A Little Pumpkin Baby Shower

This weekend I got to throw a baby shower for one of my closest friends, Katie. We met each other back in our newlywed ward when Mike and I lived in some apartments in Bountiful. I was assigned to be her visiting teacher. We became friends, soon after Mike and I bought our home and we moved away (a whole 2 miles away). Then shortly after that Katie's work had an opening at the U in the Housing Office and I wanted a new job so she told me about it, I was hired, and we worked together for 8 months until she left for another job herself. We spent many, many hours together not only at work, but carpooling for 8 months back and forth to Salt Lake. Our husbands are good friends, both been married 5 years, and now will soon both have little boys. She threw me a shower last year when I was pregnant, and she did such a wonderful job I knew I had a lot to live up to.

I decided to do a "Little Pumpkin" theme since it was the week before Halloween.

I made this little advice book. I bought a blank chipboard book at Roberts for $2.99 then decorated it with ribbon, paper and put some rub-on stickers on the pages inside.

Banner:

I made this with my moms Cricut machine, then just bought some baby socks and put them all up with some mini-clothespins and ribbon.

My mom sent me the idea for these pumpkins. Super easy to make. You can find it here.

I also made some Martha Stewart pom poms to go above the food table. You can make these here.

For food I made 7-layer bean dip, caramel apple dip, clam dip, veggie tray, Oreo truffles, and Pumpkin Pie Bites.

I was in the kitchen the day before the party making and baking. Its true what they say: things made from scratch taste better, but its also true that its a lot of work.

I think the most work was these Pumpkin Pie Bites. I got the idea here from Bakerella. Forming the dough in the muffin pan was very time consuming and took me 1 hour to make 1 batch. However, it was well worth the time because they turned out delicious.

For favors I made these, (also done on the Cricut) I put candy-corn and candy corn pumpkins inside.

Out of all the pictures I took, I was a dork and didn't take ONE of the mother-to-be. (However she can be found on my previous post Mike's Big Hurrah if you look closely for a very pregnant woman).

Overall I had a ton of fun planning and preparing this party over the last few weeks. What fun it would be to get paid to be a party planner. Maybe in my next life! I have had lots of ideas rolling around in my head for Emmett's 1st birthday coming up, however after these last 2 parties, he might not get what I've envisioned because his mother is pooped!

Getting Better All the Time

It seems like every stage Emmett has been in over the last year, I think to myself "He's so much fun right now, I don't know how it can get better". But its been proven to me over and over again how wrong I am. Every stage is so fun, just when I think it can't get any better, it does.

Here's a couple of Emmett's newest and latest: (pics taken at Mike's party from post below).

He finally has teeth! It only took 11 months and they arrived top first. (usually they come bottom first) He's got 2 on top, and the 2 bottom ones are creeping up.

And our little guy has taken his first steps. I love those tight hugs from him as he walks to me and lands in my arms.

Its not without its scary moments however...

Or its falls...

I sure love being his mom.

Mike's Big Hurrah

This weekend we celebrated Mike's 30th birthday! And in true Mike fashion at his request, celebrated up in Mueller Park Canyon in Bountiful. We were glad the weather cooperated, it was a beautiful fall day in the 70's. (However by the end of the evening we were huddled around the fire trying to keep warm).

These are the invites I made for the party:

For food I made sloppy joes, cornbread, and a pasta salad.

Trying to keep the cornbread warm:

Grandpa dishing up some sloppy joe's

Opening presents

Mike's parents and I gave him a cordless drill.

Mike's bro Nick gave him an old cassette tape player, the game "Guess Who" and some cassette tapes from the year 1979. (the year he was born). (And I must add, that cassette player has turned out to be a gift for Emmett too, he's loving pushing all the buttons and listening to the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". So thanks for buying me some some free time, it was worth the purchase!)

Mike's sister Melissa printed off a variety of fun memories with Mike from the last 30 years to read, and gave him some burned CD's of old music they used to listen to, along with a gift card to Cold Stone Creamery.

Mike's whole family was there, including grandparents, and his aunt Sharon, our friends Katie and Curtis, Mike's old buddy from LDSBC Josh Patel, and my sister Krista and her hubby Nate.

Nate and Krista gave Mike some black balloon's and a cane. (Handed down from Nate, from his own 30th birthday)

Mike's grandma gave him some cute pictures of when he was younger.

