Loving Traditions

We have had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend together as a family. Nate was able to make it home Wednesday night to put the kids to bed. Thursday morning we went to our friends/neighbors house to eat pie for breakfast. It is a tradition in their home to have a open house in the morning for a couple of hours to invite friends and neighbors over for pie. I think this year she made close to 20 pies. It was great fun to visit other families before heading off to do our own thing. We had Thanksgiving at my parents house this year. We played games and had a Wii tournament. It was quite fun. I went to bed with the kids at 8:30 and was at the shop helping my mom at 2am. I keep telling myself that every year will be the last that I am doing that, but it hasn't happened yet. Saturday Morning Nate took the kids for their traditional breakfast at Denny's in their Pajamas. This year they invited their Uncle Trent and cousins to come with them. MyLeigh was up at 5 am ready to go. You would have thought that it was Christmas morning. Saturday night Trent, Danielle and their kids came for dinner and to watch "Christmas in the Night Time Sky". We enjoyed the fireworks all bundled up in our blankets, then had hot chocolate and marshmallows. 7 SMilEs on SUndAY

1- Nate spend 4 whole days with us this week. We have definelty been spoiled with his love and attention.
2- My little sister's best friend (and someone I think of as a little sister) had Heart Surgery last week, after some scary moments, she was able to come home yesterday. I am grateful for the opportunities I have to teach my children to pray for others.
3-Putting up the christmas tree and decorating it with the kids. I even realized how much I sound like my mom, " don't put that one too close to the others"
4- Christmas lists. The kids have already made theirs, and I am telling you now, there is DEFINETLY going to be tears on christmas morning. They are so much like me when I was little.
5-Traditions. I love them, I love that we get to make new ones, enjoy old ones and some that become wonderful memories. I can't help but wonder what things will come about next year. Which leads into #6
6- Our last "Christmas in the Nighttime Sky" (oh, it better be! :( ) What a wonderful night we had with my brother and his family. Although the fireworks don't last long, it is something that the kids really enjoy. It is also something that I will always treasure in my heart as a wonderful family memory...sitting on the deck bundled up in the cold watching fireworks with christmas music.
7- Games with family. That is all I am saying! Thank you all for being good sports!

This is a picture that I took of Mady the other night. Every night after she gets her jammys on, she runs to my bed and hops in. After taking this picture, I realized what a big girl she is turning into and that she isn't the baby she used to be. It really pulled at my heart strings.

My Hero

About 5 years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a fireside given by Joseph and Emma Smith's Great granddaughter. What a wonderful testimony builder it was to me. A little while later Nate and I came across the CD "Joseph: A Nashville tribute to the Prophet". It quickly became one of our favorites. This song especially touched my heart after what I had learned about Emma Smith and her hardships after Joseph died. So, the other day on 2 of my friends' blogs I found this video. Now I love the song even more. What a courageous woman. I honestly believe that she never lost her faith. She did what she thought was best for her and her family. She had also given Joseph her word about somethings and I believe that she was trying to keep her word. I am grateful for Emma and the Elect Lady that she was. What a perfect match she was for Joseph. ( thanks Amber and Echo for finding this)

Birthday Season

We have survived our month of brithdays. Actually, is has been over for 2 weeks now. I am just slow getting pictures up. ( I thought you needed to enjoy the halloween ones a bit longer) We started the month off with my birthday on Oct 7th. It was quite differrent this year and not a birthday that I hope gets repeated. Nate promises that he will make it up to me and I am holding him to it! Next we celebrated J's 5th birthday on the 13th of Oct. He decided that he wanted Brownies and ice cream with hot fudge. I was all for it since there was going to be plenty of cake coming up. (We also had my mom's birthday on the 16th.) Jaxon had his 9th b-day on the 7th of Nov. So, now I just noticed that I got him and Mady out of order. So, I am only 1 week behind and not 2! Jaxon decided on chocolate pie, which was great cause I had just learned how to make pie crusts from my friend. Well, I thought I learned how to make them. I actually made 3 before I called her in a panic on saturday night. They were looking ugly and falling. She came to the rescue in more ways than one. We ended up with 3 choc. pies, 1 vanilla cream and 1 coconut cream. I ended up sending 2 pies to neighbors!

Mady had tradional birthday cake for her 2nd birthday. These are our favorite cakes. I order them from Smith's bakery. We get raspberry filling with whipped cream frosting. (This is the only frosting I can stand to eat) I don't think that she can get a bigger bite into her mouth!

7 Smiles on Sunday

I am going to combine the last 2 weeks cause I didn't get this done last week. Mady pulled off 17 of my keys off the laptop. The things she figures out how to do :)

1- As mentioned before, I learned how to make YUMMY pie crusts. No more pillsbury pie shells for Thanksgiving!

2- Christmas music.....I love it and decided that I would pull it out early this year. You should all check out "Straight no Chaser" you will love it.

