Drawings

I love when my kids draw and color so I thought I'd post some of my favs.

Logan did this one at school. I love how he drew about the words hot, hop, dot, and got. (The hop one is my favorite.) Sorry it's a bit blurry.

Logan's cute monster with ears all over him.

This is my all-time favorite drawing that Logan has done. He wanted to show me what the skeleton looked like that he made at school.

And here's the one he told me about.

Caden's haunted house. Love the tree!

I don't know why this one wouldn't go the right way. I even changed it on my computer and it looks right until it's loaded. Anyway, Kelsie drew an animal with many characteristics from a cow, zebra, deer, horse, and it's even got roller skates on.

Her mighty cute clown guy that is balding on top. ;]

Logan's silly guy.

More monsters by Logan. He really tries to use his imagination with arms coming out of the head and ears on the middle of the face and I think one of them even has it's eyes on it's belly.

On facebook, a bunch of people were posting about this little boy named Noah who is dying of cancer. His family didn't know if he would make it to Christmas so they celebrated early. Noah's Christmas wish was to get as many Christmas cards as possible. For family home evening we made some cards. Here's the front of Logan's sweet card.

And here's the back.

Kelsie's card

Caden's card. When I told the kids about Noah, Caden nearly broke down in tears. He is so soft-hearted and sweet. I'm so grateful to have him in our family. (And all my other kids of course.)

Caden got a new video game with money he earned working with Brandon called Mini Ninjas. He has been obsessed with it. Not necessarily playing the game, but being a ninja and drawing them. Here's his favorite drawing so far:

Another ninja

Caden used his protractor to make a design . . . really cool!

While we were waiting for the bus, Livi was looking at leaves and collecting them. When we got home she was drawing a leaf. She even had to tell me about it. She has such control over her pencil/pen/crayon when she draws. I don't remember my other kids being able to draw that well when they were 2. I like how she even added lines. I will have to get some of her other drawings out that she has done recently. She is drawing circles with faces and tries to color in the lines. She's growing up too fast!!!

Halloween and blessing

Halloween has come and gone. :( Caden was the grim reaper, Kelsie and Livi were bumble bees, and Logan was a dead knight. I had to get a pic of Caden before school since he's in the middle school and they don't do parades there. He's only in 6th grade and he didn't really have a Halloween party. Sad.

Olivia and I went to Kelsie and Logan's school for the Halloween parade. Livi had to wave to all the kids as they passed by. Logan's cape wouldn't stay on, but boy he's a cute dead knight. Kelsie took Livi with her for part of the parade. Livi thought she was so big. She wanted to go with Kelsie back to her class.

We went down to Utah on Halloween and had a party at Grandma and Grandpa Bunderson's house. The newest members of the family: Addyson (giraffe) and Gabryella (zebra). They are so stinkin' cute!!!Ready for tricks and treats. Brandon even dressed up.

Brandon and his Mommy.

On Sunday, we had the opportunity to see baby Addy blessed. Her dress was gorgeous!Cherry family. That's a good-looking family. Love you guys!Brandon and Jordan are good buds. Can't you tell? (Goofy boys)

Fall is so cozy!

I love the fall! The only thing I don't like about Fall is that it's so close to winter and snow. Fall brings lots of fun activities to do as a family. Halloween is one of my favorite's. We like to pick pumpkins and carve them as a family (like everyone else). Olivia really got into it this year. Brandon helped her carve her pumpkin which was really sweet. We went to get our pumpkins and didn't have a lot of time so we went to Albertson's. I know, how boring is that? Well, the pumpkins were $4.99 each so we decided we would look at Broulim's, the local grocery store. Now way were we going to spend $20 on pumpkins. Broulim's had a little hay maze and spook alley and tons of pumpkins for only $0.17 a lb. We got each of the kids a nice-sized pumpkin that they picked and for all four of them it came to about $6.00. Albertson's is ripping people off. Unless we misread the sign, but it said "pumpkins $4.99 each" so that leaves little doubt we read it wrong. We had a great weekend together. After pumpkin carving, we had scones with chili (aka navajo tacos). A fall family favorite. We also made caramel apples over the weekend. I had never made them before so I didn't really know what I was doing, but melting caramel and putting it on apples didn't sound too difficult. Which it wouldn't have been if I hadn't cooked the caramel too long and made it really hard. It went on the apples okay, but as it cooled, the caramel hardened. We had to peel the caramel off and eat the apples plain. :( (Sad that I 'm actually admitting this.)We are going to try again tonight, but with homemade caramel. Wish me luck! :)

