Happy Fall! Back to Blogging. :)

September 27, 2019

Happy Fall!!! 

I just decorated our front porch for the season. :)

I seriously haven't posted for about 2 years! I want to get back to blogging, mostly because I want a picture journal to print off in addition to my personal journal I keep already. :)

We have a big chalkboard I wrote on and brought out some fun fall decorations I've made through the years and bought a new pumpkin sign for our front door. We planted 4 pumpkin plants in our back yard and have 9 orange pumpkins in the back yard ready for us to carve and put out as decorations soon. :) I love this season and I love decorating!

So I'm going to write this post going back in time, so I'll finish with our summer vacation we went on this year to Utah to visit family and friends. :)

Last week was my 31st birthday and Mitchy and the girls made me an upside down pineapple cake! It was so delicious!

Mitchy got me a framed picture of the two of us from this past summer in front of the Salt Lake Temple at the wedding of my friend and former mission companion, Abby Marshall Padilla.

My brother Stuart found this amazing picture! :)

I received so many kind birthday wishes and gifts and Mitch, Lydia and Jane made it such a special day for me. :)

Jane loves bows!

We got to watch Maizy, a sweet Maltipoo of our friends, the Wongs. She is so sweet and we all have so much fun when she comes!

Lydia holding a worm Dada brought in for the girls to see. :)

We've been doing a lot in our yard lately, including seeding and over seeding our lawn. :)

Lydia's drawing of our family at Stake Conference. :)

Lydia wearing my pink flamingo shirt. :)

Us three girls in front of a pumpkin display at the store! We love fall!

Dada reading a book to the girls. They LOVE story time with Dada. Every night before bedtime, he tells a story he makes up that often lasts weeks at a time! Right now we are in the middle of The Legend of Lydia and Jane where Lydia is on a quest to find the 3 stones Princess Jane told her about so they can get the relic and destroy the evil that has come to the kingdom!

Halloween spoiler!!! We three ladies are all going to be fairies. :)

Jane sitting by our fire pit in her little princess chair. 

Jane's first visit to the dentist! She did a great job. Lydia is pro now, she got her teeth cleaned and had fun. Jane is still warming up to it but still did great. :)

Lydia reading with Jane and our friend Vera.

Fun hat time! They always say, "Look, I'm Pollyanna!"

At the beginning of the summer, we made a goal to Kayak across Lake Washington!!! We made it, thanks to Mitch!!! It was the first time Jane didn't try to jump out of the boat, thank goodness. All the snacks helped her too. :) It was a blast and took about an hour to go across and come back. 

We borrowed a bouncy house from our Bishop Rockwood for the summer carnival and we invited neighbors over to jump on it too! It was a blast, the girls loved it!

Here Jane is helping me make bread while wearing some little sunglasses. She is seriously a foodie. She LOVES food! She always requests things to eat and she ADORES cooking all the time. She loves pizza, muffins, quesedillas, milkshakes, cheesecake, cookies and more. Thankfully she likes eating spinach leaves and pretending she's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

Last week she saw a box of macaroni and cheese. She got a pot out of the drawer, put it on the stovetop and got a chair and pushed it up to the stove to help cook. 

We went with our friends, Katy, Vera and Dean to the fair! It was so fun! We went duck racing, went to the petting zoo, watched some guys carve wood bears with chainsaws, watched some horses and went on the carousel.  Then we got some dippin dots. :)

They were pretty tired afterwards!

Mitch bought me this hibiscus plant back when we were at BYU in Provo, Utah. It was so beautiful when it first bloomed, but then for years it never bloomed. :( But this year it bloomed for the first time in a long time! :)

Jane stretching cheese from her grilled cheese sandwich. :)

Putting on the birthday hats and gear in the primary room! :D

A recent yard project, resurfacing the driveway! Mitch did a great job. :)

A summer visit to the Seattle Temple with the girls. I love going to the Temple and feeling peace there. Despite the chaos and craziness in the world, I always feel like I'm in a safe, peaceful place when I serve in the Temple or walk around the grounds with my family.

Sitting on a stone bench underneath camellia trees in the Temple gardens.

Building block babies!

