We can’t believe it, but Eliza has already had her baby blessing!  It was an amazing experience, for both Kathryn and me.  Mom and dad came down for the weekend, and as a result, got to spend Halloween with us.  Kathryn found these really fun pumpkin soup bowls at the grocery store.  It made for a delicious dinner.  This is my kind of pumpkin carving!

I’m not that huge into dressing up, so Kathryn has been fantastic about coming up with really easy low key costumes that usually consist of some sort of a tee-shirt.  So this year, Ashley was Cruella Deville and we were her dalmatians.

Mom and Dad manned the house and watched Eliza so we could take Ashley out trick-or-treating.  It was her first time.  She wasn’t able to say trick-or-treat, but she was really keen on the idea of getting to take a piece of candy from each house and put it in her bucket.  She would also blow kisses to everyone that gave her candy.  It was lots of fun to go around and visit some of our neighbors and friends in the ward.  It’s really nice to be getting to know the area better.

Now onto the baby blessing.  Like I said, it was a very tender experience.  I’ll be totally honest and admit it hasn’t been easy to always love my new baby girl.  Having a newborn is hard.  However, I know that I felt pure love for her when she was born.  I’ve worked hard to remember that feeling and let it give me strength to carry on.  Today during her blessing, I again felt that pure love for her.  It was awesome.

Thanks for the all the support from our family!  For the food, and the treats, the dishwashing, etc.  (Tim was present for the blessing, but he had to head out quickly to teach his class.)

Concert time!  This was a fun one.  Fun music, costumes, and they let the kids come!  It was crazy, but we brought the girls.  Tim and Suzanne were there to help, so it was three against two.  Both of them did remarkable well.  Ashley’s favorite part of the concert was the clapping.  She would yell and clap in approval for the great music.  Kevin was also there with some friends, and we ran into Shawn and Amy and their girls there as well.   The place was sold out both nights as well.  It’s fun to have such good support for the orchestra.

This was at intermission.  Cookie and Alpine water break.

Kathryn made the parrot costume a while ago.  This picture was taken before we were actually dating.  It was one of our very first things we did together.  Such a fun time to remember!

The concert that we went to was Saturday night.  That left me with Thursday rehearsal and Friday night concert to fend for myself and the two girls.  It wasn’t easy, but we made it.  Thursday we stayed home the whole night and that was rough.  We barely made it out alive.  So on Friday night, we drove up to Alpine with Kathryn and dropped her off for the pre concert rehearsal.  We then had some time to kill so we drove around up to the top of the Point of the Mountain ridge where those really high up houses are.  It was really pretty up there, but I don’t think I’d like living up there.  It was cold and windy!  I imagine it’s pretty harsh up there in the winter too.  We made it back down the hill and Kathryn was able to fill up Eliza before her concert started.  We said our goodbyes and good-lucks and headed home.  That made the night way better than the home alone all evening we had on Thursday.

Another victory, we made it back up Hobble Creek canyon for another campfire cookout.  This time we made foil dinners.  It’s been great to be able to get out with the family and do something fun together.

Kathryn’s next concert is coming up.  They’ll be playing with Jenny Oaks Baker.
You can get your tickets here.

Bedtime is one of my favorite times with Ashley.  We like to wrestle and play and chase each other around.  It’s lots of fun.  She’s such a good girl.

The girl in pink is a good girl too!

There is a pumpkin farm close by that I drive by every day going to work.  We decided it was time to take the girls and check it out.  We got there just as it was starting to get dark, so it was a short and sweet visit.  Cotton candy, some fun animals, and a little bit of time in the corn pit.

For a while now, my car’s been having a bit of a bump coming from what I thought was the front right tire.  It’s been slowly getting worse.  It kind of seemed like the axle was slightly bent by the sound of it.  Last week I finally took the time to investigate.  After a little sleuthing around, I finally realized that my back left tire was no longer round.  It had a bad case of diagonal cupping.  This isn’t my tire, and it’s a lot worse than mine, but it’s along the same vane.  After some research I decided that my rear struts were bad.  Basically, the struts go out and don’t do their job, and the tire can start oscillating on the road leading to the crazy wear patterns.

So I ordered new struts.  Kevin was fantastic and came over Saturday morning and helped me put them in.  After they were in, it was off to the tire shop with to get some new wheels.  I brought Ashley along with me.  She was great.  As soon as we walked into the store, she saw the toys and beelined it to them.  She was super cute sitting in a little camp chair snuggling some random (and a little sketchy) stuffed doggy.

Then she found the Woman’s Day magazine, all by herself.  I guess the cover was effective.

After the tire shop, we made a quick stop at the hardware store.  They had popcorn there, which Ashley was a big fan of.  Once we got home, she was very kind to share some with Kathryn.

We capped off the day with a great trip up the canyon to roast s’mores.  This was Eliza’s first adventure in the wild outdoors.

Ashley loved the fire!

Kathryn got this gem of a sequence on camera.

This was from church 🙂

Devin and I squeezed in a great dirt biking trip a couple of weekends ago.  We tried out American Fork Canyon for the first time.  It was fantastic.  Lot’s of fun forest trails and lot’s of elevation.