FAMILY HOME EVENING

For family home evening last night we went to go find this pumpkin patch we heard about and on the way home Andy took us to this place he used to go fishing. It was so beautiful, the fall trees were so vibrant and the river was so calm, it was a perfect mirror image of the trees. So we grabbed our camera and took some pictures. It was a gorgeous evening.

KRISTI'S BABY SHOWER

The kids got shirts from Hawaii, thank you Uncle Craig and Aunt Kristi
My sister, Kristi, and her cute daughter, Savannah
Ava trying out her Halloween costume, the cutest flower I've ever seen!

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This weekend my sister, Tori and I wanted to have a baby shower for my other sister Kristi who is due to have a baby boy on Nov 19th. We are so excited for their family! We went to a place called Mimi's Cafe and had lunch. It was fun to get together with the Colyar girls and spoil Kristi. She seems all ready for this baby to come. He sure will be quite the stylin' little guy. His bedroom is done up very cute! Craig and Kristi just moved to American Fork from Dallas and are getting settled into their new home. The best part for Craig is that they moved in 2 doors down from Bronco Mendenhall (BYU's head football coach). Craig is a huge BYU ftball fan! They have a lovely house and they live about 3 minutes from my sister Tori, so that is wonderful! It was great to spend the weekend with my sisters, staying up until 3:30 talking and especially the Krispy Kreme doughnut taste test (we got 2 dozen variety K.K. doughnuts and so we could decide which is the best one, 52,000 calories later, we all concluded the basic chocolate covered dogughnut was our favorite! The sacrifices you have to make to find these things out!) My boys on the other hand had their own party this weekend. Basically you can sum it up with ...Pizza, Playstation, Sleeping, Movies, and Golf. Andy said that he took them out to eat at Gringo's and the waitress came over and asked if there was anything else she could get them and when she turned around Christian said,'How about a backrub?' Anyway, we all had a good time. Thanks for a great weekend!

WE LOVE ANA!

Here is our shoutout to the beautiful Ana Rennaker. It was 9 great years ago she graced all of us with her lovely spirit! It has been wonderful ever since, what a gift it has been to us to have had the opportunity to know her and watch her grow. Her spirit is so full of life, you can tell she must have been so excited to finally get to come to earth. I love her creativity, her enthusiasm, and she is always so willing to be a big helper. I love what a true friend she has always been to Christian. I have a home video that rachel and thomas took right after christian was born. they were looking through the nursery window as christian was lying in his little crib crying and thomas was holding ana up to see him. rachel said to ana, 'look ana, there's your new best friend!' it makes me tear up whenever i see it because they really have been true friends over the years. we love ana so much, what a joy it has been to watch her grow in to a beautiful young lady. what a wonderful life you have in front of you, enjoy it, we were ment to have joy! happy birthday!

BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP- YUM!

Okay, one of these days I will actually put on a recipe that is from me but since I have zero culinary skills I have to use others. So today the credit goes to my lovely sister-in-law, Leslie Hurst. Most people related to Leslie already have this recipe but if you don't you've definetly heard me talk about it since it is one of my favorite soups to make. My sister Kristi requested the recipe so here it is. It is a perfect marriage of autumn and bliss. It is DIVINE! Thanks Leslie!

1-2 lrg butternut squash(depending on how flavorful you like it)

1 c. chopped onion

2 bay leaves- still good without

2 tsp. brown sugar

1 tsp.ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

4 cups chicken broth

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

2 cups milk or cream

cut squash in half, remove seeds, cover in plastic wrap and microwave for about 8 minutes, or until tender. scrape out squash and set aside. in lg saucepan, cook butter, onions, bayleaves, sugar over med heat about 10 min. add spices, broth, s/p and squash. simmer about 15 min. puree in blender or with hand blender until creamy then add milk, simmer about 5 more minutes. do NOT bring to a boil or it will curdle.

MMM, MMM GOOD!

She melts my heart!!

THANKS RACHEL

thank you Rachel for the link on templates, much funner than the options on blogger.

I LOVE AUTUMN!

notice the strawberry shortcake candle addie put on
andy took this of ava

for my birthday, andy gave me a new lens for my camera so i took a picture of one of the first gifts he gave to me. thanks andy, they were both great choices!

I just love this time of year! The colors, the smell in the air, my birthday(i love getting older!-rachel), and all the holidays are just around the corner. I was starting to feel a little jipped when the snow came on saturday but now it is beautiful again...aaahhhh-I'm lovin' it!

SNOW DAY

As many of you also experienced, there was a huge snow fall on saturday. it was great! addie wanted to set up the christmas tree and isaac couldn't stay out of it. yes, that's ike making a snow angel in flip flops. the snowflakes were huge, it was fun to watch. it did do a lot of damage to many branches around town though, check out this huge one that came crashing down at porter park.

ALRIGHT, ALREADY!

I don't know what it is but people must think I love zucchini. When in all reality I can't stand the dang thing. This time of year I get zucchini donations on a regular basis. I dislike the taste, texture, and smell of it. I am starting to wonder if anyone really likes it or if everyone is trying to pawn theirs off too. I have tried to be a good sport about it and make stuff but the only recipes I can find call for maybe 1/2 cup of shredded zucchini, so what do you do with the rest? Freeze it? Then it piles up in your fridge until it takes over and all you have in there is frozen zucchini. These things don't usually get brought to my house when they are the size of a banana, they come when they are the size of my 6 year old son. I don't mean to sound ungrateful but seriously........

ADDIE'S FAT LIP

We were out on a walk on Monday when Addie got running faster than her legs could control and she wiped out on the street. She cut her lip open and had a fat lip by the time we got home. For someone this age a bandaid is the answer to 93% of her problems. So trying to explain to her that a bandaid wouldn't stick to the inside of her mouth was out of the question. We finally were able to flip her lip up and stick the bandaid to her cheeks. She looked pretty rediculous so I had to take a picture. Enjoy!

WHAT A FIND!

As a teenager, I used to be emarrased driving around town in our green suburban but I should have been thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't driving around in this! Andy and I saw this driving around Rexburg and had to follow it so we could get a picture. Words alone would not have colored quite the picture that an actual photo can. We were so mesmorized at all the work and creativity somebody put into this true lap of luxury! Who knows, maybe this could be our inspiration for the next Clarkmobile!