Family Pictures

I know I've been slacking on my posting.  I have a lot of pictures to post, but I need to do that on a later post.  I've had the kids school pictures now for over a month and JUST scanned them in this morning.  Between work and the holidays, life is busy!  Dad had our entire family and Diane's family get pictures a couple weeks ago.  I got my 5 x7s back last night, so I felt safe to scan it in.  I am cheating by showing you the proof of the big picture too.  We have quite the large group when we are all together!   Thanks Dad and Di for getting these pictures taken!

It snowed the night and morning before our pictures.  Luckily, it was a warm afternoon and the snow melted in time for us to take our family picture outside.  The ground was very wet and cold, but I'm glad we were able to take them outside.  It has been 2 years since the last time Zac and I had our family pictures done.  And it has been over 7 years since the big group was done.  Last picture was right when Devin came home from his mission and Mom arranged to have a picture done.

And here are the kids school pictures.  That was a very frustrating morning.  I arranged to go into work late so I could do Aubrey's hair that morning.  Well...we accidently slept in.  I had to throw her in the bath, get dressed and try to have her eat while I was combing her hair.  I ran out of time.  Her hair was W.E.T. when she went to school.  Very disappointing.  She is still beautiful though.

Eric's picture turned out well, but I LOVE his baptism picture in his suit.  I'm having a hard time updating the picture since he just got his baptism one done in May.  He looks more grown up in it than his school picture.

Again, I've been slacking.  I didn't even HAVE Jennifer and Lily get their picture taken.  I had every child's picture taken at their year mark.  She is now almost 16 months...I think I passed the mark.  Every week I keep on thinking, I will get an appointment next week.  Then something came up every single week. So I still have her 9 month picture up in the house and at my office.  Eventually I will get it done.

Halloween

 Zac went and watched the kids at school do their Halloween parade.

 

 The kids were so excited to go trick or treating.  We let them go to a couple neighborhood homes and then wait an HOUR before we let them go out again.  I felt okay about this, because the neighbor homes they went to, those kids had already come to OUR house trick or treating.

 Aubrey wanted to go as a vampire queen this year.  Jennifer, a witch.  Lily, the alligator/dinosaur/lizard/whatever that thing is.  Eric, an Air Force soldier.  When I came home from work, Eric was so bugged that everyone called him an Army guy.  He told me that he had to correct everyone and it was so annoying!  Can't they tell the difference between Army and Air Force?  Air Force is so much cooler!

 Eric had another pack meeting in scouts.  I was surprised by having Zac sing to us with his den before they handed out the awards.

 Eric has been working REALLY hard.  He earned his Wolf badge in 4 months.  He had to wait until this pack meeting to finally receive it.  He was very excited for it. We are so proud of him for working so hard!

 

 Yes, that is a hard boiled egg Jennifer is eating.  Shell and all.  The kids had a game where they carried an egg on a spoon and tried not to drop it.  Jennifer ran over to the extra eggs and just went at it.  She was eating the shell!  I thought I would find shell pieces on the ground.  Nope.

 Jennifer admiring Daddy's carving.  She picked out the face and was pleased with the results.

 The kids begged to carve their pumpkins.  Zac kept on telling them it was too early to carve them.  This is the only night they looked good.  It was freezing temperatures that night and they all curled into the middle.  By the time it was Halloween they looked completely rotten.

 Last Monday we took the kids to Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  I wanted to head there again while the weather was still okay.  The kids loved playing in the leaves.

 Lily couldn't seem to figure out walking on an incline or decline.  She kept on tilting her body the direction of the ground and would fall over and over.  She finally started running with her hands out to catch her.  Even though she kept on falling she was having a lot of fun.

 

 Jennifer couldn't resist playing in the fountains at the Secret Garden.

 Every time we have family over for Sunday dinner, I set up the tables and chairs early.  It drives Zac nuts.  The kids love to play on the table and chairs though.  Lily climbs up everything!  She loves to sit on chairs.  These are some random pictures we took of the girls playing.

 

 

 Every night our cat likes to go outside.  He always comes back and meows at the door about 5:30-6:00 am.  Last week he didn't show up.  About 10 am he finally came home and someone had SPRAY PAINTED him with blue streaks!  Who tags a cat?!  He hid in this area for the rest of the day. 

Last Sunday Aubrey grabbed the comics and her milk.  She told me that this is how Grandpa Nielson reads the paper.

Pumpkins

 This is our ONE pumpkin plant that we grew.  There are 22 pumpkins on this ONE plant.  Zac trained the plant to grow out of the garden bed towards our rock wall.  The kids have been begging to pick their pumpkins, so we finally caved in today.  I didn't want to pick them too soon so that they would still be good for Halloween.