Jane cooking up hotdogs on her grill out back. :)

Beach day! Lydia asked to be buried in the sand! It was a blast!

Our garden!!! We grew tomatoes this year, cucumbers and pumpkins. We harvested all of the cucumbers and made some yummy canned pickles, we've been harvesting tomatoes still and canning diced tomatoes and we've grown the pumpkins like I mentioned earlier that we will harvest soon! :)

Jane cooking again! Seriously, we wonder if she will be a professional chef one day.

Going for a Sunday walk. :)

Salon day! I cut Lydia's hair and gave her some layers! She wanted some yummy chocolate milk and to watch some of her favorite show, Peppa Pig, while I cut her hair. 

Making s'mores around the fire pit!

Canning pickles!!!

This is the fishing pond I made for the Summer Carnival the primary and many other amazing organizers like Tiffany Wilson put on at our church parking lot! It was a blast!!! The kids had so much fun. :)

Here is the flyer we made. :)

Lydia and her friend Grace eating cotton candy!

Game booths! Kids got to earn tickets to buy prizes and everyone including adults received a ticket book with food items to get, including cotton candy, churros (made by Mitch and other volunteers), hot dogs, popcorn, snow cones, watermelon, lemonade and baked goods. It was very tasty and super fun!

Jane in the bouncy house!!! She loved it! She bounced for like, 30 minutes!

Lydia with her churro and her friend, Vera with her tickets she earned, both with matching cat painted faces! :D

Jane loved the snacks! Here she is with a blue raspberry snow cone! She ate tons of watermelon too, it was awesome!

We snagged Mitch from his churro post for long enough to get a family picture. :)

The girls got crowns, a Clifford plush and a Hello Kitty toy. They were quite pleased and had a ton of fun!

We went on a bike ride and stopped on the path to pick blackberries! Lydia and Jane love watching how Peppa Pig's grandma made blackberry crumble, so we looked up a British crumble recipe and made blackberry, strawberry and blueberry crumble! Topped with vanilla ice cream, it was SO YUMMY! I love summer produce!

Another yard project, Mitch and I planted an Autumn Radiance Maple Tree in our front yard! It grows in a rounded shape and we can't wait for it to be big enough to make leaf piles for the girls to jump in!!!

This was the first time we watched Maizy the dog for our friends, the Wongs, and we had so much fun! We built a block tower around Lydia first.

After she knocked hers over, we built one around Jane.

Then we built one around Dada's head! :D It was super fun!

Maizy loves sitting on Lydia's lap. :)

Here is Jane walking Maizy. :)

Poor Jane had to get some shots at her 2 year doctor appointment, but shots always mean ICE CREAM CONES!!! They were super tasty!

Here is Lydia singing, "Daddy finger, Mommy finger, brother finger, etc." using some raspberries from our bushes. We planted the bushes last year and got a lot more berries off of them this year than we did last year, but we hope to have enough next year to make raspberry jam! (Also, if anyone here in Washington wants a bush, they spread and we have to pull some out this year, so let me know and we can put some in a pot for you!)

Jane grilling up a storm in her pj's. She seriously plays cooking ALL THE TIME! :)

Jane gave Dada a burger, lucky guy! :D

Car cuties!

Princess Jane, ready for church one Sunday morning. :)

Sweet big sister Lydia helping Jane put on her shoes. 

I didn't get a picture of Jane helping paint this bird house, but we painted it and then Lydia helped me screw it together! We're going to hang it up next spring for some cute birds to live in. :)

So this post is going back in time, as I said, so this was our visit to Grandma Robison's house in Utah. :)

The girls love her snuggly rug on the floor.

Jane playing at Mitch's parent's house.

In the MTC in Provo and in the CTM in São Paulo, Brasil, I was companions with two fabulously amazing women, Abby Marshall (now Padilla) and Katie Davis (now Christensen). Here's us in Brasil! 

As each of us got married we attended one another's sealings in the Temple, and I was SOOOOO thankful that it worked out for us to be there in Utah to attend! Once we received their wedding announcement, we decided to extend our trip two days so we could go! I was married in the Draper Temple, Katie was married in the Bountiful Temple, and Abby was married in the Salt Lake Temple! 

The door of the Salt Lake Temple.