Thanksgiving

I can't believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone. Many months ago Brett and I decided to host Thanksgiving at our home. All those months of being able to prepare came fast. 

Brett's parents came, My parents and my 3 sibling, Jenny and her husband Shane, Brett's sister Kristin and her husband Tyler and their 3 kids came as well. 

It was a pretty full house once we sat down to eat. 

All of the food was FANTASTIC! Thanks to everyone for pitching in. 

I had a lot of fun making homemade pies and cranberry sauce. 

We had two turkeys and I still probably have a whole one left in my fridge. 

If you're not sick of turkey yet please come and eat some of mine. That goes for pie as well. 

This year I am thankful for many many things. 

Here are a few:

   to live in a house

   to have a great husband

   for a perfect daughter

   my health 

   my family

   jobs

   that gas is under $2 

   that target is now open by me

   beautiful az weather

I had a lot of fun decorating for our Thanksgiving feast

Tori loved being spoiled by her Grandma Gordon

Happy 1st Thanksgiving

And because I didn't want to start another post so here is a picture of Tori and Pixie that we took last weekend. 

They are so cute together. Cassandra you also make a cute kid : )

I love how they both have their hand in their mouth

Primary Program: I'm a child of God

So after one month of being assigned to my new calling in the Primary Presidency I was told I was in charge of writing the primary program.  What? Really? Me? Are you sure Julie? Well we pushed the date back as far as we could to give me time and help the kids to memorize their parts. 

We had our program this Sunday and it was a hit. There was some divine intervention that went on because the rehearsals didn't go that great.  But I guess and bad rehearsal makes for a great performance. 

It went sooooo smoothly. There is nothing that I would have changed about it. 

Some of my highlights were:

      *Sitting behind the podium, making the kids smile and sing, and only they could see me.

      *The song If the Savior Stood beside Me while a flute played along.(brought a tear to my eye)

      *First part of the program that ended in a girl saying "I'm Taylor, I am a comedian, but most importantly".... and every child stood up and sang I am Child of God without the piano. 

       *Or when they put on missionary name tags when they sung Called to Serve

        *Or when they held up pictures of All the prophets when they sung We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet. 

Can you tell that I am proud? I am so proud of my primary. They did a great job. I am overcome with happiness. 

Thank You!

Nate is 20!!I

Just wanted to give a shout out to Nate Dawg who is now 20 years old! I'm glad I got to spend time with you on your birthday day. Party like a rock star!

Also congrats on finally getting your braces off. It's been, what..... 10 years since you got them on? Congrats!!!

10 months old

Oh man time is flying by so fast. 

My baby is already 10 months old. And around 19 1/2 pounds.

She is getting bigger and bigger everyday. 

She still can't crawl yet but I'm totally okay with that. 

She is eating more baby food now and sings instead of cries when she wakes up. 

I love her. 

Veteran's Day

This was the first year that I have ever really done anything for Veteran's Day. I went with Nikki and her son Benjamin to the huge Veteran's Day Parade in downtown Phoenix. 

(Thanks for the great idea Nikki)

I had a lot of fun being patriotic. Tori loved the marching bands and all the colorful floats. 

There were so many entries that we had to leave an hour early because Tori was getting tired and we had already been there 2 1/2 hours. We enjoyed our cotton candy, hotdogs, and waving our flags around. 

Thanks to all of our Veteran's. I'm proud to be an American!!!

Benjamin was actually really excited in this picture. 

Is Christmas still in December?

So I was driving home from work last night and I love to listen to Dalilah on 99.9. I like her heart felt dedication songs on my way home and knowing that people truly care about others. However, due to my surprise, they have already started to play their Christmas jingles. It's November 7th PEOPLE. This particular station fulfills AZ holiday Christmas carol needs (during Christmas time).I thought to myself okay having one song every now and then is okay but it was one continuous Christmas song after another. Apparently they decided to not wait until after Thanksgiving and start right after Halloween. 

Don't get me wrong I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas song. But come on. It's a bit early don't you think. Two straight months of Christmas carols??? Okay!?!

