At the last minute, we decided it would be best if we just stayed home for Thanksgiving. I was sad we could not spend it with family, but happy that I got to spend it with the two favorite people...Jeff and Kaylie. We did all the traditionals...Jeff played turkey bowl football, kaylie and I watched the parade on TV, we made ourselves a turkey dinner. It even rained, and we all went out for a walk in it after dinner. It was a very low-key, but wonderful day.



Here is Jeff carving up the turkey....he did a good job cooking that bird









Like mother, like daughter...we love turkey!



There are so many things in my life that I am grateful for, but my great husband and sweet girl are at the top of my list.

Garbage or Gold?

Is there someone you know, that it feels everything they touch turns to gold? Well lately I feel that everything I touch turns to garbage. From big things like the house we are renting in Arizona going into foreclosure, to little things like ruining cupcakes that I made with a box mix and everything in between. There used to be a book when I was a kid called " Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." and I feel like I have been living mine own version of this book over and over agian. Ugggh!
Then my new favorite pick me up song plays on pandora and Jeff and I run and dance around the kitchen while Kaylie laughs hysterically at us. Later, on our first cool feels like fall day, Kaylie and I get under a blanket and fall asleep cuddled together in the middle of the afternoon. This is golden...maybe things are turning around.

I just love this picture of Kaylie and her great grandma Wood. It is just captures how truely sweet my grandmother is, and how much she loves each of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Kaylie is 7 months old, and they finally got to met. It was under sad circumstances, my grandfather passed away after a battle with cancer and we went to California for his funeral. We miss him dearly, but know he is in a better place and isn't in pain anymore. I only wish he could have met Kaylie. He would have had so much fun with her. Both my grandparents have been such an example to me in my life and I love them so much.

Our Halloween Fun

We had so much fun this month, and I took so many pictures of our Kaylie that I had to post more. For actual Halloween Kaylie and I went to trunk or treat with the Luke's...we love that you live in AZ too! We had a great time riding a hay ride and seeing all the trick or treaters. My favorite part of Halloween is seeing all the cute kiddy costumes, and there were a ton of kids there. The best part of Halloween was picking Jeff up from the airport though, we have been lonely this week while he was working in Wisconsin.

Happy MC-Halloween!

So it is Halloween in two days, I am am just now getting my decorations out. Mostly because I was using a lot of my stuff to decorate the trunk or treat I already posted about and I didn't want to set it up twice. Also because Halloween just snuck up on me...it is like 95 degrees outside still, so my mind says it is August. I find it premature when I am at the Walmart and there are orange and black and candy everywhere, and then I remember it is October . I guess I have to look to the seasonal aisle rather than the seasons to tell me what time of year it is.
Some of my most favortie halloween things are things I inherited from my mom that we had around the house when I was a kid. The first is chicken mc-nugget trick or treaters. Yes, chicken mc-nuggets....I am pretty certain they were happy meal prizes. The pieces of their costumes come off and can be interchanged. The second are these plastic buckets that I like to use a luminares and line walkway on halloween night. I have 15...that is 5 of each face...one of each for every child in my family. And, if I remember right, a happy meal came inside.
I have these cravings for a simple mcdonald's cheeseburger sometimes...ketchup, mustard, pickles, processed cheese and the thinnest beef pattie . I feel like when I was pregnant, I ate pretty much only .89 c cheeseburgers from mcdonald's the entire month of Nov. Don't judge me, please. If they still came with such awesome prizes I don't think I would have any reason not to eat cheap cheesburgers all October.

Yabba-Dabba-Do!

I hope you can tell who we are ...maybe a famous prehistoric family - the Flinstones? I am actually really proud of these costumes. One reason being that I only spent mabye $10 total on all three, and mostly becuase they did not require me to sew anything. I have this fear of sewing machines...a fear and a complete inability that causes me to avoid them at all cost. Who know you could make three halloween costumes by cutting, gluing and tieing. Wilma's dress is made of three old pillow cases that I cut apart ,Pebbles skirt is tied together, and Fred's shirt is made of peel and stick felt...sooooo easy! We are at our ward's trunk or treat that was on Saturday. I was called to be the activity leader in our ward like the day we moved in soI am so relieved that it is over with, and hooray that it went so well!

