It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dear Holidays,

I love this season! I love fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Yes, I am one of those people who start listening to Christmas music the day after Halloween, and I love it! It puts me in such a good mood. I'm having a great fall and looking forward to the rest of it!

Girl with Holiday Spirit

Dear Goatman Flats,

Thank you for not killing me. I was impressed by how good you were as a haunted house, considering that you were done by a family. I was not pleased with the chainsaw guy, but at least I saw him coming at the group before us, so I got out of his way more quickly. Brett said we went through too fast, but I think it was just right.

Haunted House Amateur

Dear Holiday Baking,

You have officially begun! After getting 4 winning cookie recipes from last year, I am continuing my hunt for traditional Christmas cookies. At Brett's request I will be trying Chocolate Caramel Thumbprints today. I'll let everyone know how they turn out!

Avid Baker

Dear Baby,

I wish you would move a little bit more. Kennedy was more active at this point (I think) and it's driving me nuts that I can't feel you that much! Get big and strong and kick mommy!

Worrier

Dear Stonecrest,

Thank you for finally fixing all of the holes in our walls! I am so glad to have the bathroom cabinets back, and it's nice not to have the light from the bathroom disturb Kennedy's sleep. I hope we never have to deal with leaks like that again!

Glad I'm Not A Homeowner

Pumpkins and Boo at the Zoo

I promised pumpkin pictures, and here they are! The two smaller ones are the cute regular pumpkins (the one on the right is mine) and the others were definitely more complicated. The Waddoups came over for our 4th annual pumpkin carving/movie watching extravaganza and Kim and Brett went nuts on their pumpkins. Kim carved a ghost family which was so cute, and Brett went with the Utah Jazz logo.

They turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. :) We had a great time. We got up the next morning to go to Boo at the Zoo. I have been trying to go for several years, but things kept coming up. This year, we didn't let anything get in our way. We dressed Kennedy up in her witch costume, and she was darling.

I'm going to try to get a better picture for you before Halloween, because it really is a cute costume. We headed out and saw tons of kids and families in costume. It was so much fun! We trick-or-treated at a bunch of stands set up around the zoo. Kennedy loved getting all of the free goodies that included pencils and eggnog. Weirdly enough she guzzled the eggnog. We got to see the baby elephant who is only a few months old too.

Kennedy's favorites were the monkeys and the zebras. Every time she saw a monkey she'd say, "Monkey! Ooh ooh!" She really enjoyed seeing all the animals and was really interactive. She was so tired afterward that she even fell asleep in the car, which never happens.

We had a great time with our Halloween activities, but they aren't done yet! On Thursday we are venturing to a haunted house with Brett's brother and sister. I'll make sure to give a full report.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet!

One of Kennedy's favorite games is to have us smell her feet.  We started this when she was very small and her feet never smelled.  Now, on the other hand, they do smell from time to time, but the game has already been started.  And she thinks it's hilarious.  It goes something like this - Kennedy sticks her foot out as an invitation to sniff.  She usually alternates feet every time.

Mommy or daddy smells the proffered foot, makes a face, and says, "Oooooweeeee!  Stinky feet!"

And Kennedy cracks up.  You should click on the picture to make it bigger so you can really see her face.  She's laughing really hard.

She gets such a kick out of it that we do it all the time.  Hopefully this won't continue too long into her childhood, because I'm sure that her feet won't be so unoffending in a few years!

Pumpkin Patch

I had some other cute pictures from before we got there, so hopefully they will upload later. But in any case, we went to the pumpkin patch in Santaquin last night to pick out our pumpkins to carve. We went last year too, and you can look at the post here. Kennedy had a blast. When we got there she just went crazy saying, "Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Pumpkin!" She couldn't decide which one she wanted. But this one finally won out.

We started taking some pictures, but she was so entranced by the pumpkins that she couldn't look at the camera.

Kennedy and daddy made some pretty cute ghosts.

And we became a family of pumpkins too. We had a great time on the hayride and running around the patch. But poor Kennedy did a face plant, and we didn't see the damage until we got back into the light.

Poor thing really got scraped up! This picture doesn't do it justice, she really got some good scrapes on her cute little face. We had a great time! We'll be carving them on Friday night, so look out for pictures then! And I will be updating the cooking blog today with Pumpkin Scones with Autumn Spice Glaze. So far, we're having a great fall!

A New Bed

That's right, we made the switch. We ordered a toddler bed for her a couple of days ago and weirdly enough, it got here early. So Brett set it up and we decided to take the plunge. I was really scared to try this because she only turned 18 months old yesterday and she is a very independent and rambunctious child. So we did her night time routine and hoped. After a few minutes, we didn't hear any noise, so we dared to check.

She was curled up in a ball on the non-railed side of the bed, completely asleep. She slept until 8:00 this morning, which almost never happens. And right now she is fast asleep for her nap.

When it was finally set up last night she had a blast! She walked in and laughed. She just got on it and played. And this morning when I went in there, she knew that she could get out of the bed, she just didn't try when it was time to go to sleep. I thought for sure that this was going to be the challenging transition since she hasn't had a problem with anything else, but I guess we just got lucky. Seriously, she was off her bottle within a couple of weeks of turning 1, she never even took a pacifier, and she could care less if she was drinking formula or real milk.

She is just an easy and adaptable girl! And we can't call her a baby anymore, because she doesn't even sleep in a crib.