Pumpkin Carving 2014

Every year, pumpkin carving is a huge deal for the Fischers. I don't really know how it started, but one of Matt's favorite things about Halloween is carving pumpkins. This year, Jenny and Randy were a little partied out, so I offered to host pumpkin carving in our garage. We set up tables and pulled out some tarps and we were good to go.

Melissa was babysitting until Randy got off work, so she had Wyatt, Brad, Claire, and Harrison. Jenni brought over her kids until Nate got off work, so it was just the girls with all the kids for a while!

Harrison didn't want to pull the guts out of his pumpkin, so I had to do it for him. I actually did just about everything for him. He helped poke holes, until he got bored. While I was carving his pumpkin, he really wanted a nose for his jack-o-lantern, but as you can see, there isn't one on the pattern, so I had to freestyle the nose while he was shouting, "Make a nose Tori!"

Wyatt did awesome!

Brad did his pumpkin on his own this year! He picked a pretty hard pattern and only needed help with a couple parts!

By the time Randy came, Claire was ready for some help. She did all the poking, and Randy helped with the carving.

Lindsay and Harrison did the same pattern. I think hers turned out better than the one I did for Harrison!

Carter and Brad did the same pattern. Carter kept trying to do the flying duck pattern, but Jenni didn't want to do all the carving on that one, so she had him pick a different one.

After the kids were done, uncle Matt was just getting started. He spent another hour after everyone went home carving his two pumpkins. He got online and chose his patterns carefully. He printed off an Olaf pattern for me to do, which was great because it was super easy.

The "super turtle" and minion! Harrison wouldn't call it a ninja turtle! He kept calling it a super turtle!

On Halloween, Randy and Jenny had already left on their cruise, so again, I offered to host Halloween festivities at our house. Diet and Myrna brought the kids over, and so did Nate and Jenni. Kamie had to work, so Tim brought the girls over. We had chili and scones for dinner before sending the kids out for some trick-or-treating! I stayed home to pass out candy, and was shocked at how many kids we had stop at our house! I almost ran out of candy! Matt said it was way crazy walking around with so many people out. Looks like our street is the place for all the trick-or-treating! We took the kids back to their neighborhood for a few houses, and then watched Godzilla at Nate and Jenni's house after putting the kids to bed. It was a great Halloween!

Halloween Festivities

The week before Halloween, Kenzy and I had to go down to Salt Lake for an After-School Conference at Thanksgiving Point. We were put up in a hotel, so we decided to make a weekend out of it! Matt, Kenzy, and I drove down on Thursday after work. We dropped Matt off with his parents and then headed off to see Thriller! It was fun to go with Kenzy, who had never seen it before, but I did still miss our big group! The show was amazing as always!

We spent Friday at our conference, and Matt went fishing with his dad. After our conference, we got free admission to the Museum of Ancient History so Kenzy, Matt and I wandered around while we waited for Devin to meet us. Then we headed downtown for dinner at Training Table and our annual visit to the Haunted Village at This is the Place! Kenzy was pretty freaked out, and I definitely jumped a few times! That is one of my favorite Halloween traditions!

On Saturday, we went to half of the conference, and then had to leave so we could make it back to Logan for the Aggie game! We had such a great weekend with Kenzy and Devin, and definitely will try to make this a tradition!

Mass Updates

Okay, I can't even give an update on my computer because I am SO FURIOUS about everything, so I will just update everything else.

Right after our anniversary, Matt and I decided that we were going to buy a new car. We have barely been thinking about it, and Matt found a car on KSL that he thought was worth a look. We took it for a test drive and talked about price. After the weekend, we called and made an offer. We usually don't think too long about these type of decisions. It was exactly what we were looking for: low miles, newer, comfortable, more spacious, etc. And of course, the price was right. Not exactly a steal, but good enough we couldn't pass it up! Now we are so happy with our purchase. Our 2011 Toyota Camry fits perfectly in the new garage.

After we finished the house, we had no interest in doing any landscaping. Then as some time passed, I became envious of everyone else's nice grass. I wanted to be able to sit outside on the lawn! So we made some phone calls, and after a ridiculous amount of time, finally were able to get a company to come out and install the sprinkler system for a decent price. This is what it looked like before they got started:

One Saturday, the girls all decided to get together for a Girl's Day Out. Jenny and Kamie met up first at 7:00 (too early for me) to garage sale in the rain. I met up with them around 11:00 to head down to Brigham City to meet Kendra and Jenna for lunch at Old Grist Mill. After lunch, we went shopping. Everywhere. Downeast outlet in Brigham City, D.I. in Brigham, and a bunch of places in Logan. We shopped ourselves silly and had to get some dinner at Chilis after we were finished. Then we went to see "The Giver". Jenny and Kamie had to make sure we used up as much of their day out as possible! What a fun day with all the girls!

