Five Years!

Five years of my life were spent working on this quilt and now it is done! Okay, not five whole years, but it has been on my mind, and has been one of my New Year's resolutions for five years and now IT IS FINALLY DONE! I am so proud of myself. I definitely have to give a shout-out to Myrna, who (let's be honest) helped me with every single part of the quilt, and even saved me when I messed up, had huge knots, and when my fingers were so exhausted she took over at the sewing machine. She told me I need to buy my own sewing machine, but now that I'm done with my quilt, I never need to sew again! I filled my sewing quota on this project!

I took my quilt in to school and read some monster books for Halloween, we did a monster art project and did a monster writing activity and the kids loved it! When I showed them my quilt it was the best reaction I could have ever hoped for! Some of the kids told me it was the best quilt they had ever seen! I think what makes it so great, besides the great colors, are the individual monsters, so here they are! (Don't look too closely or you might see my blood from all the times I poked myself while I was stitching!)

Whenever Matt looks at my quilt, he thinks about all of the things his mom sewed for him when he was a kid, because all my fabric came from her sewing room. The colorful dragon/monster has a tye-dye fabric that Matt had "jammers" made out of...

The half-square triangles came from Myrna's monster quilt that she is working on (her quilt inspired me to start this project all those years ago). She had made all these half-square triangles and didn't use them all, so I grabbed them up! Aren't they amazing?

The back is just black with a swirl pattern, but it came together so well!

Pumpkin Carving and Halloween

I LOVE CACHE VALLEY! I love our Halloween traditions that we can actually do this year because we live so close to Randy and Jenny and the kids. This year we started the festivities with our annual pumpkin carving tradition. The boys were gung-ho as always, I think Matt and Randy carved six or seven pumpkins between the two of them. I decided this year to try something new, and I melted crayons over the top of my pumpkin which looked pretty cool! I think that next year I'll have to do a crafty pumpkin again, but also carve a pumpkin too because I missed it this year!

Even Todd got into carving this year, although he would have been more into it if it wasn't past his bedtime...

Matt's temple, Jenny's cookie-cutter stars, Brad's frankenstein and Claire's smiley face!

Todd's deer pumpkin and Randy's duck hunting pumpkin! I told both of them that we could melt some red crayons on their pumpkins and then they could show that they killed these animals...

Carving with Brad and Claire was super fun. Brad got so frustrated trying to make his pumpkin perfect, but Claire was a crazy carver! She did the whole thing by herself, tongue out the whole time!

My crayon pumpkin! For some reason the crayon would drip down the side and then lift up off the pumpkin (it wouldn't stick!). Claire had a blast picking the crayon off the pumpkin the next day!

Don't you love how Harrison is staring at Matt in the mask? He was so nervous, even when he knew it was Matt! Claire was a dead cheerleader, Brad was a vampire and Harrison was a devil. Check out dirty Randy's costume. Nasty mustache- check. Gross mullet wig- check. Cowboy hat- check. Tight, v-neck t-shirt- check. Nasty fake chest hair- check. GROSS.

I can't take enough pictures of this baby! He is just so cute!

Harrison in my boots! Okay I put him there, but he was just so cute I couldn't resist.

After the festivities of Halloween were over, we watched the Jazz game. I tried to steal a piece of candy from Matt and HE BIT ME to get it back! Look at the teeth marks! I could kill that guy!

All in all, a fantastic and very fun Halloween!

Happy Birthday Reagan and Harrison!

Reagan and Harrison both turned one this month, so the families all got together to celebrate! Jenny and Kamie made everything so cute, especially the cute baby cakes! Kamie even made those cute owls on the table to match the colors of the babies' birthday cakes.

We had yummy lunch before cake and Eli just loved the dip!

Before...

Reagan liked the frosting and was licking it off the cake! She wasn't really interested in the cake part, but that is all Harrison wanted! He didn't want any frosting, but dug in when we broke it open and he saw the cake!

Isn't that just the cutest face you have ever seen!?

The Reagan Photo Shoot:

When Reagan woke up from her nap, she was so happy! Jenny and I couldn't resist taking some pictures of her in her cute birthday outfit, and I couldn't resist testing out the settings on my camera with her darling pink tutu!

We love our nieces and nephews! Happy birthday little ones!

Friday Night with Nat and Zach

I had the best roommates in college. People who I am still so close to, who I love so much! Last Friday, Natalie and her husband, Zach, came up to Logan and we spent the night with them. We ordered pizza and headed up to the first Aggie basketball game of the year. Randy got sweet tickets from Zions Bank so we went and sat with him. Nat and I had to be the coolest and do the Scotsman with the students, even though we weren't sitting in the student section!

After the game, we headed to Providence to go mini golfing! Yes, it was 9:00 at night, but this is the coolest mini golf place in the world! They decorate it for Halloween every year, each hole has a different theme, and on weekend nights they even have people there to scare you, like at a haunted house! We were the only people in the whole place (probably because it was freezing), and the two guys working had a blast scaring us. They did complain about how slow we were, but that was because we were having so much fun! They even treated us to some free hot chocolate after we were done. Definitely the most awesome tradition!

Just a funny side note: Four years ago, on my 21st birthday, I had kidney stones. I made Matt (who wasn't even dating me at the time) skip class and take me to the ER. They gave me some crazy drugs and I couldn't feel any pain, which is crazy because the pain is terrible! The downside was that I had to stay active all day, I couldn't just go home and go to bed. At the time, Alex was a student at USU and happened to have a broken foot and was on crutches. So poor Matt had to babysit "Crip" (Alex) and "Stone" (me) around town for the day. One of the stops we made was to the Halloween mini golf place. Needless to say, it was the most fun I've ever had mini golfing, and to this day I still call Alex "Crip" every once in a while!

Are those Hogwarts Acceptance Letters? Wait... No, Just Bills

For a moment after opening my mailbox, I felt like Harry Potter. TWELVE letters all addressed to me? It must be my acceptance letter to Hogwarts! I didn't think Matt was hoarding the mail, but why else would I have so many?

Oh wait. Those are bills. Why did I get TWELVE of the same bill? I'm still not sure. Someone must have screwed up at Logan Utilities. Whoever you are, thanks for the moment of Harry Potter happiness, but screw you for sending me 12 bills!

Family Pictures

How did I marry such an interesting person? Even doing something as simple as taking family pictures always turns into a crazy event. All week before the pictures, my mom had been changing her mind about what we were going to wear. She finally settled on the boys wearing a white, button-down shirt and jeans. Simple right? Wrong! Matt does not own jeans that don't have construction crap all over them, and doesn't own a long-sleeve shirt that isn't a church shirt. Luckily, Alex works at Old Navy and I called her up and had her grab him some clothes to wear. It was a little easier to dress me, however my mom and Alex did make me change my outfit and try on other clothes for like an hour before we left to take pictures.

After all the crazy, we did get some great pictures...

On a side note, when we arrived at the barn where we were taking our pictures, there was a doe and a buck wandering around. Matt almost died! He wished he were somewhere where he could shoot the buck! He told me that if we had been in the mountains taking pictures and if he had his gun that he wouldn't hesitate to shoot the buck, even if that meant ruining his nice picture outfit. Sorry mom, he wouldn't have even thought twice about it!