"..Oh the weather outside is frightful....!"

I've been inside all day listening to the crazy wind blowing!
A good amount of snow has been falling all weekend. On Saturday our power went out for a few hours. I was going to leave with the baby, but after looking out the window and seeing all the snow I decided to wait it out for awhile. The power came back on about 3 hours later. I was so relieved: It definitely got a little chilly.

Every morning we wake up and look out the window to check the damage of the night snowfall. This morning there was just wicked wind...and a huge snow drift on our front lawn. Oh how much I love Idaho winters.

On a little brighter note... Our niece, Lily Ann Stephenson was born on Friday. She is so tiny and precious. We were able to go up to the hospital on Saturday and visit with Mom, Dad (my brother) and baby Lily. She surprised everyone with a club foot. But thankfully for modern medicine
it won't be too much of a problem to get that all fixed up. We are so glad that she is part of the family!

Since I last posted Warren has started to 'crawl'. He does his own thing. We call it the inch worm, but it's started to turn more into the army crawl. It's so fun to see him more mobile these days. I'm sure I won't be saying that here in a few months. He also has had the appearance of his first tooth! And really, for the most part, he hasn't been too fussy about it. Woo hoo! We'll see how the rest of them go.
Barry's last day at Checker/O'Reilly Auto Parts is this week. It's crazy to think that he won't be working there anymore. Ever since I've known him he has been there. But I can't say I'm really going to miss it all that much (well maybe the steady paychecks). After weighing all the pros and cons we decided that quitting that job will be the best. This way he can have a little more time for school, he can invest way more time into his own business, more time with his family, and no more working Sundays! I know it will be a little harder financially, but thankfully we have money saved up and the Lord has blessed us so much! It's exciting and scary all at the same time. But Barry is fairly confident he can be successful with his business. I am just grateful to know I have a husband that will do whatever it takes to provide for his family.

Halloween and such...

Awhile back we decided that the perfect Halloween costume for Warren would be a SUMO wrestler.. I mean he does have the perfect combination of Asian and chubby!
Although I'm not sure how many sumo wrestlers still suck their thumbs, but he still looks pretty cute to me! He had a cold that night but, of course, Barry insisted that we still had to take him out and show him off. I don't think we thought that one through very much. Once the sun went down it got cold. He stayed wrapped up in a blanket pretty much the whole night, and actually ended up falling asleep while Barry carried him around. I guess he's not much of a party animal yet.

Barry had the day off the Monday before Halloween, and I really wanted to go to a pumpkin patch and get some pumpkins. There is one in Idaho Falls that his brother and sister-in-law had found, so we decided to go check it out. It was really cute, and there was a little train for the kids, but the bad news was it was only fully open during the weekends. Even though no one was there operating the place you could still go and pick out pumpkins and leave your money in a drop box...which I still think is crazy. But the good news was one of Barry's friends works for the person that actually owns the pumpkin patch. He happened to be there unloading some more pumpkins, so we got all our pumpkins for free along with a watermelon, cantelope, and some squash. It was so nice of him!


Later we went home and carved pumpkins...Neither one of us are very artistic but it was fun just to be together!
Then we had all that squash leftover that I didn't know what to do with. I had found on the internet that you could make pumpkin pie filling out of squash. I'm really not much of a pumpkin pie fan, but Barry really loves it, so I decided it would be fun a fun way to kick off the fall season by trying this pumpkin pie recipe out. Amazingly it wasn't that hard, and it tasted pretty good.

On another note...I have loved watching the leaves change colors this fall!! It has made me really miss Portland where I served my mission. There have been a few times when I have actually stopped my car and pulled over to take pictures of the trees. But unfortunately my cell phone camera just doesn't do it justice. These are some leaves that have been collecting on our front lawn. (we've been meaning to go out and buy a rake...but it just never seems to make it to the top of my list, because that would mean we would actually have to go out and rake them up.)


Well there isn't much else exciting going on at the moment. Although Barry and I have become totally engrossed in this book trilogy called the Hunger Games. Our sister-in-law let me borrow the first book. I had never heard of them, but was excited to get into a book again. I started reading it on Sunday, and Barry thought I should instead do something with him because reading is 'boring'. So I decided to read out loud, and then he didn't want me to stop! We finished it together in about 3 days. It was so fun to read together!! On to book 2...Catching Fire!

A little update on Warren... He has learned to click his tongue. It is sooo cute! We'll just catch him playing on his own and clicking away with his tongue. He is getting up on his hands and knees and rocking a lot more now, but I don't think he quite knows what to do after that.
He loves standing up while holding onto the couch and scratching the cushions. He's so funny about textures. He loves his bath times. Last night while I was giving him a bath I brought in the nose bulb suction thingy to clean out his nose. Well after I finished I was cleaning it out with the bath water, and shot some water out at him. He loved it!! I had never heard him laugh so hard.I love this picture because it shows all those wet spots from his slobber. And he totally looks like he's been incarcerated with that gray jumpsuit and beanie.