October BDAYS!!!

Happy Birthday to my brother, Jason who turned 33 on the 7th. He is usually being goofy and teasing. We have a lot of fun with him though and wouldn't have him any other way. He has two cute little boys and has a baby on the way in the spring. Yay! Happy birthday brother, hope you had a super fantastic day! Love ya!
Happy birthday to my father-in-law (wearing the cowboy hat). He celebrated another great year on the 17th. I love this picture since it has four generations. The kids love going to Grandpa Harris' ranch and riding on the ranger or the motorcycle. They have lots to do there and always have a great time. We love you and hope you had a great wonderful birthday!

On the same day, was my brother-in-law Seth's birthday (on the 17th). He's married to my sister Stephie and is so good to her. They just had a little baby girl and she already has her daddy wrapped around her little finger. He is so sweet and cute with his baby girl. She is lucky to have him for a dad. Happy birthday (late) Seth! We hope it was wonderful and we love you!

Pumkins, witches, snow, and moving . . .

October started out great! We were in Salt Lake (which I know I already blogged about so I won't go into lots of detail) which was so fun. We went with Tami and her kids to a pumpkin patch and the boys loved the tractors . . .
Saturday we went to Gardner Village to see the witches. Olivia is such a ham. . .

Here's my friend Brandee that was one of the cute witches. Olivia was so funny when they painted her face. She had watched Logan get his face painted with his eyes closed since they were doing paint on his eyelids, so she thought she needed to close her eyes. I didn't get a pic fast enough, but it was so funny.

Painted faces

Stephie and baby Addyson came with us

My sweet mother-in-law came too

Stephie and me

After we left Gardner Village, we had to stop at Wal-Mart and we saw Grandma and Grandpa Cranfill there. (There must have been a Utes game that day, Stephie and Grandpa were both showing their spirit.)

We had our first snow fall of the season and the kids waisted no time making a snowman and a snow fort.

We loved Arco and would have stayed their forever if the house we were in didn't have so many issues. We loved having lots of land for the kids to roam around without having to worry so much (except about wild animals taking off with them). :) I wanted to get a few calfs in the spring since we had a place for them. It would have been a good experience for the kids and I think it would have been kinda fun. Baby cows are so cute! We would have sold them in the fall so we wouldn't have to worry about them in the winter. I also wanted to get chickens, but oh well, maybe some day. When we were boxing up (again) Olivia thought the boxes made good beds for her stuffed animals. She had one on each box. I wanted to take a pic so she thought she would do different poses. I took about six pics of her in different spots around the boxes. She is so silly.

We were back in SL for my uncle's funeral and we stayed at Grandma Cranfill's house. Livi loves her grandma.

We brought little Jakey with us so he wouldn't have to be home alone (where would we put him anyway?) and Sawyer (Grandma's dog) didn't really want to put up with Jake's puppy ways. Jake wanted to play with Sawyer, but Sawyer didn't want anything to do with it. Jake followed him all around.

My three little puppies. :)

So . . . now we are back in Rexburg and we love it! We have been back about a week now and the kids love their schools especially since they already know some of the kids. The house doesn't have huge yucky spiders everywhere, but our boxes still do. I was getting our Halloween stuff out and a black widow was right on top of the stuff. I am creeped out again (go figure), but I bought some stuff to kill it and I will be okay. ;) I have had to go to the library to do homework while I waited for my internet to be set-up at home and Livi would come with me and we would spend some time on the little computers playing games. I put the headphones on her and she made this face until I took them off:

She is so funny and keeps us laughing all day.