Our visit to Utah

Just Kaylie and I flew out to Utah to visit for a few days. Mostly I was missing my family and craving the fall season in Utah. We had a lot of fun, especcially Kaylie. There were so many people for her to play with and my parent's spoiled her course. And you really can't beat Heber in the fall can you? I went a little picture crazy...sorry if there are to many. The picture to the left is Kaylie on our flight. She is becoming pro at this airplane thing. We had a whole row to ourselves on our flight there which made it so easy. The flight home wasn't as wonderful....I finally gave Kaylie and tootsie pop to calm her down. She loved it!

Kaylie and her grandma playing the chase game and Kaylie and Brielle playing...Brielle was curious about Kaylie's hat, and Kaylie was really curious about what is on Brielle's head, (that is hair baby girl, one day you'll have some too.)

A four generation picture and a picture of Kaylie and her grandpa and great grandpa. She was so fascinated by great grandpa daryl's deep loud voice.



Kaylie's cousins take her on a walk to the river. She was loving facing forward in her stroller and I was loving that she got to wear some of her cold weather clothes before she grew out of them.



We tried to take pictures of the Kate and Kaylie together on two occasions. It is amazing how two girls that are a half exact gene match can look so different. And I know... enough of the cute pink hat.

My baby is 6 months old!

I can't believe Kaylie is 6 months old already! She is the light of our lives, and it has been so much fun to watch her as she learns new things and is becoming her own little person. In honor of her half birthday, this post is all about her....aren't most of my post just that anyways.

Top 10 nicknames:

1. "_____ bear". Fill in the blank + bear...angel, littlest, baby, whatever you like.

2. " bear bear". I know this is sort of the same thing as above, but we use this more than even her real name.

3. "sister". No this isn't an announcement! We called crystal, sister when we were growing up, and now I find myself calling Kaylie that. Can also be combined into "sister bear" and yes, we read the Bersteain Bears.

4. "girlfriend" Said like a "sister" would say, and I mean a sister from "the hood" not the kind above...oh I am so suburban it is disgusting.

5. "kaylie schmaylie". I know, creative with the rhyming aren't we.

6. "monster". said with affection.... almost always

7. "pretty girl". Well, isn't she

8. " polywog". given to her by her gramps, because of her love for water. Who knows a polywog better than a "carp".

9. "little piggy." one day a boy she is dating will read this and it will embarrass her. I only bring this one out when she is eating.

10. "kay kay". I am trying harder to not say baby words like "baba" and "doggie", but sometimes this slips out like a baby version of "kaylie".

Top 10 things Kaylie likes:

1. Toby; the dog

2. Sleeping in our bed; we aren't winning this battle, more in another post.

3. Watching t.v.; she is mesmerized by the picture but we don't let her watch it really.

4. Water; pool or bathtub, she take it either way.

5. Peek -a-boo; she like to be the one who is hidden.

6. Ice water in a glass; not to drink, just to hold or put her face against...it really is hot here.

7. Her feet; she like to play with them and eat them.

8. Being tickled

9. Having her ears cleaned; so much so that sometimes I stick my finger in there to calm her down.

10. Rolling over; she just learned this and every time she does it she smiles big and waits for applause.

Top things Kaylie doesn't like:

1. Getting clothes on; I have let her wear her pjs all day on multiple occasions so I wouldn't have to ruin her mood.

2. Sleeping in her own crib; really what are we going to do.

3. Peas; will gag until we stop them coming.

4. 9:00 church; she was so easy at the 1:00 time, now at least one of us is in the lobby with her at all times...we have yet to make it past the sacrament being passed.

5. Sitting in her carseat; except when she is really calm.

6. Bottles or pacifiers; she has done a complete '180 on these compared to when she was first born.

What a Day!

