Mr. and Mrs. Clause

At Smucker every year they have Santa, Mrs.Clause, and some reindeer come to the Smucker's store. You can also have a pancake breakfast which apparently was stocked FULL of candy toppings. My girls were in heaven! Reid and I had to miss out this year since we had a full day of other activities and he needed at least one quality nap. Nate said it was a lot of fun and that they beat the crowd, so it was a nice little morning with breakfast and the Clause family.

Oh Sandy.....

Well hurricane Sandy did many horrible things to many people, but for me personally it was great! The storm hit Monday night, here at our house we just had a bad wind storm and it rained for about a week straight. My cousin Becky was not so lucky because she lived in New Jersey and lost power. So Wednesday morning she called, packed her bags, and brought her girls to come and stay with us. We were SO excited! They all got here Wednesday night and stayed for a week and a half. We stayed very busy and had lots of fun. To say that Nate was out numbered was an understatement....he and Reid did their best....I guess we had too much fun because I have very little pictures from the week and a half. Part of the time we hung out with Becky's friend from high school, Brandy, who lives fairly close to me. I also have another cousin, Dustin, who lives south of me who happened to be coming up for a visit so we were able to all get together. 

Becky and her girls got to our house Halloween night but sadly missed all of the trick or treating. 

 They loved the face paint

Reid was Dracula and I got the costume brand new for only $2

 Hallie and Elena holding hands watching a movie

So I have tried 2 other times to successfully hit up a Mitt Romney Rally and Becky was always mad that she couldn't attend from NJ. Well on one of the days that she was here I got an email from Mitt that he would only be an hour north of us so Becky and I got tickets right away.

 We were so happy to see Ann! 

 We also got really close!

 We found every sign we could and took a picture with it

 It think this was our favorite 

Dustin got in Friday night and we all met at Brandy's house and had dinner.We never would have imagined that all of us Wyoming/Utah folk would be together in a small town in Ohio especially since Dustin and I moved out here this summer....

 Me and Dustin--remember this?

He lives south of me undergoing this research!
Dustin is the 4th in the WORLD to do this!

Me and Becky and of course Nate had to bomb this picture.....

Its been such a fun 2 weeks for me filled with family! Now is will be a bit lonely without cousins running all over my house--although we all get to meet up again in less than 2 weeks!!

A Simpler Time

So living in Indian our eyes were opened to the Amish and Mennonites. I would occasionally see them at the grocery store and some clothing stores. We lived about 30 minutes from a large Amish/Mennonite community. Well now that we are in Ohio we see them ALL the time. It is pretty cool to see them going down your street with their horse and buggy, although Mennonites drive big 12 passenger vans, (my facts may not be completely correct--this is just what we have come to conclude after talking with some of them) Where we live there are so many and so we are used to it now.  In early October most of the town is having a yard sale and of course I was taking part. I laughed to myself because I never thought I would be yard selling with the Amish and be parked behind their horse and buggy. Nate and I admire them because of how much more simple their lives are to a degree. The rest of us complicate so many parts of our lives.

 

Extras

I was looking through pictures on my camera and came across some random pictures to share:

 Reid was loving on Hallie's bear and the girls thought it was HILARIOUS!

They sure love each other

Nate saw this and said, "Wow this should be her facebook profile picture" haha

It was late at night and Nate and I were in the living room and I heard loud snoring so I peaked around the corner to the stairs and found this.

Reid just got a new high chair and was SO excited to join us at the dinner table

 BYU vs ND game day. We had to make this into a big game day since we have some ties to BYU. However we still love BYU and cheer for them at every other game ;)

Back Up Your Blog!

Hey everyone, this has been on my mind for sometime and I never sat down to do it. Hopefully most of you already do it, but just in case its soooo easy and takes a second to do it. Just go to "settings" under "other" and click "export" then "download". It saved in a file I know I would never find so I made a new file in my documents and moved it over there.

Stoney Creek Pumpkin Patch

A week ago we went to the Stoney Creek Pumpkin Patch. I have to say it is probably the best one we have been to. It was great for small children and so relaxed and most importantly CHEAP! For $10 we got 3 pumpkins, a hay ride, the kids maze, and roasted marshmallows! Our girls had so much fun on the hay ride. It was a long bumpy ride just the way they like it!  Oh and the weather was PERFECT!

Finished Table

We finally finished our kitchen table and chairs a couple of weeks ago, except that I need to recover the chairs which will happen in the next few weeks.
Remember the before first:

 The after: