Linder Farms

Mandi and her family were here for just over a week for BJ's wedding.  We jumped at the chance to go to Linder Farms together (thanks to Living Social for the great deal!).  Even though it was a little quite chilly, we all had a great time.  Here are some highlights:

Kylee loved climbing up the pallets and straw bails to go down the slide.

Tanner, Hailey, and Kylee found their way through the straw bail maze.

The barrel train was a big hit for all the kids.

Pumpkin slingshot

Burying each other in corn

The kids LOVED the petting zoo - here is Kylee and Hailey with the bunnies.

We found our way through the corn maze

Trying to find the perfect pumpkin - we ended up getting one that is over 40 pounds!

We Have Footings!

I'm the Mommy and You're the Honey

Last year when I was in Ghana I bought a set of wooden carved elephants (similar to the picture above), and these have become some of Kylee's favorite "toys".  She seems to have a fascination with small wooden carved objects, because she also loves the sea turtle family Matt and I brought back for her from our honeymoon.

I love listening to Kylee play with her little elephant or sea turtle family, and she often wants me or Matt to play with her.  Once we agree to play with her, she will hand us one of the smaller figurines and tell us, "I'm the mommy and you're the honey," and then she proceeds to call our "child" figurine "honey" for the rest of play time.

I love this.  I think it is super sweet.

I sure love being a mom to "my honey"!

And Then There Were Fourteen

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while (if there is still anyone out there!) might remember this post about a new family picture we took in 2011.  We decided not to wait another 27 years before taking an updated family picture, especially considering we've added FIVE new people to the family in the last 13 months!

A special thanks to Lyndsey (Jen's friend) who took our pictures for us because Jen was out of town, and to Jen who worked with Lyndsey to get them edited.  I love how they turned out.

And just for fun, a couple pictures of Kylee.  She went down to the river with me a few days before we took pictures to scout out a good spot.  Her favorite part was throwing rocks in the river.

Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Nye

And I don't mean my parents!  That's right, my little brother got married last week and we are so excited to "officially" have Rachel as part of our family.  It's so crazy to think that BJ (or Ben to most of the rest of the world), who has affectionately called me "shrimp" for years, is all grown up and starting a family of his own.  And I couldn't be happier for him.  I love my brother more than he will ever know.  I'm proud of him and the man he is becoming.  And I think Rachel is pretty special too.

Their wedding day was beautiful.  When they originally planned an outdoor wedding on October 13th, I was pretty nervous thinking we could have some pretty rotten weather... but the day turned out to be beautiful and everything seemed perfect.  Here are a few shots from the day.

Waiting for Rachel to walk down the aisle

Rachel's father giving her away

Smiles all around

First dance

Cutest flower girls I've ever seen... and a pretty handsome photobomber if I do say so myself

The cousins had a great time playing together

Handsome fella

You've Been "Booed"

For our Young Womens activity a couple weeks ago, the girls wanted to make treats to drop off at people's houses.  I was in charge of the activity, and didn't want to do an ordinary treat, but instead teach the girls how to make something that maybe they weren't familiar with.  I remembered back to when I was growing up and how on a couple different occasions we made bundt pan popcorn wreaths... and not just Christmas wreaths!  I decided this was the perfect treat for us to make.  It's super simple and super fun.  Here's what you do:

• Pop popcorn - we used an air popper to make our popcorn, but I'm guessing microwave popcorn would probably work too.
• Use the same recipe you would use for rice krispie treats but substitute popcorn for the rice krispies... and also put food coloring in the marshmallow mixture before adding the popcorn.
• Add holiday M&Ms as you are mixing the popcorn and marshmallow mixture.
• Press the popcorn mixture into a greased bundt pan (just spray with cooking spray)... we used a smaller than normal bundt pan.
• Decorate the wreath.  We just added extra M&Ms and a licorice bow, but you could add other cute things like spiders and eye balls :-)

We Have a Hole!

Last week they dug out our lot for our foundation.

And this week they got prepped for the footings!

Hooray, I love seeing this progress.  Unfortunately it's Matt and I have have pushed out the timeline because we are still saving for the rest of our down payment, so here's to enjoying the process!

This is for us!