Yesterday was such a great day! First off it almost feels like fall this weekend. I know most of you Utahns are watching the snow fall, so when I say it cooled off I mean it wasnt warm enough to go to the pool. We also didn't have anything planned, so it was a day of looking for fun. Up first, the park. We found it by accident. Kaylie was screaming to get out of her carseat so we just pulled over into the first parking lot. She must have known what she was doing, becuase she loved it! The swings, this frog, the slide.

Then we last minute decided to find some sort of pumpkin patch. I found one on the internet that said something like" pumpkin patch, hay rides, petting zoo, children crafts, food, music..." Sounded pretty good. Well there were eight pumpkins sitting on a hay bale at a full fledged dairy farm. They did have a couple things, and Kaylie didn'y know any better to be dissapointed. It turned into be so much fun just watching her enjoying everthing so much.

This girl takes her pony rides seriously folks

She grabbed everything and wouldn't let go...this pumpkin, the tractor wheel, the horn on the saddle.

I loved this pict...they both had such great expressions

What are you watching?

Have you been watching good t.v? Last week ABC called it National Stay at Home week because of all the season primeres. Thankfully becuase of TiVo, we don't have to stay at home to catch all our favorites, but Monday nights that is where you will find this family. We call it "good t.v. night". We are following Chuck, How I met your Mother, CSI: Miami, the Office and Grey's anatomy. Chuck starts tonight, and it might be our favorite...hilarious. What are you watching?

Our International Traveler!!!

So Kaylie is only 5 months olds, and already traveling internationally. Okay, not really, but we did have a fun road trip this past Saturday. This past weekend, our friends Amy, Preston, and cute Autumn came down from Salt Lake to visit. On Saturday we took a road trip to Nogales Mexico and crossed the border!!! We stayed just long enough to bargain with some of the locals (see the pinata purchased by Preston below), take a few pictures, and that was it.

Kaylie and Autumn are only 3 weeks apart and Kaylie loved having a playmate around the house for the weekend. Whenever she got close enough she tried poking or grabbing her cute friend. Thanks for paying us a visit Jensens...we had fun!

Mesa Temple

We found the mesa temple today. It is actually only like 15 minutes away. It just kind of appears. We are driving through downtown and then there it is. It is pretty in its own sort of way....not palacial like most temples I have seen. It is more like a washington monument meets mexican ruin. Looking at the picture above it kind of reminds me of what a temple might have looked like in ancient times. It was fun to walk around the grounds, obviously with Kaylie we couldn't go inside. It is wonderful though how even just being on the outside of the temple you can feel the spirit.

Top Spot

So we live in Arizona now. Sometimes I forget this, I guess I am still getting used to the change. When I do remember it, I think that it is okay that we do. For those of you that I talk to regularly you may remeber a time when I wasn't okay with the fact that we were going to...live here I mean. There are things that I like about here and there are things that I miss about Utah, but here is home so that is that.

I have been in the process of unpacking our things and everything that goes into movin in. I was unpacking a box that was our office stuff; jeff had packed up the boxes of office stuff and I came across a paper that was from several years ago, on the bottom it said 2005. It was a quiz we took on the internet, from a website www.findyourspot.com. I can kind of remeber doing this and we must of been in our St.George apartment. Anyways the website ask you all sorts of questions about what you like and need in a plave to live and then gives you your top 25 places. Many of you have probally done this and if you haven't it is kinda fun so you should.

Funny stuff... reading our list, mind you it is 3 years old, it says that fountain hills, AZ is our number one place. Fountain hills is about 12 miles north of where we are now. That being the case, we decided we had to visit it this weekend. It is famous for having the largest fountain in the world. It is a very small town (think Heber 15 years ago) and kind of isolated from the rest of the towns by the mountains. It is quaint and pricey and I don't know how it made it to our number one top spot, but it was fun to check it out.

Lucky for us we already live in our number 2 spot...scottsdale, AZ. If only I had known it was our number two spot before we moved...maybe I would dragged my feet a little less.