Spiders, blehcky . . .

Need I say more? As I mentioned in a previous post, we have spiders galore out here. I am terrified of spiders so living here is a bit difficult for me. There are these awful shelves in our bedroom that go around the top of the room and the light hangs on the wall right above our bed. I always thinks that a spider is waiting for me to lay down so it can slowly make its way down a web onto my face from one of those areas. Sounds paranoid, but has happened to me more than once, but it didn't actually make it to my face, just right above it. Creepy!!! So anyway every night I always scoot my pillow down so I'm not right under the light or the shelves. I know, I know, you're probably laughing at my silliness, but like I said, I am terrified of spiders.

So, last night I turned the light off and Brandon said there was something crawling on him. I thought he was just teasing me. He tells me to turn on the light, he had the crawly thing in his hand. So I turn the light on and sure enough there is a huge spider in between his finger and thumb. AAAaaaaaaaa. . . Needless to say, I didn't sleep in there last night. I slept on the couch and was still checking every corner of the room before I went to bed. They are sneaky little things though and I know they hide well so the checking didn't really reassure me. Then, the past few days we have had a cricket in our family room chirping so loud. We could not find it any where. Well, yesterday it stopped. I know a spider has it wound in its web somewhere in that room. (shivers.) I am so creeped out about those stupid bugs that I just can't stand it. Do they really have a purpose here?

Remembering . . .

Sunday morning around 2 AM, my uncle had a heart attack and passed away. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. We will miss Uncle David and will remember him daily. It's moments like this that I am grateful for the knowledge the gospel provides. I know that we will see him again and that he is with my grandpa right now. The gospel also brings peace and comfort in times of grief. I know the family will turn to our Heavenly Father to find that needed peace and comfort. I hope they know of our love for them and for Uncle David.

I have really been thinking about life since this happened. This type of circumstance really makes me think. I see people who behave certain ways and treat people in a way that is less than appealing. I know that I have had those moments as well and I do not want to have any regrets if someone that I treated that way passed. Life is just too short to have ill feelings toward others. I know this sounds cheesy, but really, think about it. Life is a gift and we should treat it as such. I love to see and hear stories about people who try to make life better for everyone they come in contact with and I think about being that way as well. I just need to get out of my comfort zone and really strive for making life a little better in what I do and say to others. Again, I know this sounds like wishful thinking, but with the loss in our family, I can't help but think about how fragile life is. I am giving myself a challenge, you can join if you feel so inclined, I will make someone's life better each day. This is a small goal, but ya gotta start somewhere. :)

So much . . .

First of all, I have to say that if you ever have a choice between satellite internet and other, never get satellite! We haven't had internet for a few days because of the wind storm the other day. I still can't post pics because the signal is still too weak. Doesn't work so well when I can't even log into my online schooling. They can't do anything about it over the phone, they have to send a technician over to fix it. SO FRUSTRATING!!! What good is internet if it goes out every time there is a storm?

(Deep breath.) Okay, so I have a few things to post about and I will add pics when I have reliable internet. We have been to Utah a couple of times since our move and had lots of fun. The first weekend we were there, we stayed with Brandon's mom and had a lot of fun. Friday night we watched Twilight. I saw it in theatres, but wasn't too impressed. I heard everyone say that the second time is so much better so I was excited to see it again. Blah! I still didn't like it too well. It might have been because I just finished reading the book a couple days before that. The movie just doesn't compare to the book. Usually when I read a book then see the movie I try to keep them separated so I don't compare them, but with Twilight, I just can't do it. I am looking forward to the second movie though. Saturday, we went out to breakfast then went to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It was really cute and the kids really enjoyed it.

