, and of course even the cow lick in front cant be removed with a pair of clippers. We think he is a little stud now :)

Our Enchanted Princess

Kenda was certain she wanted to be a princess again. She had a school party the day before halloween and then a ward party. Both times she wore different hair and makeup with lots of glitter and glitz. On Halloween, she decided maybe she would tweek the idea and have butterfly wings and have me paint a butterfly across her face. Keep in mind that I am not an artist....so of course, 20 min before we were planning on leaving to trick or treat, she looked at my finished butterfly covering her face and said "mom, I think it is kind of ugly". It totally wrecked my self esteem but I kind of agreed so we soaped up her face and started over. this time she said "Can you draw stars good?" So she picked a few stars on one side and a moon on the other side. No glitz or glam but it made her feel pretty and that is what counted.

Our Little Bride

Makiah decided this year she wanted to get "married in the temple" for her costume and she found this bride costume at Walmart that fit the bill. We were so pleased that she even thought of the temple when picking out a halloween costume. What a strong spirit she is and can be through life. She insisted on a glitter heart on her cheek to complete the look but it really did turn out cute!!

Our Halloween Slugger

Poor kid. On Halloween Day, the piano bench fell over on Gabe's face during his attempt to get off it. He got his first black eye and it swelled up even bigger than these pictures. We are on day 2 and it is now black and blue all on top of his eye and still a bit puffy. We could not put face paint or a mask on him so we just called him "slugger" for his costume.

Pumpkins between Apples

As Louis said, we were canning for weeks. One night, for FHE we went to the local Super 1 store and bought the 2 biggest pumpkins they had. Kenda picked the first face....scary, and Kiah picked the 2nd face (the one with a heart for lips and stars for eyes). We carved it up and then made delicious pumpkin seeds to eat on the following week.

Gabe even enjoyed the festivities and tried to climb on top of the short fat pumpkin a few times.

120 Quarts of good times

We have been trying to finish our food storage and have really been focusing on our fruit this season. After we picked my Mom's apples and pears. I (Louis) had the genius idea of asking our neighbor if we could pick his too. It turned out to be a "success" depending upon who you ask. The good news is that we canned 120 quarts and completed our fruit storage... the bad news is that we did not sleep for almost two weeks while we canned every night after I came home from work. We ended up with Apple pie filling, peach pie filling, apple sauce, italian plums in honey and cinnamon, vanilla pears and just plain pears.

These are the girls helping us can the Italian plums from our neighbor.

Gabe did not help much, but he sure looks good wandering around. It's nice to have Gabe around to balace out the abundance of estrogen in our household:)

One of the crazy thing is that at the house we are renting out right now has a peach tree on the side of the yard which was able to give us 8 quarts of peach pie filling. Not the best peaches in the world, but its not exactly Florida weather here! Extra sugar in that recipe:)