Relief Society Retreat

The great thing about only moving a half hour away from your old ward is that you can still go to the super fun events.  The Weston 1st Ward was having a Relief Society retreat up at Camp Zion in NH.  Since my house happened to be right on the way, my friend Brenna picked me up and I got to spend some great time with old friends.  The food was delicious as always, and the company was wonderful.  It was freezing at the camp.  Luckily our cabin had a pellet stove that kept us warm at night, but the mess hall was still pretty cold despite the fire.  In the time we didn't spend eating we enjoyed a few other fun activities...

Starting the puzzle...

Friends keeping warm by the fire


Julie gave us a wonderful lesson about journaling.  She was one of two published authors at the retreat.  Cool, huh.

Keeping warm and learning a little line dancing

Puzzle completed.  This was taken the next morning.  None of us were fit to be photographed at 2am when we finished.

Crazy pic.  I love the girls camp YW thing in the background.   It makes me laugh.  Because this is such a girls camp photo anyway.  (with a few years added obviously.)

Ditto to the above comment.  Totally reminds me of Mount Misery.  Maybe not everyone had girls camp in November.  But we did. :)

Anne is seriously one of my favorite people in the world.  She was the only one brave enough to do the polar bear swim.  It was soooooo cold.   It got down below freezing that night.  Crazy!

It was fun to get away for a night and thanks to Scott for keeping things under control here. :)

A Quick Fall Visit

We were so lucky that my family was able to visit for a quick weekend trip this fall.  Crazy that there are only two boys at home now, but thankfully Great Grandma and Ginny were able to come up too!  They all came up the weekend of General Conference and we spent much of the weekend watching that.  But we were also able to do some fun things... watch BYU football, fix some doors, get some ice cream at a local dairy, visit Mount Auburn Cemetery, and just plain have fun hanging out together.

Here are a couple of pictures from their trip.  Unfortunately not as many as in times past. We really miss having Aunt Megan around to take such wonderful pictures of our cute boys!

Uncle Evan and Alan played a fun pumpkin decorating game.

And Evan took these great pictures

Jamesy loves the Jack in the Box!

At the top of the tower in Mount Auburn Cemetery.  Alan loved the echo when he yelled inside.

Us at the top of the tower

Boston skyline

The trip down

It was a fun visit and we were grateful for the chance to spend time together!

Kids and Crafting Fun

So when we don't have joy school, we have been having a blast doing fun things around here.  I love everything about the fall.  In addition to the beautiful weather, there seem to be so many cute activities to do with the kids.  Here is a small sampling of the different things we have made this fall season! Oh, and none of these ideas are really original.  Got them all from pinterest, so you can find them there. :)

Ok, the lobsters were kind of late summer.  But they were still cute hand and footprints.

We made pumpkin face bags and had a blast knocking them down.

James is a big helper!

Super easy fall tree.  Made out of a paper lunch sack!

We went apple picking with Anne and Sarah and Micah.  And I didn't take any pictures of the picking.  Luckily Anne took this one of Alan at the farm stand.

The apples were delicious!  We managed to make some applesauce, apple crisp, and eat the rest!

Alan really wanted cookie dough cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  And it was mighty pricey.  So I told him I'd make a whole cookie dough cake for him at home.  This was the result.  And it was good.

Ghostes (pronounced as 2 syllables).  Alan has been super excited to do this.  Can you tell which two he made?  They have Christmas lights in them and glow at night.  Super easy and fun for trick or treaters!

In other news, these girls are moving to Texas.  And we will miss them tons!

Vegetable Stew and Healthy Kabobs

We have been having tons of fun at Joy School.  Our first unit was all about our bodies.  We learned all about our body parts, senses, healthy foods, exercising and growing.  Here are some pictures of the kids making their vegetable stew and making their healthy kabobs.  They loved them!

Each kid brought a vegetable and helped peel.  Potatoes

Carrots

And more carrots!

We used toothpicks to make our healthy kabobs

And they thought it was great.

We have really had a lot of fun with Joy School so far, and are looking forward to our Halloween party this week!

Ward Campout

Yes.  We did it.  Camping.  It was our first time since we've been married, or with kids.  We've been promising Alan that we would go all summer, and we just couldn't find a time to do it.  But luckily the ward campout rolled around and we busted out our camping gear and went.  Group camping was a great way to approach our first camping experience.  The boys had so much fun!  We got up there a little late and had to set up our tent etc in the dark, so most of the pictures are kind of washed out with the flash.  Actually I think I just had it on a weird setting.  So they're not the greatest pictures, but we had to document our event.

James was just thrilled to be spending so much time outside!

We went the low-key route with dinner.  Hot dogs on sticks!

Chillin on our bathroom walk

We brought James' pack n play for him to sleep.  It took up half of the tent.   The rest of us squeezed in the other half.  But James slept.  And so did we. :)

Love this pic of my cute boys!

They had games the next morning for the kids.  Alan was a great competitor at all of them.
From the bean bag toss  

to the long jump.

James mostly waddled around like this.

And participated in his own version of the rock toss.

Tug of war looks so funny with little guys

And throwing rocks in the lake was, of course, another highlight of the trip.

Our boys are great campers and love being outside!  We are excited for the next chance we get to venture into the wilderness together!

General Conference

We had an excellent day yesterday and are so excited for today.  We love family and General Conference!