 We had parent teacher conferences this week for the kids.  The kids are doing well.  Aubrey has 2 teachers this year.  When we went to her conference, they had to tell us a story about her.  Apparently there is a girl in her class that is doing horrible.  She cries all day and really loud.  Her Mom has been sitting out in the hall, which makes the situation worse.  I guess Aubrey took this girl under her wing and has been inviting her and grabbing her hand to go play at recess, sit with her at lunch, etc.  When her teachers were telling us this story, their eyes were all watered up.  Apparently it was a really hard situation and Aubrey was their saving grace.  Eric, on the other hand, has been bringing Legos and Transformers to school.  :)

 

 

 

 Here are some updated pictures of Zac's project.  He has been working on the chimney this week.  It has been horrible weather this week, and he was outside putting the pipe on so we could start using the fireplace.  It has been heating our house for the last 4 days.  The only downside is when Zac opens the stove to put another log in, a billow of smoke comes out and the house smells like a campfire for the next hour or so.  He is looking tomorrow to make sure he secured everything in its right place, the smoke shouldn't come out at all.

He cut the siding off our house and secured the pipe.  I found out at church today that all of our neighbors have been watching him wondering what in the world he is doing.

He got this much of the chimney finished yesterday.  Since tomorrow is Columbus Day, I have it off.  So Zac is going to be finishing this up tomorrow hopefully.

Projects

I wish we would have taken pictures along the way of Zac's cold storage room.  Here is a pic of it 90% finished.  He still needs to box up at the back of the wall, put in the window seal and a box for our firewood. 

Zac dug this room out BY HAND over the past couple of years.  It is UNDER our deck.  We had a window in our basement under the deck, and Zac cut the cement all the way to the floor and made a door into this room.  He poured all the cement floor by hand and did all the work in here.  It turned out so good!  I was able to put all my other "storage" (consisting of totes of kids clothes, decorations, etc) into the old cold storage room that is under our porch. 

Zac bought a wood burning stove for our house.  This was his other main project while I was home for the month was to get it in.  He cut the cement out for the stove.

Poured the cement for the hearth and laid the rock.

Then put the rock on the wall and made the mantel.  He still needs to seal the rocks, and stain the mantel.  It is really coming together!  He really wants to use the stove this year for winter to cut down on our heating bill.  He is working really hard to have this room finished before Christmas.  I will post another picture once it's finished.

September

Again, another post with a lot of random pictures.  I was home for most of September.  So here are the pictures from this month.  I love Lily's eyes.  They are so pretty.  It's hard for the picture to do them justice. 

Jennifer was being funny this day.  She wanted me to take her picture with her and the commercial of the

toy she wanted.

Eric and Aubrey wanted in the action too.  Jennifer put that Christmas skirt on Lily.

Jennifer and Lily yell at each other all the time.  Their main argument consists of Lily calling Jennifer "Dada," and Jennifer yelling back, "Don't call me Dada!"  I was able to capture a picture of one of the MANY "Dada" arguments.



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This is how we found Jennifer sleeping one night while checking up on her.



Jennifer has been dressing herself.  I love her crazy outfits!

Zac took Eric out shooting.  We had a bunch of canned goods that had gone bad.  Zac told me the first time Eric shot the stack of cans, he hit them on the first shot and the can on top shot straight up into the air.  The video is of Eric's 2nd try at the stack of cans.

Aubrey participated in a mini drill camp at the high school.  The pictures at the gym are during her practice.  She performed during the high school's homecoming game at the end of the 1st Quarter and during Halftime.  

We went up Provo Canyon to roast some hot dogs and smores on Labor Day.  It was so packed there!  We had a hard time finding a fire pit we could use.  The kids had a great time.  It started to rain on us as we were leaving.  Lily loved the free range of the fields for her to run.

The weekend before I went back to work I took 2 of my neighbors up to hike Timp.  I was really sad I didn't get to go with Zac and Dad a couple weeks before.  The weather was horrible almost the entire hike down.  I put on some hiking boots that I hadn't worn in awhile, thinking I didn't want to get my running shoes dirty.  About 1 mile into the hike I had HUGE blisters on the back of my heels.  I stopped to put some mole skin and bandaids on and a moose came up right behind me!  Luckily he lost interest really quick and ventured off the other way.  By the time we got to the top of the mountain, there were clouds everywhere.  We couldn't even see 15-20 feet in front of us.  Very disappointing.  It was FREEZING as well.  The wind was blowing so hard we found shelter behind a rock to eat our lunches while wearing our snow gloves.  It rained almost the entire way down the mountain.  It was still a beautiful hike, and I definitely want to hike it again next year.  I found the path for the Air Force plane crash site that crashed in the 60s, so Zac and I want to head that direction next year.