Busy Bunch!

Whew! We have been a busy bunch!

Decemeber 1st- Michelle took her first steps!!!
It was lunchtime and she was HUNGRY! Joe was sitting by her high chair waiting for her to come to him and instead of crawling over she walked three steps to him!
It was crazy! I mean it has been a long time coming since she has been crawling since she turned 6 months and she has been able to stand up in the middle of the room for a while too. (Not that I was ready for her to do this! Or encouraging it really either). It was nice though that it happened when we were both there to see it. Since then she has been walking up a storm. I think that that day she didn't really realize that she had done it but she is very aware of her capabilities now! I think that her record thus far is 11 continuous steps.

Last Friday and Saturday was Joe's first school production as a Drama teacher. He put on "You Can't Take It With You". He managed to wrangle 23 eighth graders and they got through the show one way or another!  Joe and I built the set, he directed and I did all of the props, posters, playbills and costumes. It has kept us very busy. We were naturally worried about the turn out since this is the return of the high school drama program but the turn out ended up being really good! It's nice that Joe works at a school with such good parental support.

We were even blessed to make back what we spent so Joe and I aren't taking a hit (seeing as it was all out of our pocket!). It makes it much easier to want to continue doing this.

We managed to get everything cleaned up at school but I still have a guest room full of props and costumes to take pictures of and catalog.

This week Joe has been playing catch up with all of his math classes and doing a ton of grading that had to be temporarily postponed while we put on the show.

Friday night we went to the Boise Botanical gardens Winter Garden Aglow. It was fun! They light up the whole garden with Christmas lights. We didn't realize how big it was until we had hiked up to the top of the hill!

I goofed and had the flash on here but this picture is too funny not to share :)

 Michelle was not too thrilled with having to wear a hat and socks on her hands but she kept warm all bundled up!

 Prancer was even there!

And of course, SANTA was there! Michelle wouldn't smile 

but she wasn't crying either so I'll take it!

Saturday morning was our ward Christmas breakfast. (I even got out of bed and got myself dressed and got there on time, come on siblings, admit it, you know you are impressed that I did this for my least favorite meal of the day). Then we went home and thought we were finally going to have a pretty mellow Saturday just taking care of stuff around the house. Then what should happen but I get a call from a great friend who is randomly in Boise. Within a couple of hours where did we find ourselves but at the Idaho Potato Bowl with stinking AWESOME tickets! It was crazy!

Can I just say that baby carrying devices are awesome? Friday night our stroller came through for us and Saturday it was the Bjorn to the rescue. Also, ya know, have a super great baby :)

When I say stinking awesome tickets I mean like, front row of the club sky seats... yeah, ya know, you should be jealous. It was a good game too, especially since Utah State University won. Although the Toledo people in our section were less than pleased, I take their early departure as an admission of failure ;)

It was cold but we kept Michelle warm and had fun! 

P.S. Papa, we did end up leaving the game early (by about 1 minute) because the Aggies were so far ahead. It made me think of when it was snowing on us in Alb. and I was frozen to the bone but so mad that I didn't get to see the end of the game.

I AM LOVED!!!

My family loves me.
I come home to smiles.
When I'm sick they take care of me.
I love my girls so so much.
LOVE
JOE

Halloween!

Boo!
Better late than never on this post right?
For Michelle's first Halloween I basically decided that I wanted to put her in a giant tutu. So, I made her a very fruffy tutu and then decided she was going to be a ballerina. We decided it was kinda lame to take her out trick-or-treating since it would really just be begging for candy for ourselves so instead we took a bunch of pictures of her and let her help us answer the door for all the trick-or-treaters.

Her is our cutie patootie ballerina

The tutu was so fruffy that it was pretty hysterical to watch her trying to crawl, especially from behind ;)

I have a "special" family ;)

So.... Sometimes things like this just kinda happen at our house..... ;)

In case you are curious that shirt was a 4XLB, I paid $2.50 for it at a Marshalls that was moving to a new location. It is now a skirt for Joe's production of You Can't Take It With You. Yes, I got more fabric for the price than you could even with a coupon AND I got buttons! So there!

Randomness

Here are a couple random pictures and things we have been up to:

We went to Utah for Fall break and had lots and lots of fun. We were doing stuff pretty much all week long but I failed to take pictures. I pretty much only got two pictures.
Well, this one is more of a series. Michelle thought that the prep sink was lots of fun. (Hey Sampson kids, Anybody recognize that shirt in the background? Remember that Christmas where Papa got all of us these? I found mine when I was going through some storage stuff so Papa went and put his on)

And watching conference:

p.s. thanks for this papa, she now thinks that she should be allowed to play with the remote... ;)

Back at home:

Just being cute on Sunday

 Utterly excited that I let her play in the Tupperware drawer ;)

Linder Farms

This week we decided to head out to Linder Farms for a fun family activity. It is a working farm but in the fall they have a corn maize and pumpkin patch. We carried Michelle around the whole place and she was such a trooper (it's nice to have a baby that for the most part puts up with being dragged around all over the place, then again we tend not to give her a choice). The corn maize was pretty fun but we did realize that neither of us particularly enjoy getting lost and so we are not really corn maize people. But we did get a couple of cute pictures :)

We also traipsed all over the pumpkin patch finding pumpkins. Apparently Joe and I had different ideas of what we wanted in terms of a pumpkin. He found a 30 lb pumpkin and I wanted little ones as in like 5lbs or under.... So we compromised-ish. We got a big one to carve and a couple little ones to look pretty on the counter. It was fun finding our own pumpkins and they had gourds too, they even had white pumpkins! (confession, I totally thought that people painted their pumpkins white. One of those moments where I felt really smart, kinda like when I finally realized why it is called Idaho Falls.)

Pumpkin carving to come!