Hunger Games

Thanks to everyone who recommended I read this series. I finished it last night. I really liked it! Maybe not as much as Harry Potter or Twilight, but it was really good and I enjoyed reading it. One recommendation I have if you liked the Hunger Games is that you should read The Alliance written by Gerald Lund (same author as The Work and the Glory). It has a similar but less violent feel to it. Just my two cents :)

Also, I want to wish my sweet sister, Shannon, a very happy birthday! I love you!!

Thanksgiving 2010

We started out the day by getting up really early and heading up north for family pictures with my family (those pictures to come later, hopefully). But here's one family photo we had taken at my cousin's house:

Funny thing--Dar & I ended up in the center of just about every single family shot that day. It helps being the middle child & the center of the universe, I guess ;)

After a crazy photo shoot, we went to my sister's house for a Thanksgiving brunch to hold us off until turkey time. It was pretty scrumptious!!

Hannah loves Uncle D, and one of her favorite things is for him to swing her around in a blanket :)

Thanksgiving Brunch

We also did our family Christmas gift exchange because we were all together and we won't be for Christmas. It was so nice to have everyone in the same place at the same time!

Hannah & Liam both got new Wii games from Uncle Tayton

Dar & I gave Mike & Bri 3 new movies to help build their movie collection--Liam helped just about everyone open their gifts :)

Liam helping me open the cute card and Christmas money his family gave me & Dar

Tayt was super happy about his gift from Mom & Dad

Hannah & Liam helping Gramps open his and Nanny's gift from Skylar

Helping Omie & Grandpa open their gift from the fam

After relaxing for a little bit we headed back home with everyone to have Thanksgiving down here around our stomping grounds. It was kind of crazy with all the people there, but that's what Thanksgiving is all about, isn't it?

I went downstairs to take pictures of the kids playing and this is how I found my husband...

There was some serious Wii playing going on!

Handsome Matthew

Bri & sweet baby Koda
(Everyone is saying Koda looks just like I did as a baby. We can't wait to see who our little nugget looks like!)

Some of the craziness in the kitchen

We have to set up 4 tables to fit everyone :)

My Pops working on the bird

Back downstairs the kids got out our favorite game--Just Dance!

Some of us even started playing without remotes. Matt pulled out some pretty sweet moves during Cotton Eye Joe

Those that weren't into playing Wii played pool instead :)

Had to sneak in another cute shot of Dakoda

Usually we have dinner with both of our families, but we ended up missing Dar's family dinner all together this year so we didn't get any Thanksgiving pictures of his family. We still went over and ate some of their yummy pies & spent the next couple days helping them eat left-overs. Mmm! Overall, we had a very nice Thanksgiving, and we hope the rest of you did too!

A Short List of a Few of the Things I've been Grateful for This Year:
1. My Savior, Jesus Christ, who made it possible for all of us to be here on this Earth & to whom I am forever indebted to.
2. My wonderful husband and best friend, Darwin. I honestly can't imagine my life without him. I could go on and on for days about how amazing he is, but I'll spare you and just share my thoughts with him :)
3. Graduating from UVU with my BS degree, Darwin graduating from MSU with his MS degree
4. Overcoming one of the most difficult challenges I have ever faced & being blessed with a great pregnancy as a result.
5. Supportive family who love us and mean the world to us.
6. Wonderful friends in our ward who we love to hang out with and have come to mean so much to us.
7. Being able to celebrate Grandma's 90th birthday with her.
8. Seeing my other grandparents and being able to spend some time with them.
9. Being able to feel our healthy baby girl kicking and growing and greatly anticipating her arrival.
10. My testimony of the Gospel and my temple marriage. They mean the world to me.

It was 6 years ago...

...on Friday, November 12, that I hung out with a fun group of people at a birthday party for a friend, Rhett. And at this birthday party was a very cute guy named Darwin.

...on Saturday, November 13, that I attended a ward activity that included a dance. Although I came to the dance with some Brazilian guy, I danced to a song called Amazed by Lonestar with that cute guy named Darwin. We danced. Close. We sang the words to each other. It was a dance to not be forgotten. The cute guy named Darwin asked me to dance the last dance with him too, but someone else had already asked me, so I had to turn him down. Poor guy.

...on Sunday, November 14, that I sat next to the cute guy named Darwin at church. He called me later that night and asked me to come to a bonfire at his friend's house. We talked outside in the cold by the fire. Then inside the house. When he brought me home I asked him if he wanted to come inside to meet my cousins, who I was living with at the the time. He came inside, and we stayed up talking long after my cousins went to bed. We talked about lots of stuff. He told me he liked me & wanted to see where things could go with us. I was unsure. I had a missionary out who I was sure I was going to marry, but I told Darwin I would give him a chance.

