Finally!

Well, it's been awhile since I have posted. I thought it was about time to get rid of the Halloween colors on the blog.

I've been out of it for the last couple of weeks suffering from some back pain. It's been hard to be restricted in what I do and hard to take care of the kids and house. Luckily, I have really great friends who have been so willing to help out with the kids. Thanks so much Donna, Angie, and Rebecca for helping me get some rest on some of those hard days. I'm truly blessed to have wonderful friends. I'm hoping to get the results of my MRI back soon so I know how best to get better.

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving this year with just our family and Jim cooked the entire meal while I layed down for most of the day. We were supposed to travel to Idaho to go to my mother's family gathering, but my back was hurting so much, I knew it would be a miserable trip. It was a little strange being here by ourselves, but we enjoyed the day anyway and had a wonderful meal.

Christmas is approaching fast and I'm almost done with my shopping. I mainly need gifts for Jim. He usually gives me a pretty long list, so I'm not worried about coming up with anything. There is always something that he wants. Thanks for making it so easy honey! :-) Since we didn't make it to Idaho for Thanksgiving, we're contemplating going down after Christmas. My sister will have had her baby girl and I would really love to see her. Jim is taking extra time off for the break so they can get his office done, so I think we need to go somewhere to pass the time. I hope we'll be able to. It's a long trip, but we always have a great time.

Our Jack-O-Lanterns

I forgot to include pictures of the pumpkins we carved this year. Sometimes my memory isn't so good these days. Anyway, we had fun starting to carve these pumpkins at a carving party our friends the Walkers had Monday before Halloween and we finished the next night. I was very impressed that my 11 year old, Kenedy, carved the owl all by herself. Jim enjoys finding challenging patterns to carve each year. Here they are!

Halloween!!!

Well, Halloween has come and gone and I think the kids had a great time. It was quite warm Halloween night and it was much more pleasant than usual to go trick-or-treating.

We started off at the Trunk-or-Treat that our ward had in the church parking lot. Then, Kenedy went out with a friend, Hallie went out with a friend, and the rest of us went to our friends, the Mathesons, to have donuts and hot chocolate. All in all, it was a fun night. Haden, Lexie and Cooper didn't get much candy, which was fine with me, but Kenedy brought home 5 pounds of it and Hallie brought home a little over 4 pounds!! I'm going to have to figure out a way to get them to give it up soon before they have a mouth full of rotten teeth. :-)

Here are a few pictures from that night.