Snow

As you can see, we got a little bit of snow today! Sonny and Taylor had a grand time making a snowman together, Frosty, as Tay calls it. Sonny is the expert snowman maker. Hello, he grew up in Idaho! So I left the job up to him... ha ha. I watched as he rolled the ball all around the front yard. I was too cold to help (I stayed inside, can you see me?) Sonny was hoping that we would get a whole load of snow. I guess they close Fort Lewis when there is lots of snow because they don't have any plows. Well, lets hope for tons tonight :)

And I had to add this pic, Taylor has discovered the art of cutting with scissors. He saw me cutting out recipes the other day and wanted to join in. I found these "baby scissors" and he went to work. He would literally cut for hours on end if I let him!

Family Pictures

Trip to Utah

Last weekend I was able to fly up to Utah (by myself!) to go visit my Grandma Rosa. She is having some medical problems right now and I thought it would be great to go visit her before the weather got too crazy. It was incredibly wonderful and relaxing talking to her for a couple days. She is the most awesome lady in the world :) So classy and smart with a halarious sense of humor. I love to be around her. It was a much needed break for me as well. My family had the chance to meet up with me there too so it was a little family reunion as well. I also got to hang out with my fun cousins that I hadn't seen for a while.


We went to Johnny Carino's for dinner and pigged out on some scrumptious Italian food


My sister Sarah and the wonderful lady herself, Grandma Rosa


My second cousin, Hayley


Cute little Dylan


The lovely pregnant (Jayme) and engaged (Kristen) cousins! Congratulations you guys!


The best mother and grandma a girl could ask for


Mr. Intellectual, my dad


Jayme and my aunt Caryl


My totally bodacious sisters


Uncle Jim and my cousin, Tammy


Mom and my bro, Kyle (the dating machine)




All of us together for dinner


All of my siblings with Grandma. We love you Grandma Rosa!

Just some cute pictures...

Halloween 2009

We had a reallly great halloween this year. It started out a little bit rocky but ended well. For the past couple weeks or so, I've been planning Taylor's costume. He had told me about a month ago that he wanted to be a mummy. He is really into watching the Scooby Doo movies with all the classic monsters and I thought it was a great idea too, pretty easy really. So I got to work, went to the Goodwill and found white pants and turtleneck and a white sheet. My plan was to soak the white sheet in tea bags over night, rip it into long strands, and once dried, wrap them around tay. The white clothes would be worn underneath the peices of sheet. I was pretty excited and proud of what I had done at this point. The tea bags made the sheet look really old and ancient. But come the night before halloween, while getting ready for our ward trunk or treat, I began to wrap him up. He was fine at first and then suddenly realized he didn't like the idea of being wrapped up or something, I don't know. You got to be kidding me! I told him everything I could think of to try and talk him into it but he wanted nothing to do with it. Great... so we ran to Carls Jr. for dinner and then to Target, crossing our fingers that some kind of costume would be there that he could wear. This is what we ended up with:
Jango Fett, from Star Wars, one of the only costumes left there. taylor is familiar with Darth Vader but wasn't familiar with this character, honestly, neither was I. I had to google it :) It took a little convincing at first to get Taylor to agree to the costume but once he saw the picture of the bounty hunter with his gun and I told him he looked like a robot, he was in.
The costume was still a little bit big but we made it work.
But he refused to wear the best part of the costume, the helmet. I don't blame him really, cool looking but bothersome.
Tay didn't understand the concept of trick or treating when we first started. After the first house, he wanted to stop and eat the candy and go home.
The loot
So he told everybody that he was a "robot guy."
Taylor warmed up pretty fast to trick or treating. After a while, he wanted to go up by himself!



This was our porch all decked out the trick or treaters. The picture isn't very good but if you look closely, there are a few spider webs too.
Of course you always have to make some kind of yummy halloween dessert. I never have before but thought it would be fun to start doing it.
And I also made some Calzones and they even turned out pretty good. Yea!

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Stairs slide

Halloween Time

Halloween is probably my second favorite holiday. I just love all the scary decorations and all. Since the season has started, Taylor has really been getting into monsters and ghosts and all the other halloween characters. He loves the old Scooby Doo movies because they are always solving mysteries in haunted houses etc. So this year, he has decided that he wants to be a mummy. I'm going to try and put it together myself so we'll see how it turns out (pictures to follow :) It's funny, I always ask him if he's a big boy and he says, "No, i'm a happy halloween boy!" Anyways, so in the mist of all the moving chaos, we managed to squeeze in a few halloween activities. My mom came down to help us move and we had fun hanging out with her.

Our porch all decked out for Halloween, well, sort of. I don't have many "nice" Halloween decorations. All of mine are from Dollar Tree and Big Lots. That probably wouldn't look very cool in front of our new house.


Carving pumpkins. Taylor loved the finished product and lighting it but wasn't really interested in carving it. It's ok though, I enjoyed it!

So, I've decided to never wear makeup again... just kidding. But it seems like it lately eh?


I tried to make carmel apples but didn't do very well. The carmel hardens so fast! And for some reason, the apples seemed really bruised and nasty tasting after I put the carmel on them. I don't know what happened. weird. Taylor just liked the carmel part, he could care less about the apple.

NEW HOUSE!!!

It finally happened! We got a house! It's almost like it's not real :) It hasn't really hit me yet, even though most of our stuff is moved in. We had one of our pods delivered on saturday and the last one is coming tomorrow. It's weird, I hadn't seen any of that stuff for about 4 months, seems way longer than that. We didn't have a couch for 4 months. Let's just say, the floor and I got to be real good friends.

Our house for the next 5 years. We were the first and last to make an offer. We found it posted on zillow without any pictures and decided to check it out. Good thing we did. We both love it.
The cute entry way

The living room and family room kind of mesh into one, just separated by half of a wall. It's pretty nice because it makes it feel like one big room.

The biggest room I've ever had. I feel like a queen :)
On the second floor just above the stairs is a really nice spacious loft area, a perfect playroom for Taylor.
Taylor loves his huge room
The only bathtub in the whole house is the soaking tub in the master bath. Taylor is in heaven.
It's funny- the area with the toilet is about the same size as the whole bathroom in our apartment. Why do they make so much room just for a toilet?
Wonderful walk-in closet
I didn't know how I would feel about having a two-story house but I really like it, a lot.
We're going to use this fireplace a lot with the cold winter ahead of us. Isn't it pretty? Ignore the no-makeup me... who needs makeup while moving anyways?
Sonny absolutely loves the Brazilian cherry wood floors. I am realizing too that it is way better than carpet, especially on the first floor.
And another plus, NO carpet in the dining area !

I feel like the kitchen is almost too fancy. I don't miss the white linoleum floor that we had in Loma Linda at all :)
There is even a small fountain thingy in the backyard. Somehow, I don't think this feature will last very long in the backyard with a toddler.
I've always wanted a front porch!
side gate leading to backyard

nice brick pathway in the side yard
And a pretty big backyard I gotta say. Big enough for me to take care of, that is.
A view outside our front door. The community green space right outside was definitely a huge bonus!
The neighborhood is beautifully taken care of. Kind of reminds me of a 50's suburban town.
Sonny and I went into house hunting never thinking we would live in a PUD (planned urban development) but we really really like it so far. It is so safe for kids and Sonny's bike ride to work every day is now 5 miles instead of 10! Now to get some furnishings for the new house!