...on Monday, November 15, at 5:00am we shared our first, most magical, amazing, incredible kiss either one of us has ever experienced. (Picture the end of Beauty and the Beast after the Beast becomes human again and they kiss and everything transforms to beautiful again. Yeah, that was kind of what it was like.) We took it as a sign and felt we were both walking on sunshine the next day. I ended up calling in sick to work that morning after having only 45 minutes of sleep...needing to be at work by 8:00am, I nearly passed out in the shower from lack of sleep. Although my body felt miserable, my heart felt like it was going to burst from the feelings I was beginning to feel about this cute guy named Darwin.

...on Tuesday, November 16 through Thursday November 18, that I saw Darwin every night after he got done at work. We would talk for a while before he would go home so we could continue with our work and school responsibilities and not fall too far behind. But all we really wanted was to be together.

...on Friday, November 19, that I hung out with Darwin at his house where we talked some more and tried to figure out what we were feeling, and why our feelings for each other we were already so strong.

...on Saturday, November 20, that I took Darwin up north to go to a baptism and baby blessing where he met my parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, and lots (but not even close to all) of my cousins. My family fell in love with him instantly. My aunt knew there was something special about him and told me I had to keep her posted. It was that night, on Saturday, November 20th, after spending more time talking at his house, when he walked me out to my car he said, "Marry me someday." A little unsure of what to say, I told him I had to pray about it. On my way home he texted me a couple of scriptures to read in Doctrine & Covenants. When I got home, I read those scriptures and immediately prayed about my question. I didn't expect to get my answer right away, but I did. And it was clear. I knew I was supposed to marry Darwin, not my missionary. I called Darwin and when he answered the phone I just said "Yes." Not completely sure what to say, he said, "Yes, what?" I responded, "Yes, I will marry you."

...on Thursday, November 25, that we told my family at our Thanksgiving dinner that we were going to get married August 12, 2005.

...on Saturday, November 27, that we were shopping for engagement rings.

And from there, it's history.

Here we are, exactly 6 years after that life-changing week we had, only 2 months away from meeting our first child. Dar & I both agree that life has improved since we met each other and married in the beautiful Bountiful temple on that very hot August day. I am so glad that even though things moved very quickly for us, we were both willing to trust our Heavenly Father by taking that HUGE leap of faith into the darkness (not knowing each other hardly at all, and getting engaged after a week of just hanging out, not having gone on an official date yet, was a pretty scary thing for both of us) knowing that He would not lead us astray. I am so glad Darwin trusted the feeling he had to ask me to marry him and that I trusted my feeling that it was right for me to marry him. Darwin is by far, with absolutely zero competition, the very best thing that has ever happened to me.

Dar, thank you for being my best friend, my husband, my lover, my protector, my security, my perfect puzzle piece, my everything. You complete me. :) I love you with all my heart!

To. Die. For!

I seriously crave this pie year round, but still have yet to make it this season. I figured I might as well share the pure joy of eating this pie with all 10 people who read our blog before Thanksgiving comes so you can try it out on your own family first and then see if you want to make it for the big dinner on Turkey Day. This pie is seriously To. Die. For! I'm telling you...once you try it, there's no going back!! (I hope I'm not talking it up too much, but I'm sure you'll love it either way!) I'm honestly not a huge pumpkin pie fan in general--it's just too dense for me, but I could probably eat this pie every day of the year and not get sick of it. Okay, that might be an exaggeration too, but you catch my drift.

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
Courtesy of the amazing Colleen Terry

4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 Tbsp milk
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 cups Cool Whip
1 graham cracker pie crust
1 cup milk
2 pkgs (4 serving size) Jell-o instant vanilla pudding
1 can (16 oz) pumpkin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Mix cream cheese, milk and sugar in large bowl until smooth. Gently stir in whipped topping. Spread on bottom of crust.
Pour 1 cup milk into bowl. Add pudding mix. Beat until well blended, 1 to 2 minutes. Mixture will be thick. Stir in pumpkin and spices; mix well. Spread over cream cheese layer.
Refrigerate at least 3 hours. Garnish with additional whipped topping and nuts if desired. Makes 8 servings. *I also like to shake a little cinnamon on top of the last layer of cool whip for presentation.
*I like to use the graham cracker crust that is a little larger than average (it says "2 more servings" on it.) Some common stores have it and some don't.

Enjoy!! And leave me a comment if you make it to let me know if you liked it!