For Lance and Kendra's birthdays, we got them tickets to the BYU vs. Utah State football game in Provo. We fully expected to lose. After a five hour drive from Logan to Provo in the worst traffic I've ever faced, we finally got to the game. I have never been in such a huge stadium. As anyone who watched the game knows, WE WON! It was sooooo fun. We sat up in the student section with all the other Aggie fans who made the drive and we were cheering like crazy the whole time! We didn't get home until 3:30 AM, but it was totally worth it!

Halloween is coming! This is absolutely my most favorite holiday of the entire year, and Matt and I have been extra excited to get our house all decorated! The first thing I did was pick up my pumpkins! There is an awesome "Pick Your Own Pumpkin" patch just down the street from my house, so I stopped by to grab some huge pumpkins! I only had to pay $5 for the ones that were over 30 pounds and $3 if they were less than 30 pounds. Love it! I bought a bunch of baby pumpkins too. Such a fun tradition, and super fun to support some of our neighbors.

Then I got out all my other decorations. We have been trying to collect some creepier decorations. We are trying to copy the old witch's house on "Hocus Pocus." So we have been collecting candles, old candle holders, skulls, jars and bottles, and of course my big book. I searched everywhere for a big old book that I could pretend was a witch's spellbook. It is actually a 100-year-old dictionary, but it looks amazing! When we get a little closer to Halloween, we'll put everything out on the porch. Hopefully in the years to come, we can grow our collection of creepy stuff and eventually have a full on witch's graveyard with tons of gravestones and fog machines. We'll get there eventually, but I love what we have for now!

Back to the landscaping.... This is what the yard looks like now that the sprinklers are in. The hydroseed was sprayed a few days later and we are patiently waiting for it to sprout. Hopefully we'll see some growth before it gets too cold.

More pumpkins...

We love having a second bedroom with a spare bed in it because we get to have visitors! Last week, my grandma came up for the Aggie vs. Air Force game and stayed the night. It was so much fun to catch up and spend some time with my grandma, even if she was also cheering for Air Force.

This weekend, we were able to invite our friends Natalie and Zach up to spend the night. Nat and I went to Skyline and lived together at Utah State for two years and have become very close friends. She and Zach live in Draper now with their darling little boy, Noah. They came up and we gave them a tour of the house, went for a walk, had dinner, then went and played mini golf and had hot chocolate. The next morning we had breakfast before they headed home! It was so much fun to catch up and get to spend time with cute baby Noah!

Okay, last pictures, I promise. On Saturday night (after Nat and Zach headed home), Matt and I met up with the rest of the Fischer crew, including Lance and Kendra who drove up, for dinner at Pizza Factory. Table for 15 please! Reagan had to sit in between Matt and I. She kept snuggling up to us, and even tried to give Matt a hands-covered-with-ranch-dressing hug during dinner. After dinner, I got a birthday ice cream that I shared with Blakelee. She is definitely a little girl! She was moaning in ecstasy after each bite, and was even trying to grab ice cream out of my mouth when I gave myself a bite! We had yummy dinner and great service before we went over to American West Heritage Center for their fall festival Haunted Hollow. We went last year and had so much fun. This year, Tim and Lance came with us, and even Harrison was big enough to come! We had fun standing in line, with the uncles harassing Brad, Claire and Harrison. Harrison would not let me put him down! He was wearing his birthday batman sweatshirt and was telling everyone that he was Batman. When we finally went into the Haunted Hollow, he was definitely a little scared, but Jenny and I kept talking to him and laughing at the scary people and he started telling all of them that he was Batman! They were all pretty cute when they realized how little he was. After the Haunted Hollow, I carried Harrison back to the car and he talked my ear off the whole way. I love the age that he and Reagan are right now because they are both so talkative! What a fun night! Love spending time with the whole family! So glad that Lance and Kendra could come up!

