Decorating!!

Oops I didn't really mean to go a month without posting, but since Carson and I seem to be forgetting our camera everywhere we go, there were no pictures, or worthy stories to post about.

We did have an awesome Thanksgiving (even though there are no pictures). We got to go to Moab for a quick trip, and even though we would have liked to have gotten to stay longer, we also like being employed. Anyway we had Thanksgiving at 1:00 with the Daltons, and then at 2:00 with the Holyoaks, so we were very stuffed by the end of the day. It is so fun to see family, and we played many games, and ate lots of yummy food. It was awesome. The day after Thanksgiving we had to head back home so Carson could go to work that night, but that just gave us a head start in getting our Christmas tree and decorations up.

We headed out one morning in search of a suitable tree, but oddly enough even though we drove around for hours all we could find were cedar trees, or very large pines. We had gone out past Carson's work because he said he saw a guy driving back from there with 3 trees in the back of his truck. Well we have no idea where he got his trees, because we couldn't find anything that we would even consider cutting down (and believe me were were not being picky at that point). So the next day we headed out again to a different spot, and we found our perfect tree surprisingly fast.

Our tree in its former home!

Superman after cutting it down

Carson begged me to let us get a yum yum tree this year, and then he even let me cut it down, a duty I took very seriously

Our stockings (can you guess which one is Carson's)

And our tree all decorated in its new home! I love our Christmas tree because we collect ornaments whenever we go someplace new, it is a tradition I started when I was off traveling the world. It makes me happy to see the ornaments now and think "that came all the way from China, or Ireland, or Switzerland..." Our newest ornament this year came from Yellowstone.

Pumpkins and other stuff...

Carson and I headed over to Megan and Andrew's to carve pumpkins the other day. We had to distract Alex a bit, but we had so much fun. I really like carving pumpkins, too bad you have to do the messy cleaning them out part first.

My witch and Carson's spooky tree

Our birthday party!! Carson and Andrew planned this little get together all on their own, and Andrew made us a sweet brownie cake.

Happy Birthday to us!!!

And the rest of the pics are of my Halloween village. I started collecting last year with a large total of 1 house. This year Megan got me another, so I decided that I would try to get a whole village, unfortunately some of the houses and buildings, and even the accessories are very expensive. So I decided I would try to make my own accessories, and even though they don't look as good at the ones at the store, I think it is way cool. I couldn't get a very good picture of it all lit up, but it looks pretty spooky and realistic in the dark.

We even made little hay bales :-)

Birthday Fun!!

Last week Carson and I headed up North for my friend Chelsey's wedding. The day started off rocky when things started going wrong for me at work, resulting in me getting off later than I was planning. Then I get home thinking Carson would be packed and ready to go, but instead he calls me to tell me he is stranded about 20 miles out of town. Seriously!!! He had gone out with his construction class, but hours later everyone was still working and he couldn't get a ride back. So I hurry and unload all my heavy work stuff out of my car and up the flight of stairs into our apt (it was about 4-5 trips), then pack some clothes for the weekend as fast as I can to so I can go pick up my stranded husband from the freeway exit. We were finally on our way, and estimated to arrive before the line at the reception was scheduled to end, but of course we got a little lost on our way to the place, and we barely missed them cutting the cake. We were there for the awesome dance solo that the bride and groom performed. Chelsey was such a beautiful bride, and it was so cool to get to attend the sealing the next day in the Draper Temple

Since our trip was close to my birthday, we decided to splurge and go to a haunted forest on our way home. It was way cool, longer than we expected, and with some new things that I had never seen before like this creepy clown that chased us around with a lawn mower. The scariest part was at the end when you have to get on this slide and go down, it was dark so the slide didn't look very long, but it turned out to be much longer than it looked, and then out of no where sparks start flying at you, and yeah I will admit I screamed.

We also made a trip to Gardner Village to see the witches!!! Carson is such a good sport to go with me even though it was pretty crowded. We had such a fun trip, now some other friends need to get married (Keara... Becca...) so we can do it again real soon.

Cookies!!!

These 2 sure are cute together!!!

The other night Carson and I got together with Megan and Andrew and our friends Courtney and Zach to make Halloween cookies. We had lots of fun, and there was lots of creativity going. Andrew even sang us a little song about one of his cookies.

These are the 2 cookies that Carson decorated (halfway through decorating the bottom one I asked him what it was, he didn't really appreciate that).

You see this little guy...