Warm before the storm

*Warning!!*

I know I always post tons of pictures and this post is no exception, but these are all of Dar. Be ye warned! :)

Believe it or not, it was about 70 degrees here on Saturday. Such a nice day to be outside!! We took advantage of the nice weather and went to help out the in-laws with some yard work before the wet weather this week. (And yes, I woke up to rain on this beautiful Monday morning! Love rain!!) Dar spent a good part of his time playing with the trees. Okay, by playing I mean cutting them down and making them look nice:

1st project of the day: Get the ivy out of the juniper tree, and make the tree look nice in the process :)

Scoping out how far up the juniper the ivy went

My monkey way up in the juniper tree

2nd project: Take down the tree limb that fell from the neighbor's yard over the driveway from that amazing storm we had recently

Getting out the big guns :)

While Dar worked on the 2nd project I made myself useful by raking up leaves that fell from the beautiful Maple tree in the back yard...

...so Dar could play with the leaves too--or clean them up :)

The poor guy was pretty pooped by this point and it took every last ounce of his energy to clean up the piles I made. (I would have done it myself but it's getting harder and harder to bend over, so it was left to him to clean up the leaves.)
Don't judge the methodology. He was totally making me laugh though.
If you shove your face in a pile of leaves, you're bound to have evidence remaining, right?
Killing two birds with one stone: squashing down the leaves to make room for more + taking a break at the same time. You are one smart cookie, Love!

As Dar was putting his tools away I found a little teeny snake by the garage...Dar nearly stepped on him!

A few shots of the beautiful autumn leaves. I can honestly say I'm ready for the cooler weather!

All Hallow's Eve

It's pretty much a requirement to love Halloween if you're in this little family of ours. So it pretty much goes without saying that we dress up every year. The people in our ward were expecting great things from us since Dar's costume was so amazing last year. This year, it was my costume that got most of the comments. It was a simple costume, but people loved it! I was slightly bummed I didn't get to wear it longer and show it off to more people (read below for the story).

I think it's funny that I don't even really look pregnant in this picture. We should have gone with a tighter shirt. Oh well. But yes, I am 6 months pregnant in this picture. And I think my awesome red eyes give the picture the extra accent it needs :)

I wish I could say I'm creative enough to come up with the idea on my own, but I actually got the idea from this website.

Saturday we went to our ward trunk-or-treat, and about 40 minutes into it we got stormed out. The storm was absolutely amazing!! A bunch of us just stood in the church parking lot and watched it come in. You could hear the rain/hail falling before you could see it, but the clouds were moving so fast we barely got in our car in time before it all came down on us. One of the cool things was you could feel a definite drop in the temperature just before the storm got to us. Like I said, it was absolutely amazing. And the storm pretty much ended the trunk-or-treat. Dar & I sat in our car for probably about 20 minutes just listening to and watching the storm before it calmed down enough for us to run inside our house.
We ended up with a lot more candy left over this year compared to last because the storm cut everything short, and I'm still trying to decide if it's really a good thing or not that we still have all this left over chocolate at our house.

We had seriously considered decorating the trunk of our car but it was already wet outside and we figured we wouldn't be at the church for very long so we ended up with a plain trunk, but Darwin carved one more pumpkin half an hour before we left for the church:
It was actually a freaky pumpkin to have staring at us while we watched Clue with our friends, Jimmy & Becca after a little dinner and some trick-or-treating ourselves. We only had about 3 families come trick-or-treating at our house while we were home, hence all the extra candy in our pantry that I'm trying desperately not to eat because I get heartburn just about every time I sneak some. Overall it was a really fun Halloween this year. Dar & I got to watch all of our Halloween movies throughout the month of October, carved pumpkins, enjoyed our decorations, and ate lots of yummy treats! HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!

Jimmy with Dar's awesome glasses on. Love this picture!!

The Mad Scientist with his lovely creation :)

I already took down all of our Halloween decorations yesterday. I could honestly put up our Christmas tree right now and be totally okay with it but I'm trying to talk myself into waiting at least until mid-November (we usually put all of our Christmas stuff up Thanksgiving morning). I'm so excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year! Bring on the rest of the Holidays!!!!

Pregnancy Update:
In the home stretch--Third Trimester!!! Woot! Woot! I went for my 28 week appointment yesterday & everything is looking great! Baby has a strong heartbeat & I'm measuring right on schedule. I now start going to the doc every 2 weeks from now until Christmas. After Christmas we only have 4 weeks until our little munchkin is due! YAY!! I cannot even tell you how excited I am! She's still a little wiggle-worm in my tummy right now and so far not too much discomfort. She still makes me laugh quite frequently with her little movements. I can't help it...it tickles!! We start our prenatal birthing class next week and Dar is excited out of his mind ;). Just kidding. He really doesn't mind that I'm making us take one. We are so excited to be parents & can't even express how glad we are that things are going pretty much perfectly with this pregnancy. We can't wait to be parents!! Things I look forward to most: (1) Seeing the face of our little creation and meeting her for the first time, (2) Seeing the love of my life hold our little girl in his arms.