Sad Day

This update is to tell everyone that I have not been slacking on my blog! I have been working on a project to scan all my mom's scrapbooks and print them for myself. This was harder than I planned for several reasons:
1. The pages were 12x12 scrapbook pages so I had to "convince" my dad to buy a commercial size scanner so I could scan them at home. That took about a week of nonstop scanning.
2. While scanning, I realized that the files were HUGE, almost 1G each, and I have over 300 pages. So I had to connect everything into my 1T external hard drive, and still my computer was way bogged down.
3. Once everything was scanned, I thought I could just upload them to blurb and voila! Done! NOT! Apparently blurb doesn't read tiff files, which is what they all scanned as! Ahhhh!
4. At this point, I had two options. Rescan everything, or convert the files individually. I opted for the second option. I tried to open them and convert them in several programs before I found one that worked. I had to open them all in Photoshop, which took forever because they were such huge files, then I had to resave them, which took even longer!
5. I've been working on converting for about two weeks, and had just finished the first half of the pages when my computer started to get really slow. My macbook is from 2006, when I graduated high school, and has been through a lot. I figured it was tired from the huge project so I finished up and unplugged and shut it down. It did not turn back on.
6. I took out over to expercom, who was impressed it has lasted that long. They called it "vintage". They thought the hard drive was dead, but said they'd look at it. I didn't think it would be a big deal, because I don't feel like I use my computer that much. I was so wrong! In the three days since it's been gone, I've needed it 3-4 different times, and then realized I didn't have it. Then they called me and told me that the hard drive was gone.

I am so sad. I don't know what to do without my computer, and I'm even more sad that I may not be able to recover everything. I backed up my pictures about a month ago so most of those are safe, but all my music and other documents are on that computer. Expercom said they would charge me $100 minimum to TRY to recover anything, and more if it was difficult. I don't know what to do. I can replace the hard drive, but it is an old computer and may not last too long anyway. I could pay to recover my documents and then just use my work computer, although it is a PC and I don't like it. Or we could buy a new computer (probably not feasible after buying a house and new car). So sad!

So I will probably not blog until we figure out what we are doing with the computer situation. I have a bunch of stuff to blog, so when I get back up and running there will be a lot! Until then...

Football Season!

I can't believe it is already fall and that football season has started! I know it seems crazy, but I actually do like watching college football with Matt on the weekend. But even better than watching them on TV is going to the games! We got our season tickets again and are always trying to convince people to come to games with us. I finally convinced my mom and Jeff to come up for a game and to stay the night at the house. It was really fun! The Aggies didn't play very well, but they did end up winning the game! Right before the game, I called my mom to see if she wanted me to buy them new game day shirts, and she asked if she was supposed to wear her Aggie shirt... haha! Of course you wear your Aggie shirt to an Aggie game! Matt was in Salt Lake helping replace his mom and dad's roof and barely made it on time to the game. He didn't have time to change his clothes before the game so excuse his green shirt.

Life in the New House

Everyone always asks us how we are liking living in the new house. It is definitely amazing! There are a few things however that we didn't expect:

• We put out our garbage can every week and the recycling bin every other week. At first, both cans were always overflowing with moving garbage, however now that we are settled, I feel a little crazy taking my garbage can to the curb with it's two little bags of garbage inside. I almost feel like I'm wasting the garbage man's time by making him stop to pick up such a measly load.
• We still have about a million things to do! I thought we were done! Little things like putting the toilet paper rods in the bathroom (yes, the toilet paper roll just sits on the counter), organizing all the crap in the garage, touching up paint, even putting away some boxes! I wrote a list for Matt to work on while I was at work and he has done like two things on my two page list. I guess being homeowners means that we always have something to do at home!
• We are still getting used to being in a real neighborhood, especially knowing that we aren't going to be moving anytime soon! We got to participate in a ward activity that was really fun. One Friday everyone showed up at a farmer's field to harvest an acre of corn that he had planted for the ward. We walked through the field picking corn, and then went back to the common area for dinner and a corn boil! They sent us home with a giant bag of corn (over three dozen ears). Most people freeze the corn, but I just gave most of it away. It was the best corn I've ever had!
• I absolutely love having people over. I almost don't ever want to go to other people's houses because I'd rather invite everyone over. I always make my bed before people come over because I have to give everyone a tour of the house! And last week we got a mattress for the bed in our spare room and I am so happy that I can invite people over to stay for the night!
• After a couple weeks in the house, we started seeing ants crawling around. I didn't think it was a problem until Matt left a box with a doughnut out on the side table overnight. When we woke up the next morning, they were everywhere! It was disgusting. The carpet looked like it was moving because there were so many ants crawling around. That's when we got serious about getting rid of them! Why a brand new house was being overrun with ants is still a mystery to me. We tried some Pinterest  remedies at first, and then bought a small spray, which graduated to some small traps, then finally a giant bottle of house spray. Luckily we haven't had any problems since, but I was furious!

Visiting

About a week ago, Matt and I went down to Layton on a Sunday to visit Lance and Kendra, but really we went down to visit Kailee and Clayton! We had a barbeque and we played with Kailee and Rudy! I can't believe how big Kailee is getting! It is fun to see her start talking and playing with us! I wish we could see them more often. Matt and I keep trying to get them to move up to Cache valley... too bad they bought a house only a couple months ago.

Of course, Matt likes playing with the dog almost as much as he likes playing with the kids!

Isn't she so freaking cute!?