The next weekend we stayed with my parents. We went to the mall with Tami and her kids then to a pumpkin patch that night. The kids loved the little corn maze and the little wheel barrows that were just their size. Livi loved seeing the chickens eat the corn. She loves animals. Saturday morning I had to get the rest of our stuff out of our storage unit then we went to Gardner Village to see the witches. The kids got their faces painted and hair colored and got balloon shapes from some clowns. While we were in line to get the kids' faces painted, one of the witches came up to me and said in her witchy voice, "You're name is Amy and you went to Bingham High School." It was then that I realized it was a friend from school that I haven't seen in years. Brandie Pilcher was a cute, perfect witch for the festivities. She had her four little girls with her and they were all so cute! That was a lot of fun to see her. The kids enjoyed all of the activities and was happy that Grandma Cranfill and Aunt Stephie and baby Addyson could come with us.

We had our first real snow Sunday night. The kids woke up Monday morning and were so anxious to get out and play in it. We had a snowman and a snow fort by the end of the day.

I am terrible at writing down all of the cute and funny things my kids say, but they do it a lot. Logan is the most random one of all. He comes up with the silliest things and he is totally serious. I really need to do better at writing them down since I have a terrible memory. I did write down some things that Livi has said lately and this was all within a few days so it was easier to remember:

Jake (our puppy) was jumping up at Olivia so Livi says, "Take it easy. Take it easy." :)

She walked into the kitchen with her pointer finger pointed up and says, "Mom, I got an idea!" Then proceded to walk to her bedroom with her finger still up.

Brandon brought our computer desk into the house and Livi says, "Oh - my - goodness." She paused between each word.

Whenever we walk into a public restroom she says, "Ew, it stinks" or "It smells in here." All the while she has her hand over her nose and is sniffing and making a disgusted face. I agree with her here . . . yucky!

Once a month

I like to feature the birthdays in my family on my blog, but since I am always behind, I thought it might be better to do it once a month for all of the birthdays in that month. September is full of birthdays in my family. All of these birthdays are within a week of each other, so here goes:

Stephanie's was on the 13th and she turned 28! My little sis is growing up. :) She just had her first little baby and is enjoying being a mom. I am so excited for her and I know she will make a great mother (already is). Happy birthday Stephie! We hope you had a wonderful day.

So, on Steph's 2nd birthday she got a special gift . . . another sister. And what a great gift this sister has been. Heidi's birthday is also on the 13th, and turned 26. Heidi is always helping everyone and is so generous with her time. Happy birthday Heidi! Hope you had a super day!
Tyler's birthday was the 15th. He turned 17. I can't believe how fast the time goes. It seems like just yesterday that I got married and Tyler was only about 5 wearing his cute little tux. I'm sure it won't be long before he is wearing another tux (for a school dance, not a wedding), but it won't be so little this time. Happy birthday Ty Ty!

Cami's birthday was the 16th and she turned 13. Sweet little Cami is now a dreadful teenager, well, she's not dreadful, but the word teenager is. We have a lot of fun with Cami. She goes a lot of places with us and my kids absolutely adore her. Happy birthday Camers!

Spencer's birthday was the 18th and I'm not exactly sure how old he turned . . . maybe 24? Kelli, help me out here. :) He is the newest in-law in our family and has been a great addition. Happy birthday Spenc!

Last, but certainly not least, is sweet little Brynlee. Her birthday was the 20th and she turned 2. Olivia loves to play with her cousin Brynlee and has so much fun with her. Brynlee has the cutest laugh and smile. I can't help laughing right along with her. Happy birthday little one!

We love you all and hope you had a fantastic birthday! We can't wait to see you!

I'm back . . . finally!

