Love you Tyson!

Our sweet nephew, Tyson, passed away on October 31. He was born with many medical problems, and in the beginning, doctors didn't think he'd make it more than a month or two. He turned 5 on October 21 and we feel so blessed to have had him in our lives for so long. His funeral was yesterday and it was so beautiful. His Aunt Kim, Uncle Jonathan and his dad spoke and they were all extremely touching talks. The spirit was very strong and just confirmed what an amazing life Tyson led and what a strong influence he had on everyone around him. We'll miss him so much, but we're so glad that he's healthy and strong and out of pain. You can read his obituary here and his parents' blog here.

Morgan's Blessing

Morgan was blessed this last Sunday. Travis did such a great job blessing her and Morgan slept through the whole prayer without a peep! Afterwards, we headed over to the Romney's for yummy BBQ pork sandwiches, frog-eye salad, spinach salad, pasta salad, caramel apples, peanut butter rice krispies and cinnamon rolls. Yum! Thanks to everyone for all your help, ESPECIALLY my parents! They cooked and cleaned all weekend and I couldn't have done it without them!

Trick-or-Treat!

I'm finally getting around to posting our Halloween pics. Well, better late than never, right? My family came down for the weekend, so they were able to join in the festivities with us! My sis-in-law Lindsey put together a fun little Halloween dinner complete with chili, cornbread, string cheese "fingers" and hot dog "mummies". Then we headed off to trunk-or-treat. I really like this concept because of safety reasons. Kinda sad that Kaylee didn't go to one house though! Kaylee had so much fun dressing up as a witch and having Grandma paint a spider on her face. She loved going from car-to-car to get candy until she started seeing the kids with masks on. After that, I had to hold her the whole time. To this day, she still talks about the "boy with the scary face!" Oh well. Morgan was a ballerina, thanks to her cute outfit from Aunt Kristin. She slept through most of the fun as usual!



Grandma painting Kaylee's face.

Hanging out in the back of the Pilot while we hurried and got rid of the rest of our candy!

Pumpkin Fest 2 Years Running

Last year we took Kaylee to the Pumpkin Festival, but she was a little too small to understand what was going on. This year, we had a blast getting her face painted, riding down the bouncy slide, decorating cookies, jumping in the leaf corral, painting a pumpkin and eating donuts! Morgan was a champ and slept through the whole thing. Saturday was pretty crazy for us. I had our primary program practice that morning, then the Pumpkin Festival, then the SUU Homecoming game then the BYU game hosted at our house! It sure was fun though!






Travis finally got another dirtbike and he is ecstatic! Kaylee is pretty excited too!

Food Storage Analyzer

As I mentioned before, I'm trying to use the canned food/food storage we have to cook with more often. The Emergency Essentials website has an awesome Food Storage Analyzer that you can input all of the food in your pantry and it will tell you how long you could feed your family. Mine says we've got about 41 days saved, but I didn't include some of the food from our fridge and cupboards. The cool thing is that it displays a nutritional table that tells you what you are lacking in vitamins, fiber, etc. so you have an idea of what to buy next.

The website was pretty straightforward, although I sometimes had a hard time going back and forth between the food category tabs. An additional bonus is that if you use the food storage analyzer and write a review on your own blog (like I'm doing now!) they will send you a free $10 gift card. There is a store located in South Jordan by my parents' house, so I plan on using mine next time I'm in SLC. Anyway, I totally recommend checking it out. It only took me a few minutes, plus it's always a good idea to take a food storage inventory to make sure you are prepared!

Taco Tuesday

I've been trying really hard to make new recipes and use items from our food storage or that we already have in our pantry. I found a recipe for Beef & Vegetable soup online that looked pretty yummy. It was very straight-forward and didn't have a lot of weird ingredients in it--meat, veggies, pasta--how weird can that be? I slow-cooked it all day and it smelled pretty good. Before dinner I tasted a little and it tasted...okay.

When we sat down to eat, Kaylee took one bite and refused to eat the rest. This is not unusual for her as of late, so I didn't think anything of it. Then I looked over at Travis. He was taking a bite of soup, washing it down with a huge swig of water and then eating an entire crescent roll. I finally took a bite...it was not good. I piped up and said, "Umm, this isn't my favorite." To which Travis responds, "This is so gross!"

I've never done this before, but I promptly stood up, dumped Kaylee's bowl out and said, "Do you want some cereal?" She gobbled it right down.

I have to say I'm very proud of Travis for at least trying to stomach my new creation and not saying a word of complaint! He's at Del Taco with Kaylee right now. Good thing it's Taco Tuesday.

Apples to Apples

We decided to take the girls down to Zion National Park yesterday to enjoy this unbelievably good weather. It was 91 degrees in Springdale, a good 10 degrees above the norm. We went first to the apple orchard, where you get to pick your own apples and buy them by the pound. Kaylee loved it and the apples are SO GOOD! We headed into Zion's for some lunch and then a very quick hike up the Emerald Pools trail. Unfortunately, we got off to a late start, so by the time we began hiking, Kaylee was already exhausted. But we still had a blast. Morgan rode along in the front carrier and did really well. We bought an annual pass, so next time we know to go early AND bring our own lunch instead of spending $18 on 2 sandwiches!