November Tidbits

It's been a busy month, hence the lack of posts this month. I can't say we've done a whole lot lately, but we've kept busy with the usual day-to-day things associated with going to school, working, church callings and raising this little girl. Claire has been growing so quickly and becoming less of a baby and more of a little person every day. We are loving it. :)

She is getting more independent every day. She knows what she wants and knows how to get it most of the time too. She loves to sit in her little rocking chair and watch Blue's Clues or Curious George. She also has recently decided that she must sit in the big chair instead of her high chair to eat her snacks. She makes the funniest faces sometimes. :)

She loves reading her books. There was a time period where I thought she had lost all interest in books. She would pull them off the shelf just to make a mess but she never would look at them. But now she pulls them off and brings them to me to read to her. Her favorite game at the moment is to go through each page and point out the dog, or the baby, or mouse, or whatever I ask her to find. It's fun to see her recognize words and know what it is I'm asking. :)

She is so proud of herself. We're pretty proud of her too. :)

October C's

I'm a little behind on blogging right now, but I just wanted to do a quick update on my C's for last month. :)

Create: So I made something last month, but I can't show or tell what it is since it's gonna be a Christmas present. ;) I did make a little fall decoration though for our place. I found the idea off of Pinterest. It was super easy to do, pretty cheap and I think it looks really cute! (I put together the candle decoration, not the pumpkin).

Cook: This month I made Chicken Ranch Macaroni and Cheese, a recipe from here. It was a little difficult to make, but that was probably cuz I was just trying to follow a new recipe. It turned out really good actually and it made quite a bit so we had it as leftovers for a few dinners. :)

Capture: I actually had a few opportunities to take pictures this month, it was great! The first photoshoot was of a little girl in our old ward. Her mom wanted some 18 month pictures of her daughter and remembered that I had offered once before so she asked me and we took pictures in an orchard, which was really fun. The second was a soccer photoshoot that I mostly just helped out with. My sister in law was taking pictures of a soccer team and they wanted a few individual shots of each player and some team shots, so I came along and helped out. And the third was some family pictures my sister asked me to take of her. She wanted very fall looking pictures so we drove up the canyon to get some more fall looking photos. I think they turned out well, you can check out my photoblog to see more. :)

Halloween, Part 2

We had a pretty busy Halloween weekend, but it was pretty fun. It started Friday night when we went to a party some friends of ours had down in Spanish Fork. We dressed up and ate yummy food. Claire participated in a cake walk and won a glow-in-the-dark wand. :) Saturday our ward had a Halloween carnival. We walked around the booths that they had, but they were more for older children so we ended up spending most of the time in the kitchen where I was helping with the refreshment booth. We got our family picture taken at the photo booth afterwards. :)

Check out our costumes... Scott is Bedtime Bear (not sleepy bear, grumpy bear, or goodnight bear, but BEDTIME Bear), I am FUNshine bear and Claire is Share Bear.

Our pumpkins were looking pretty sad by Saturday... Monday night, they were really scary considering they were both shriveled up almost to the point of not being recognizable. :)

Our little Claire Bear.

Sunday was super busy. Just as a side note, I got a calling in our new ward as the Primary 1st Counselor and this Sunday was my first time teaching Sharing Time. It went alright, but I was happy to be done with that first one. Sunday night we had a family get together. We didn't get to show off our costumes or anything, but it was still fun seeing everyone.
And then Monday we wore our costumes most of the day. I had to work and I got to wear my costume to work. Scott picked me up and we took Claire trick-or-treating to a few family and friends' houses down in S.F., and then headed home and walked around our street a little. At first she was a little nervous about the whole thing, but towards the end, when she realized we were filling her little bucket up with things, she got pretty excited. :)

The first picture with me was at the beginning when she was a little scared and the one next to it was at the end, so you can see how comfortable she got later on. :)

After trick-or-treating, we came inside and helped pass out candy. Claire kept running over to our bowl of give-away candy and snitching some for her bucket. :) She really enjoyed this Halloween and it was so much fun for us seeing her get all excited. Happy Halloween!