Maybe next year they will start after Labor Day.

Chicken Little

So I just found out that my chicken little just won the University of Phoenix Halloween costume contest. Yeah!!!

I have to give credit to Brett for the Chicken outfit. Last year when I was pregnant we saw a 

fluffy chicken outfit at Babies R Us and Brett fell in love with it. I was against it at first but he said if I let him pick the first year's outfit for Halloween I could have the rest. 

So I gave in obviously and I'm super happy I did. 

I love my chicken little. 

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone had a great Halloween. We sure did. We actually had our ward Trunk or Treat on Thursday. There were lots of people there and it was great hanging out with our family and friends. Our ward had a chili cook off and Brett won the spiciest chili. Good job Babe. Tori also won the cutest costume award. Her costume was so warm she could only wear it for a little bit. 

Tori with Uncle Nate and Shalene. 

Tori loved Elmo's outfit. 

My Parents

Tori was smaller then pumpkin head. (So cute)

UOP had a Halloween Festival on Friday during the day. We went to visit all of my old co-workers. It was so nice to see everyone again. 

Silly Gary Parker dressed up as Santa. (Thanks for the candy cane)

Hey Jenny Mae! We love the purple hair. 

Our funny little photo shot. These pictures show off her cute tiny pigtails and baby teeth. 

Chicken Halloween outfit

Animal Lovers BEWARE

After much anticipation we finally went on our 2008 hunting trip. It was a wonderful trip. Here are some of our highlights. 

Tori was such a wonderful girl. She did not fuse the whole way up or back from Utah. 

She just took her naps as usual and watched Baby Einstein. 

This is a picture of her being super cute. 

We met up with Brett's family in Panguitch, Ut.

We stayed out Brett's sister, Natalie, house.

She has an adorable little boy, Randy! 

Ashley and Randy loved playing with Tori

First morning we went out Brett shot a buck.

 We skinned it at Natalie's home and the dog joined in. 

Tori was already ready for hunting with her own orange outfit and camo bow

Brett and the 1st Buck (Nice Gun)

We still had another deer tag to fulfill so we went out hunting again at night. 

(Natalie also cut my hair that day now I have a cool mom hair do. Thanks Nat!)

The next morning. 

above: Picture of Brett checking out some doe's in his scoop.

After a couple hours Brett's Dad said we should look in the shrubs cause that's where the deer bed down during the day. Honestly Brett and I didn't think we would see anything. 

I don't usually see what the boys are pointing at until 5 minutes later. 

Usually the deer are so far away. In this picture the arrow is pointing at a spec and it was our next buck. (if you enlarge the picture you might be able to see the spec)

The boys decided to hike towards the deer to see if they could cut it off. 

They walked so far. You can barely see the orange specs in this picture. 

I stayed at the truck and finally heard a gun shot. I guess they got right on top of the buck and were only 25 yards away. I figured they wouldn't want to walk back so I decided to romp through the sage brush and go and get them. Yeah I drove through that. 

Good Job Brett!!!

Tori loved Natalie's swing and wanted to play in it all day. 

Deer hanging is our 2nd buck. Our 1st one is the closest. Tim is skinning Natalie's buck. 

Good shot Natalie but you didn't have to shot both of its legs off. LOL

Since we got the two deer in 1 1/2 days we decided to spend the remainder of our days in Spanish Fork with Brett parents.  

This is Tori telling Brett to hurry so we could get on the road already.

 We were able to keep her quiet on the way to Spanish Fork with the help of Cotton Candy. 

The next day we ran some errands with Grandpa. This is Tori waiting for Grandpa

She had fun with Grandma. 

We also decided to stop by my Grandma's house so she could see Tori for the first time. 

This is her first great grand child. She was calling my Dad to tell him they we were there. 

So cute Tori

She was put her arms up in the air when ever we said "So Big"

She was showing us just how really big she was. 

Thanks Grandma for the chocolate licorice 

We now have tons and tons of Deer meat. We made a bunch of jerky, deer chops, and roast. 

All of it has been good. We have enough stocked for the winter.