Happy 29!

Happy birthday Jeff! We hope you are having a great day and want you to know what a great husband and dad you are. We love you soooo much. Thank you for all you do to take care of us. Sorry you have to go to work on your birthday...come home soon so we can celebrate!

Love,

Amy and Kaylie

Kaylie tried a few new things this weekend...the first was swimming. She loved the pool and we only got out after almost an hour because it was getting late ( It is still 100' at night so we went just before sunset). She learned to splash and we just pulled her around in the water. She was really happy and calm the whole time. It looks like we are going to have a fish for a daughter.

The second new thing was real food...and when I say real I mean rice cereal. Really how appietizing could this be? The first experience you can see on her face in the first pict. She was concerned to say the least about what was happening. The second time around we got a much better response, though I can't say much more of it actually eaten. We thought for sure Kaylie would be much more of an eating champ... She has been to this point as far as milk or formula was concerned. She was sitting with us at the dinner table a week ago and when we stopped looking at her for a second, she had a fistful of soft taco and the wrapper and was with true excitement trying to figure out what how she could get it into her mouth. Although that is what she trys to do with everything she gets her hands on ... we thought this for sure was a true sign that she was ready and willing to eat people food. Maybe that is just it...is watered down rice cereal really food. Perhaps we have a gourmet on our hands. Or maybe she just want a little more of what she got a taste of last week...quiero taco bell little kaylie?

Goodbye Utah

ON TO SCOTTSDALE WE GO!!!!

So, I realize we have been in Arizona for over a week now but I wanted to get up to date on the whole blog thing. The past few weeks have been an absolute blur to say the least. We were able to wrap things up in Lehi and make the trip down to Scottsdale just over a week ago. The trip down seemed to take FOREVER!!! First off, we left Lehi around 11PM and we made it to Kanab before we called it a night. We checked in to a Holiday Inn Express around 3AM and slept for a few hours. The next morning was slow going as we had to make several stops along the way to take care of Kaylie. The trip was hard since both Amy and I were in separate cars. We finally arrived in Scottsdale around 5pm! We arrived on a Friday and our truck wasn't due to get here until the following Monday. Thanks to my parents, we at least had a nice Aerobed to sleep on. It was our only furniture for those few days. We found an add the first day down here about a moving company that hired out teams to unload trucks. We thought that would be nice since my work would cover the expense... well, WHAT A NIGHTMARE. Amy kept texting me at work that everything coming out of the truck was being drug across the driveway and run into walls. I came home as soon as I could and tried to make sure things went better from there on out. The funniest part was when I saw one of the workers with our towel using it as a rag. Needless to say, it was not a good experience. Throughout it all, we are now mostly unpacked and settling into our new place. Here are some pictures from our move and last few days in Lehi.

All of our stuff ready to be loaded!!!

Nice place for lunch! A dining room table in the driveway!

Toby had a hard time walking up and down with all the holes in the ramp so he finally learned it was easier to just jump from the truck. In the end, he made the trip.

THE ENGINEER - Thank's to Amy's dad for spending all day in the sauna like conditions (the truck) to make sure things were packed nice and tight!

Usually rocking chairs have cushions! Wait, they're all packed! Thank's to Amy's mom for helping out and also watching Kaylie so Amy could get things done as well!

Sure Jeff, I'll finish all your projects you started and never finished!!! Thanks dad for helping out when I really needed it. Thanks also to my mom (sorry, I didn't have any pictures) for helping scrub walls and getting stuff packed for us!!!

Our last walk along the canal!

DO I HAVE TO LEAVE???

Where did all the ducks go? This was a second home for Toby. He loved to chase ducks (he never caught one) and just swim down the middle since it was easier than walking.

Both Amy and I really enjoyed all the time we spent in Lehi and all the friends we made both in our neighborhood and our work. We will both miss those we are leaving behind and all the memories that were made! Thanks to all those we became friends and we hope to stay in touch!!!