Pumpkin Creations

These are our Halloween creations this year. The pictures pretty much say it all.

Pumpkins

This year I wanted to take the kids to a pumpkin patch with all the bells and whistles; hayride, corn maze, etc. But it just didn't happen. Instead we found a farmer that puts up a roadside stand with all his pumpkins lined up. Not as exciting as my original idea but still fun. We were excited to find a clown there who was giving away free balloon creations to the kids. Each kid got a sword of some sort and Lex ended up with a crazy hat.



This is what Lex will be driving when she turns 16 :)


Our goofy picture with Dad driving the tractor...




Now on to carving our jack-o-lanterns!!!

Backyard Creatures

This is what hangs out in our backyard. And in our house. We have now had 2 in the house. The last one, the kids caught and released all on their own while Dusty and I were both gone.

Happy Anniversary...12 Years

What does 12 years look like?

5 pregnancies, 3 kids, 2 angels, 3 states, 11 moves, 3 college degrees & lots and lots of hugs and kisses is what 12 years of marriage looks like for us.

On October 16th Dusty and I celebrated our 12th year of marriage. And we are doing great! We know that we have only come this far in our life together with the help and support of our Heavenly Father. We are so grateful for his hand in our life. And no matter how backwards we started out, we know that this is how God intended our life to be. We are blessed beyond measure with love!!

Junior Prom ~ 1997


Our Temple Sealing ~ 1999



Christmas ~ 2004


January ~ 2010



To my husband, I will forever be grateful for his patience and love. I have loved him for a very long time and feel like we are one, not two beings. I live for him and cannot wait to see him when he is gone on a business trip. I love how funny he is and how his sense of humor has transferred over to our children. I love his spontaneity and how he can brighten my mood. He is my soul mate.

So, what do two people who have been married for 12 years do to celebrate? Oh, wait...don't answer that.

We went to the zoo with our kids!!!

The kids overheard us talking about what we wanted to do for our anniversary and voiced their opinion that we should celebrate it as a family. Emma wanted to have cake and have a party. So we decided to just do something fun together and that is where the zoo comes in. We haven't been to the zoo in years, so this was great for us.

There was so much to see and do at the zoo that we didn't even get to everything. The kids got their faces painted, played on the playground and we saw some really fun animals. Did you know that seals swim on their back upside down? They do! See, I'll show you...

If I tried to do that it would be disaster.

We saw one of these
And some bison, snakes, turtles, polar bears, brown bears and owls.

We saw some of these

We also saw gators, some really ugly baboons, snakes, cougars (boo!!!), and lots other animals.

But our favorite were the chimpanzees.
We stayed watching them for almost an hour and got some really cool video. There was a teenage girl there that bonded with the chimps. She sat on the ground by the glass and would 'touch' hands with one chimp in particular. He would kiss her on the glass and get very defensive any time one of the other 11 chimps tried to get near her. One chimp was mad about this and decided to begin charging the glass. He would back up really far and then start jumping up and down and then he would charge the glass with a rock in his hand. He would launch that rock at the glass as hard as he could and everyone would scream and jump back. There were parts of the glass that were cracked and it looked like this was a common practice for these chimps. They are super strong! We watched this until the park was closed and we had to leave and go home.







We had a great day being together and had a great anniversary!!

Happy Anniversary Dusty! I love you!!!