Lovely Fall Afternoon

Finn greatly enjoyed his first time really playing outside on his own. He loves the car!!

Jesse Tree Party

This year my friend Natalie and I decided to throw a Jesse Tree Party.  What is a Jesse Tree you ask?

It is an advent tree with an ornament for each day of December. Each ornament is related to a story in the Bible or Book of Mormon relating to Christ.  It is a helpful way to help our family focus on the true meaning of Christmas.

My friend Kaylene had sent me a few links about Jesse trees and one had an idea for a Jesse Tree party- you invite all of your friends and each person is assigned one ornament to make and they make 24 of those ornaments. Then we all come together and swap and end up with a full set of ornaments lovingly made by friends and family that will remind us of Christ through the holiday season.

So I enlisted Natalie's help to put this together and she was kind enough to host at her house and I did the ornament organization. We decided this at the end of August so that people had plenty of time to make their ornaments and so that we could have the party in October before everyone got busy. So, we ended up having a fabulous Christmas party, complete with Christmas decorations in October.  Natalie made delicious cheese and chocolate fondue and had Christmas music playing and Christmas smells brewing on the stove. It was THE best.

The whole party and ornaments exceeded my expectations.  Everyone put such care and thought into their ornaments and we had everyone tell the little story of how they made their ornaments and such. It was a wonderful evening and I'm so thankful to know these amazing women and now to have an ornament set created by people I know and love.

Without further ado, here are plenty of photos from our party!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finn is ONE!

On October 3, my sweet little Finn turned one. I can't even believe my sweet boy is already a year old! (I had to put his fox shirt on him for his birthday- he came home from the hospital in an outfit with a little fox on it) Before I get into the details of his big first birthday, here's a little about our Finn at one! -He finally got teeth and then they all came in between 10-12 months old. He has 6 now, with 2 more on the way. Poor little guy has quite a hard time teething even with his amber necklace, lavender oil and a little tylenol. -Even though he'll take a few steps here and there, he still preferred crawling on his first birthday. -When he blows kisses he puts his finger in his mouth and yells "muah" flinging it out. So cute! - He weighs 21lbs and is 30 inches. That's the 25th percentile for weight and 65th for height. -He loves to put all sorts of things in his mouth. He especially likes those little people things and has one constantly in his mouth when he crawls around. -He loves REAL food. He likes avocados, mangos, chicken, pasta, and really anything, except grapes. He makes a very sour face for those. On the morning of his birthday he opened up his gifts from us. Wes and I got him a Little People farm which he LOVES. Liam got him a pushable airplane ball popper and Addy got him a play cell phone. They were all hits! After the kids got home from school we went to the pumpkin patch. Finn loved the animals and we all had a great time. We then went to Grimaldis for pizza and Finn could have eaten the pizza for hours. The big kids loved playing with the dough. Then we went to Baskin Robbins for his big birthday ice cream treat from Nana. He LOVED his first taste of ice cream. I think Finn was pretty impressed with his introduction to birthdays!

Happy Harvest

I had to snap a few pics of my cuties on the first day of fall. These are our homegrown pumpkins. Wes did a great job growing pumpkins this year. I think we harvested over 20!

Cousins

We had a little cousin sleepover a few weeks ago. Izzy had just learned to read her first book in Kindergarten so she got to read us our bedtime story. How cute is this?

11 Months

Clearly I'm a little behind here, but I'm going to do my best to get almost caught up! Here is Finn's 11 month photo.  He took his first steps a few days before he turned 11 months old. Although, he is such a fast crawler, he didn't really start walking.  He's a mover and a shaker and doesn't really like to be held unless it's snuggle time. He's still the easiest kid ever to get a giggle out of. He also learned to blow kisses, wave bye bye, and fold his arms for prayer this month.  I LOVE his cute little folded arms, even if they only last for a split second. I was hoping the last month of his 'babyhood' would slow down, but it didn't. Still it's pretty darn cute to watch this little boy grow!

Jamie and Bethany's Wedding

We had the BEST time and Jamie and Bethany's wedding. All of Wes's high school friends and their wives also were there. We went to the rehearsal dinner at a bowling alley the night before and it was SO fun to catch up with everyone. We haven't seen some of these friends since our actual wedding, but it felt like we all picked up where we left off.  The wedding was gorgeous. It was a fun steampunk theme and it was just so fun to see Jamie so happy.  We had so much fun dancing, visiting, and laughing. I'm so glad that we were able to go and see everyone again.