He came over to play with me the other day.

And even though I spent the next day...

sweeping and mopping crackers off the floor,

putting all the books back in the bookcase,

putting the cans back in the cupboard,

vacuuming up the spilled crumbs from the entire pan of peanut butter fingers that ended up on the floor (although let's be honest that was really more his mom's fault),

and putting all my Halloween decorations back up...

I just want to say one thing...

ALEX come back and play anytime!!!!

Fall Fun!!

I LOVE fall!!! It is my favorite time of year, I love the colors, the weather, the leaves.. everything. Plus my birthday is in the fall, as well as the start-up to the best holidays of the year. I have been a little slow getting my Halloween decorations up this year though, because even though our lives sound really boring when I try to write about them in a blog, or a letter to Dallen, we are really actually very busy. But Carson and I did find time to go to Yankee Meadows the other day for a hot dog roast, and to see all the fall leaves. We also got to have our first snowball fight of the year. It is hard to say who won though, because while I hit Carson with more snowballs than he hit me with, he takes the award for the best hit with a well placed snowball right to my chest that knocked the wind out of me. He takes his snowball fighting very seriously.

Anyway here is a picture of the beautiful lake. The picture below is Nathan's refrigerator art from our family reunion. Crystal was riding home from church with my parents, and this message is for them. Even though the flash make the 2 hard to see, I think it is really funny.

Isn't he creative!!! I wonder how long it took him to make???

I love Carson!!!

If you don't want to read a mushy tribute to my husband, than this post is not for you, because that is exactly what this is (except with a bit of a twist since I am going to reveal all of Carson's little quirks).

Carson makes me laugh everyday with the funny little quirks he has. For example the biggest one that comes to mind right now (that is actually kinda starting to bug me) is that Carson loves to wake me up when I am sleeping, seriously it is like he is five years old. I have to get up really early for work, at least I consider five or any time before that rather early, so when I get home from work I like to take a little nap. But it never fails that as soon as I fall asleep Carson wakes me up for some reason or another. He won't admit that he likes to do it, he even denies it in fact, but I am convinced he must like to do it, because every single day without fail he does it again.

Carson also enjoys to quiz me on the hymns at church, so he won't let me see the book when we are singing. He does praise me after though, because more often than not I surprisingly know all the words to the songs.

Carson does not like to do the dishes, so if there is half a sink of dishes, he does them, and is so proud of himself that he is sure to mention to me that he did the dishes. (He is no where to be found when there are large stacks of dishes in and around the sink)

He takes his hunting very seriously. When he was on his mission he sent me his journals, and I thought it was so funny because he wrote pages and pages on the day that he killed his first deer with his bow, any other event is lucky to get 1 line of text. He will tell you every detail of the day if you ask him about his hunting trips too.

Neither of us really love to shop, but if there is something I need and and he ends up going to a store with me he tries to be really helpful by... disappearing. Seriously within seconds I cannot find him anywhere. He thinks that he is not pressuring me to hurry or something, but if I just need to go in and look at something really quick I end up spending way more time looking for him than I did looking at any merchandise. He's so thoughtful though.

Carson gets really into books on CD when we drive places. So then when we get home he will come inside and within minutes he is asking if we can just sit and finish listening to the book.

He talks in his sleep. The topics can get very interesting based on whatever is going on in life at the time.

He thinks that Diapers are easier to put on backward rather than forward.

He puts BBQ sauce on his salads.

He doesn't like to get sprayed with water, so even when he showers, he stays out of the water as much as possible. (He likes baths though which I think is funny)

His all time favorite cereal is... Bran Flakes. Seriously of all the delicious cereal choices there are he picks Bran Flakes as his top choice.

He has trouble staying awake at church, and has even been known to fall asleep during the rest hymn. We pack snacks in our bags like we have little kids to keep Carson awake.

He will wear his socks until they completely fall apart. He thinks it is a waste to buy a new pack before the other ones are all worn thru.

Even if he wakes me up, wears holey socks, eats nasty cereal, and sleeps thru church, I still love him more than anything. He makes me laugh every day, is the perfect guy for me, and the best husband I could ask for.

Love you babe!!

Carson and I got to hike Kanarraville Falls the other day with Megan and Andrew. The hike was so pretty, and we had a really good time. Unfortunately the water was so cold, and you had to walk in it for long stretches sometimes, by the time we were thru some of the little slot canyons my feet were numb and aching.

