Happy 3rd Birthday Garett!

We celebrated Garett's birthday on Saturday in Logandale while we were visiting Grove's parents. He got lots of fun toys and some awesome Spiderman pajamas. He's been carrying around a bag with his birthday toys in it ever since!
We're so glad Garett is part of our family. He didn't have an easy time coming into this world - he was born with a lung infection and was taken in the middle of the night by ambulance to UVRMC from AF hospital to be taken care of by the nurses in the NICU there. The hospital staff released me after 24 hours so I could go see him. Garett spent a week in the NICU - a few days on the respirator and a week on IV antibiotics before he got to come home. We're very thankful that he's a healthy 3 year old boy now!!!
Garett weighs 30 pounds (25%) and is 37" (between 25 & 50%) - he's back on the weight chart & doing great. The doctor told me today that he's worried about Garett's speech - that he's hard to understand - so those of you who have talked to Garett lately, what do you think? I don't think he's hard to understand at all, but I'm around him 24/7.
Some of Garett's favorites are:
Favorite Color: red & green
Favorite song: Popcorn Popping
Favorite toy: Spiderman and helicopter
Favorite show: Mighty Machines
Favorite food: corn dogs & french fries & he has his father's sweet tooth so anything sweet!!!!
Favorite thing to say: he calls everyone "hot dog"
Garett loves his firefighter blanket, his puppy, and "oo" his owl.
Garett says his k's and c's as t's and his says his l's as y's. So corn dog is torn dog and lollipop is yoyipop. He calls himself "Gg".

Garett's birthday box & ....

Garett got a birthday box in the mail 2 days ago from Grandma & Grandpa M and is completely enamored with it. He carries it around the house (unopened) and chatters about what's in it & how he's so excited that his birthday is tomorrow. This morning he decided to decorate the box & Haven & Story really wanted to be part of that fun. Thanks for the fun box G & G M! I'm sure he'll love the contents too, but who knew a box would be so much fun???

Last night there was the most beautiful sunset that I had to capture. Holland says the sky looked like cotton candy.

Fall Frolic

More tomato pictures...because of the frost, we had to pick some tomatoes early. They were huge! They've been ripening really well & we made a few more batches of tomato stuff & then froze a bunch of tomatoes too!

As big as her head? Maybe not quite...

Painting pumpkins

Notice the tomatoes ripening on the ledge...

My early Christmas present. I've really been enjoying our new piano & so has Holland.

Holland's 2nd grade Halloween concert

"Things that make you go Aaahhh!"

Have you ever seen a sleeping walrus?

Haven the unicorn and Holland the half wizard/half witch (her own creation)

The loot

Buzz lightyear with a pig nose. This cracked me up! Garett kept pulling his helmet down so it pulled his nose up....what a funny kid!

First of all, I did not stage this. This is what fell on the floor (and didn't get picked up) in the kitchen in a 24 hour period. The kids have to rescue whatever they want & put it where it's supposed to be or it goes in the trash. Just wanted to document this. The good news - the kids have been coloring & drawing a lot lately. The other good news - that means they're not watching tv. The bad news - paper and crayons, colored pencils, etc. everywhere!!!

When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange...

Do you know what show that's from? I'll give you a clue - 6 70's bellbottom-wearing children...
Last week, they split our ward. So now instead of being about 5 square blocks, we are 4 square blocks. Just to give you an idea, we were filling the entire chapel and gym most sacrament meetings and there were about 250 children in the nursery and primary. Only in Utah...
Anyway, the way they split our ward, we lost the YW pres, part of her presidency and at least 1 advisor, the RS president, and the same week they put in a new bishopric member to replace the one who moved. He had been the YM pres so we needed a new YM pres too. Oh, also, they called a new Sunday School president who was the former ward mission leader so today we got a new ward mission leader too. What a week!
Lots of people got new callings today, including me. I was called as the new RS 2nd counselor over the formerly-known-as-Enrichment meetings. I actually like change and look forward to this new opportunity. I think it'll be fun!
Today, we had two full-time missionaries speak in our ward, which is rare in our area - they come to our ward about twice a year because they have so many wards in their area. I'm writing this for the benefit of my East Coast friends since we had 4 elders assigned to just our WARD in Connecticut. Of course, there are 2 stakes in all of Connecticut and there are 3 stakes just in our neighborhood and they're planning a 4th. We have to have 2 sessions of stake conference to fit everyone.
So I just have to share this funny story one of the elders told. He grew up in a family of 11 children. Imagine...
He and his siblings were bugging their mom & dad for allowance for the chores they did around the house during family council. The next day, their mom came home from shopping and put up a sign on top of the door that said, "Service is the price you pay for the space you occupy." Grove adds that instead of calling them chores, they called jobs around the house family service. I thought that was brilliant!!! What a mom!

Big Tomato weigh in….

The first frost came last night so I had to haul in all the tomatoes. My biggest tomato was 18oz. There were quite a few that were around the one pound range.

These are gourds that we grew in the garden and they make a great centerpiece for the fall.

My photo session with the kids

Katie Keele told me about this great place to take pics behind Osmond Designs. The kids didn't have school today so I decided it would be a great day to try it. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold so the kids were in a hurry to be done with this, but a little bribery helped me get the rest of the pics I wanted.

We call this the Garett sandwich. Garett wasn't playin' along tho.

5 Faves of Conference

1. Elder Holland's talk - so POWERFUL!
2. President Eyring's talk - love, love, love....loved this!
3. Bishop Burton's talk on "ity" virtues.
4. Elder Bednar's talk on being more diligent and concerned at home.
5. The Mo Tab singing "Come Come Ye Saints" on Saturday. I think this is my new favorite hymn & I'm sure that's my favorite arrangement of it ever.

LOTS of greats! What were your faves???

I also loved that Elder Falabella gave a prayer. He & his family were in the same ward as us in Costa Rica & we went to mutual with his kids. Such a great family. I was glad to see him. Also, as a funny coincidence, Elder Falabella's son, Nefi, was Grove's home teacher at Ricks.