halloween, part one

i've never been a halloween guy i suppose. sure i love the free candy, but dressing up in ridiculous outfits? it's just never been for me. i have pretty much dedicated my life to trying my best to hide my goofiness from the world, so willingly putting on the goofiest clothes i can find has always seemed counter-productive. it's a pride thing i guess. i can't do too many silly things or i lose my "coolness", or whatever. it's funny how getting married and becoming a father melts that pride away. now all i want is to bring a smile to amber and claire's faces, and if that means being a goofball, i guess so be it. :)
so halloween has become a much bigger holiday to me in recent years. we now do it all: pumpkin carving, decorating, scary movies (not that scary), and yes, even costumes. we started the halloween festivities this year with pumpkins. amber and i used a couple patterns and carved up our pumpkins up real nice, and we're pretty proud of our finished products. but the funnest part of this year was setting a little pumpkin and some paint in front of claire and letting her go at it. she loved it! it was so funny to see her dip her little brush into the paint color of her choice and turn the pumpkin so she could get the side she wanted. we may have a little artist on our hands. :)
we'll leave you with the pictures and video of our pumpkins for now. stay tuned to see our fun costumes in our next blog. :)

Pumpkin Patch Playdate

Last week we went with some of Claire's friends to a pumpkin patch. Claire wasn't sure what she thought of the pumpkins at first and was a little hesitant to get close, but she did seem pretty amazed at how big some of them were. :)

We then had Claire and her friends, Leah and Emma pose with their little pumpkins. They all look a little embarrassed... probably cuz us moms were all cheering and jumping and yelling their names trying to get them to smile. :)

After going through the pumpkin patch we went through the corn maze. It was tricky and we almost couldn't find our way back out! :)

There was a petting zoo, a playground and some other fun things for kids to do but I didn't get any pictures. The petting zoo had chickens and goats which the later I found out Claire isn't too fond of. She started crying when one of the goats started Baa-ing at us. :(
Overall though, I think she had an enjoyable time. :)

Up

Some of our recent activities lately have included play dates with friends that almost always end with a treat. In this case it was a smoothie at Hogi Yogi. She was drinking from the straw but saw all the other little ones eating ice cream with their spoons and she wanted to use her spoon so I took off the lid to our smoothie and just let her go at it. She loved it. :)

Since then she now always wants to feed herself and will usually throw a fit if I don't let her hold the spoon. The other day I let her have her spoon but I was still feeding her (otherwise it would probably be all over her tray instead of in her mouth). She decided I needed to be fed as well. It was kind of funny. :)

If you haven't noticed already, her hair is growing! :) We are finally able to put little pigtails in it. This was the first time I put two pigtails in her hair and my mom said she reminded her of Boo from Monsters Inc. :)

Living at my parents house has been great. Claire has transitioned beautifully and feels so completely at home that she's been sleeping better than ever before (she's slept through the night for the last two weeks). We also get to spend more time with family. I love that whenever anyone comes to visit my parents we're right there to enjoy their visits as well. :) General Conference weekend we got to see my sister April and her family and Claire got to play with her cousins. She really liked playing with Andrew. She kept giving him toys and once she tried to put shoes on him. :)

Scott started playing in a Payson football league. We made it to the first game and it was a little rainy. Luckily it stopped and we enjoyed watching Scott play. Claire loves being out on the field. :)

Scott was putting together a bookshelf for our new place and Claire was being such a good helper! :)

Claire's first word is officially "up". She picked it up in just the last couple weeks but she really seems to know what it means when she says it. She'll come up to me with her hands in the air now and say "up" until I pick her up. It's so cute. She also says something that sounds very much like "hi" and of course she's been saying dada for awhile now but I think she's starting to realize it means daddy. :)

September C's

Capture: So it's been a busy month with our move and everything and I was planning on just taking the month off from my C's and not stress about anything else besides this move. I got asked to take some pictures in the middle of the month though which I didn't mind doing because it gave me a fun break from all of our cleaning and the photoshoot itself was so fun. We went to some new locations and I was taking pictures of some good friends of ours and like always I learned a ton. You can see some more of my favorites on my photoblog.


Create: Scott figured our home counted for this one right now. We are busy organizing and trying to decorate our new place and make it more of a home so there is a lot of creating going on. We'll post more pictures of our new place when it's finished! :)

Cook: This month my parents got to sample my experimental cooking as well. :) I found this Broccoli Chedder Chicken Crescent Braid recipe by way of Pinterest (I love that site!). I don't think it was our favorite recipe but it was still pretty good and quick and easy to make so we'll probably make it again because it's also something a little different too.

Next month we'll hopefully be back into the groove and I can finish an actual project. I really enjoy my crafty projects and I feel myself getting a little itchy to make or sew something new. :)