Mike's mom made the cheesecake. (I only had 24 candles so we spelled out the #30)

We had a great time and thank you to everyone who came! Some drove long distances to be there. Stay tuned for more parties around the corner...!

A Good Deal Gone Bad...

All summer long I had been longing for patio set for our backyard. I love Utah's warm summer evenings and eating outside on a patio set is something I had been itching to have. I looked on KSL classifieds, and found lots of good prospects but nothing that caught my eye. As summer was coming to a close I knew the end of summer clearance sales would be starting. I went to Wal-Mart, Target, Lowe's and Home Depot multiple times checking out their patio furniture sales. I found a really nice looking set at Wal-Mart, regular price $488 on sale for $250. Not good enough. I know my Wal-Mart, it was only the beginning of August and I knew they could do better. So I waited and a week later I checked again, and sure enough, it had been discounted to $125! I jumped on it and came home with this little beauty:

(It didn't include the umbrella, we got that at IKEA a few months previously)

We have enjoyed many meals out there on our lovely furniture for the past 6 weeks, the last one being on Sunday.

Last night we had a wind storm, and we woke up to this:

My poor table. The top was made of glass and with the umbrella in the middle, and the wind blowing, it somehow shattered it. Mike's determined to fix it. (no not piece it altogether) ;) but maybe order a new glass top, or make something out of wood. Or I just might call the company that makes them and have them send me another one. So, stay tuned, it may not happen till next summer but hopefully we'll enjoy our table again! If not, I guess we'll just enjoy the chairs!

His First Word

I think this video might go down as one of my all time favorites...

We were in the car and I had to tape him from behind because he won't say it if he see's the camera. He's also much more prone to say it if he can't see me, and only hears me.

The end makes me laugh everytime because its almost like you can hear the impatience in his voice as if he's saying "Enough! I've said it already!"

In need of a good home...

About mid-summer we saw something growing in our garden that Mike couldn't figure out what it was. Mike's the gardener in this family, so I had no clue. He thought it was either spaghetti squash, or watermelon. The reason why he wasn't sure is because, he didn't plant them. They just SHOWED up. Well....weeks went by and we found ourselves staring at these odd vegetables playing a guessing game on what they were, (they were still in a pretty small unformed-form) then it dawned on me when I saw their stems..."Babe, those are PUMPKINS!" He didn't agree...(I think he just didn't want to agree, because of the disappointment that they weren't watermelon).

Anyways, now here's the proof I was right. We have lots of beautiful pumpkins now.

The thing is...we have no idea what to do with all of them! So if any of you are in the area, and would like a pumpkin, PLEASE PLEASE come take them from us. Remember, we didn't plant these, and we have no need for all of them. If nobody comes and gets these, they will probably be smashed by Mike getting some of his masculine energy out over a rock or edge of a cliff. But really, we would rather your darling children or family get to enjoy them instead. So if you find yourself at the store in the next month or so buying pumpkins, save yourself $5 or $10 and pick them up from the Gleue's pumpkin patch instead. If you don't carve them right away, they should last till Halloween.

Because as you can see from this picture...we have (at last count) 15 more coming soon!!

How Grand

We've officially wrapped up our summer by taking one last trip to the Grand Canyon!

We packed all our camping gear up in my parents Subaru, (its got a lot more room than our little Camry) and took the 10 hour drive to northern AZ on Thursday morning Sept 3. We arrived at the campground at about 8:30 at night in the pouring rain. We seriously considered sleeping in the car that night (the back seat folds down) because it was pitch black and looked almost impossible to set a tent up in those conditions. We were starving, so to kill some time we went and got dinner, and by the time we were done it had stopped raining. So Mike set up the tent and we slept cozily. I think he was relieved because with his long legs, the back of the Subaru wasn't looking so comfortable.

Yes, we took Emmett with us. He was a good sport. The hardest thing about taking him was he wanted to crawl and move on his own everywhere we went. He's very mobile now and mommy not letting him crawl on the dirt, rocks, or pavement was a serious heart breaker for him. I listened to more whining from that kid in one weekend than I have in his entire 10 months of life! And like in any road trip, he was buckled up in his car seat for a lot of the time as well, another thing he despises. But other than that, he was a happy little camper and was fun to have around.