It seems like forever since I had the internet. That's one problem we found moving to a rural area. . . the internet takes a bit longer to get connected to. We had to get satellite internet and the closest place was an hour and a half away. So today, they finally got us up and running. It's funny, I was fine before I ever had the internet, didn't know what I was missing. Then, once I had it, then didn't, I really missed it. The important thing is that I'm back. I feel like I am so behind so here is what we have been up to:

The kids have a lot of fun riding the lawn mower. We use the trailer to transport things to and from the barn (including kids).

The day we moved in, Grandpa and Grandma Harris and Audrey came to help us unload the truck. Grandma and Grandpa Cranfill brought Brandon's truck up for us so we wouldn't have to take an unnecessary trip down to S.L. Thank you everyone for your help! Grandpa Harris gave Livi a ride in the tractor which they used to take some old couches out of the house and up to the barn.

So much fun. Yep . . . we like our rocking chair in the middle of the yard on those cool nights. ;)

The kids have really been enjoying school and making new friends. Caden is in the middle school and is the 32nd 6th grader enrolled there. That's about what his individual class was last year in Utah. He had a bit of a rough time with his locker the first day, but has it down now. He has 7 classes and is taking drama which he is enjoying.

Logan's teacher is easy for him to remember, Mrs. Taylor which was the name of his kindergarten teacher. She's really nice he says and likes first grade and eating lunch at school.

Kelsie really likes her teacher and has made lots of friends. Her class has about 16 or 17 kids, half what her last class had. She gets to each lunch in her classroom since the lunchroom isn't big enough for the whole school to eat in. :) She thinks that is pretty cool.

The kids first time riding the bus. Even though it comes to the end of our lane, it's still a ways to get to the bus stop. I may have to drive them to the end of the lane in the winter. . . ?

Oh boy, there it is. The kids were so nervous about riding the bus with the high school kids. The bus takes all ages of kids. The elementary kids have to sit in front though. The high school kids were nice after all and the bus ride wasn't as terrible as my kids thought it was going to be.

Jake was right there to say goodbye to the kids. Look at that face! Isn't he the cutest? (I'm not biased at all.)

I had to get this pic of Livi. She was off in her own little world staring and thinking of who knows what. This pic shows how very secluded we are from the world. Nothing in the background. (This is from our backyard.) So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we have no dishwasher so I get to wash dishes every day. It really isn't as terrible as I thought it was. I really hated washing dishes when I had a dishwasher. Now, it's not that bad. Well, it wasn't anyway. I was washing a glass the other day and I heard it pop when my hand was washing the inside. I looked down to see that it sliced the top of my hand and left a gaping hole. I thought it was a gaping hole anyway. I have not had many injuries and none for a long time so this was bad to me. Not to Brandon of course, he has had many injuries that were pretty bad. It was the middle of the day and just me and Livi were home so I called Brandon to take me to the doctor. Luckily there is a clinic in town so we didn't have to drive too far. I took the pic with my left hand and was a little shakey so it's a bit blurry.

The clinic had an opening right then so I was able to be seen right away. Imagine that. I got six lovely stitches and I'm sure an ugly scar to come. Brandon thought that I might have been able to get away with a butterfly bandage, but the PA said it needed stitches for sure.

One thing that has been difficult for me to get used to is all of the bugs. Tons of huge stink bugs and spiders . . . yucky! Brandon found a wasps nest up at the peak of our house in the back so he sprayed and instantly they died. A huge spider emerged along with the wasps. I have no idea what kind of spider it was, but it was mondo. I saw a small one the next day above the back deck so I sprayed that area around the light. A little while later I saw that another huge spider (same kind as before) was there. Anyone know what kind of spider this is? I tried looking online to identify it, but still can't figure it out. They are everywhere so I think I may have to have someone come out and spray. I took this pic from inside the house. I had a really hard time going outside for the next couple of days.

I finally got brave and was going to spray the big ol thing, but the wind was blowing and I didn't want to get close enough for the spray to be effective. That would mean getting way too close. So I took a picture instead. :) Isn't it ugly? I really had to zoom in since I still didn't want to get close enough to get a good close up.