A few days after we did the hike, someone mentioned to us that they had seen a 4 foot rattlesnake on that hike the weekend before, I am so glad I did not know this before we went because I would have been totally freaked the whole time.

Isn't Family Fun???

Carson and I are so lucky that we get to go visit family so often. We headed down to Moab last weekend to go to another reunion but of course we planned a little time to play first. When we got to town we stopped to see Carson's family and by the time we were heading out to my parents house I had 2 messages on my phone from my sister begging Carson and I to take my nephew to Harry Potter at midnight (like she really had to pull my arm to get me to go, and to go for free at that) Anyway apparently her orthodontist rented out the whole theater and let his patients go for free. With an opportunity to not go Stacy claimed said was old and could not do a midnight movie, so she gave Carson her spot, then we just had to talk Payton into giving me hers, she was easily persuaded with the promise of a princess movie for her, and good thing too because I don't think she would have liked the movie. In fact she might have been worse than Parker who asked me questions throughout the whole movie (on our way there I learned that he had not seen part one). Well I didn't mind him asking me questions, but he doesn't really whisper when he asks them so every once in a while we would get looks from the people around us. It was fun to get to take him though, and I loved the movie, Carson has seen all the movies, but he still tends to get a little lost, so he might not have loved it as much as me.

Then next morning we got to go meet brand new Cheznie Mae, number 7 on my "Proud Aunt List." Tori is doing great, motherhood fits her well, like we always knew it would.

After that we got to head to the cabin where I killed everyone in squeek twice!!!

Nathan cooking breakfast!!! Can you believe it? It was actually really good!!

The new skylight in the cabin. The boys spent the morning fixing the stovepipe. Us girls tried to avoid helping. Stacy assured me she gets to be the favorite because she helped the most, well that is fine by me (although I am pretty sure I climbed the ladder more times than her). Not that we don't want to help, it's just that the boys tend to bark commands at us as they run by and they expect us to be able to find whatever strange named items they list. Then they act like we are dumb when it takes a few tries to get the right supplies.

These 2 spent lots of time breaking in Parker's new bow.

I don't know how I managed this. You see I made friends with Kendra early on, but Kayla doesn't really want anything to do with me. Nathan managed to slip her on my lap once though without her really noticing who was holding her (or maybe she had just given up resisting at that point, she does look a little tired in the picture)

Crystal showing off her and Payton's moth collection. There were so many moths, even after my parents spent the weekend before battling them.

After one night at the cabin it was time to go to the reunion, we finally made it there only about 2 more hours of stovepipe repairs than we had anticipated. We forgot to bust out the camera the first day, so we don't have very many pictures, but we had a good time.

We were given a bag of supplies and told to make a tractor with them. This is our bulldozer. We won most realistic (which means the other ones must have been really odd looking)

I have never really played horse shoes much, except last year at the reunion, and this year at the reunion, so I am not very good. I did manage to get my first ringer this year though, and Carson and I did beat Danny and Dallen twice in a row (I am choosing to forget the fact that they beat us twice the day before)

Some other highlights of the reunion include: playing Scum with all the cousins, back up singing for Morgan's version of "Old Dan Dalton had a Farm," cow pie tossing contest, and of course all the FOOD!!!!

Unfortunately Carson and I had to leave the reunion a little early so that we could move everything out of our apartment by 8:00 Monday morning to get new carpet. This only makes about the billionth time that we have had to move our couches and crazy heavy entertainment center.

But we love our new carpet.

A Fun Day at the Lake!!!

Last weekend Carson and I got to go bass fishing with 2 of his uncles, and 2 cousins. We had such a good time!! And guess who won the fishing contest between us???

ME!!

Yep I out-fished the master (or at least that what he says he was before his mission). Anyway I caught 2 good size fish, and all Carson caught was one little excuse for a fish. Actually I caught 3 fish because when we started to fillet my bigger one, the first slit on the back of his neck caused him to spew out a little fish right on the table. We also got to do some fun tubing mixed in with the fishing. All in all it was a great day.

My Big FISH!!!

Carson struggling to get back in the boat.

Carson and I riding on the tube.

Uncle Kent (aka our Skipper)

I tried to upload a video of one of the tubing crashes, but it would never finish loading. Carson and Michael were hard-core on the tubes though. They kept egging Kent on by saying things like, "oh that one was so slow we finally got bored and jumped off." Well Kent sure gave them some wild rides, and the whole time Michael would just keep saying, "faster, faster."