We had 2 full days to spend at the park, and 3 nights. The Park provides free shuttle services to everything, visitors centers, lodges, cafe, market, campground, viewpoints, hiking trails etc. And since the campground we were staying at was located inside the park we didn't have to drive our car once we were there. The days were a beautiful 80 degree's and blue skies, but at night around 8 o'clock, it thundered/lighting. Typical desert weather I think. Here's a picture of Emmett on the shuttle. One of the few times he was contently sitting still.

And this is what we would do to keep him happy when he was wiggly:

Some of the wildlife we saw:

I think the most exciting was this little horny toad.

And some others that we chose not to take pictures of were ravens, which were everywhere and loved to eat our leftovers that fell on the ground (Emmett loved them and squealed with delight everytime he saw one). And a black widow spider that decided to take up residence in the womens bathroom at our campground. It first said hello to me as I was drying my hands under the automatic dryer and everytime after that she was there sitting in her web above the mirror. If you know me, you'll know I hate hate hate all things creepy and crawly so lets just say I only went in that bathroom when I was on the brink of losing it all.

Since it was our anniversary while we were there we put Emmett to bed early that night and enjoyed ourselves some fajitas and a crackling fire. Who needs candlelight and steak and lobster?

The Grand Canyon is AMAZING. Its considered one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and we couldn't believe how many people travel to see it from all over. We felt like the minority being Americans. It made me glad that we took advantage of seeing something so spectacular when it can be considered right in our "backyard" compared to someone coming from England or India.

Pictures never can do something like this justice. But here's some to enjoy anyways!

Sunrise

Sunset facing away from the sun.

Storm in the distance

If you look closely you can see a trail with a million switchbacks. We took this picture at an above viewpoint/cliff. Its called the Bright Angel Trail and is 12 miles long. We didn't take it, although they say its one of the most popular ones there.

One thing that surprised me was there's hardly any guardrails or safety fences anywhere. As you can see, the cliff pretty much just drops off behind us.

We had a wonderful trip, but what vacation goes without its hiccups? Ours began about 15 miles down the road on our way home. Mike was driving and noticed the power steering quit working and the battery light came on in the car. He thought it was odd, and not a good sign thinking the alternator was going out. This is when I started to moan "Ohhhhh nooooooo" and began trying to find my happy place. We were in the middle of nowhere Arizona, no cell service, no town for 20 miles, and a car that was not driving well. Luckily the road to the nearest town was mostly downhill so to preserve as much battery power as we could he put the car in neutral and coasted most of the way there. We made it safely. Bad news was the town we were in, Cameron, had no car repair shop, and no stores that sold any car parts. In fact, that tiny town had probably a population of 50. And it was a Sunday on a holiday weekend. We were informed our best bet was in Flagstaff, AZ about 60 miles away in the opposite direction of home.

Here's a picture of Mike holding up, what we discovered was a shredded serpentine belt. I still can't believe with all the stress going on in my brain at the moment I managed to pull out the camera and take a picture.

We called a tow truck and he took us the 60 miles to Flagstaff. We planned on stopping at a Subaru dealership to get it fixed in the morning (on Monday) but found out they were closed until Tuesday due to the holiday. I was having awful images of being stuck in a hotel room for 2 days straight without a car until Tuesday, when all I wanted to do was go home. (Keep in mind we'd been camping for 3 days and had no clean clothes left. And although we got to shower once, I really wanted my own bed and bath)! Well, we decided to call Napa Auto Parts and see if they had a belt, which they did. And thankfully they were actually open on a Sunday. We headed over there in the tow truck, and caught them 15 minutes before closing. This is a picture of the nice employee who stayed 10 minutes longer after they closed to help us out.

It was fixed! We hopped in the car and drove to Kanab, UT and hoteled it for the night. The next morning we were driving along the freeway and came to Richfield, UT (which is in central UT), pretty soon we started seeing signs for Grand Junction, Colorado and noticed we were driving east instead of north. Come to find out, Mike, (who was driving) was talking on the phone and didn't realize the road split in two and he went the wrong way. We had been driving in the wrong direction for 20 miles before we realized it! At this point all we could do was laugh at our luck. Rolling into our driveway that afternoon was a pleasant sight to see! I have the darnedest luck with road trips, this included my 3rd time in a tow truck, and I'm sure not the last. I keep saying someday when we can afford it I'm owning the most reliable vehicle in existence so I don't have to keep doing this!