3- Mady has learned how to say, "NO" and it is a very clear NO. (this is a sarcastic smile)

4- "New Moon" is coming in 4 days! I am excited, but this year we have decided not to be so crazy and stand in line to see it on the first day. We are giving it a couple of days.

5- My Beautiful, Amazing, Inspiring friend had her 6th baby this week.

6- I got to hold a new baby this week. I love how peaceful they are

7- Nate will be home for Thanksgiving. He will be home late wed night and we are crossing our fingers that he will stay till Monday morning. 4 whole nights together. We might get use to sleeping next to each other by the 4th night.

Halloween and 7 S on S

This year had to have been the best Halloween EVER! It started off alittle shaky. On Thursday J found out that our ward wasn't going to be doing a Trunk-or-Treat. That set him off and he informed me that he wasn't going to dress up and NOT going Trick-or-treating to the neighbors cause that was "just dumb". By Sat. I had him convinced that it would be alright. We made plans to go with my Brother and his family to their Trunk-or-treat. After that, we headed up to Grandma and Grandpa Anderson's to show off the costumes. It had to have been the warmest halloween I ever remember. We put Mady in the stroller and headed out to knock on doors. We have never done this with the kids. Usually it is cold and they were little enough that they didn't care, the ward thing was good enough. Once they caught on, we were all running full speed house to house....

They ended up having to dump their bags a couple of times. I will post of picture of that later. I have the extra bags stashed away. (Nate thinks that he is taking them to Richfield with him) By 8:00 all the kids were done except MyLeigh. Nate took her and her cousin Xander out for more. That girl can run forever! She never even complained about the cold. Although I did finally force her to put leggings on. The Best Part of Halloween? It is a tie between Mady learning to say "Trick or Treat" and being together as a family having a great time.

7 Smiles on Sunday

1- Halloween!

2- Mady's birthday is today. My baby is 2. I am so grateful for her quiet personality (don't think that it will last for long)

3- Cheesecake Factory! That is were Nate's company took all of us to dinner. Soooo Yummy!

4- My 24 hours away from the kids is just what I needed to recharge my batteries.

5-Finally a Halloween picture of ALL the kids. No kidding, every year someone is crying, or just won't cooperate. I have never had a picture with all my kids.

6-Sunday dinner as a whole family. I miss that so much

7- For as long as we have all been apart, every week we are getting closer to the end of all this. So glad that we are not starting from the beginning.

A Day Late

Sunday was a little crazy. I was doing so many things with the kids, I totally forgot that I needed to do this!
7 Smile on Sunday:

1- Tomorrow I am going to Salt Lake to spend some time with Nate. He is there for Meetings and his wonderful Bosses invited me to come along.

2- A new "table seat". I ordered one for Mady 2 weeks ago and it finally arrived. She now can sit with the other kids and eat. Bye-Bye High Chair.

3- Our Fantastic Friday is coming up soon and I am so excited for the crafts that I signed up for.

4- Along with #3, I will finally have a friday night were I am not all alone doing nothing! I love hanging out with the girls!

5- The weather has finally turned alittle too cold for Mady to be outside. So glad that I took advantage of the nice weather we had a week ago and spent lots of time at the park

6- We had school pictures last week. This is always something I pray will work. Usually JD gives me the run around and the problems. This time it was Mady. She got on the stool and wouldn't even look up. Then she got really sad and started to cry. I love these pictures every year. What I really love is the memory behind each picture and the chaos that comes along with it. Something that only myself and the child involved knows about. When I see these pictures, the whole morning comes flodding back to me and I just laugh.

7-Did I mention that I am headed to SLC? I can't wait for Wed morning. I am sleeping in (hopefully till 8 maybe longer if there is really DARK curtains) and I don't have to get anyone ready for the day or feed anyone breakfast!

7 Smiles on Sunday and Winterizing

Ok, So I never got our winterizing tip posted during the week as promised. I am putting it below our 7 Smiles on Sunday

1- Jordan had his birthday on the 13th. I am no longer counting down his birthday for him. We are now counting down to Halloween.
2- Legos! I love Legos. My Boys wouldn't play with them when they were little, but I decided to give it a shot with J and he is loving them. MyLeigh and him have been playing with them for hours so quietly all week long.
3- Pigeons. Anything that makes J happy makes me happy. He ended up with a neighbor down in the gully training his dog with pigeons. The next day he went out with him somewhere to watch them shoot them. Now he wants to know when he can take hunters safety. Thanks Derek! ( I hope he wasn't to much trouble, but he had a blast!)
4- Although I have really enjoyed Jaxon playing football, I am glad this is the last week. Now we can get back to normal dinner routine, instead of eating at 4:30 so we can get to practice and games on time.
5-I was getting the kids lunch today and was thinking, "I think that I am going to need some chocolate at some point today". I also realized that I didnt have any in the house. Not 2 seconds later there was a knock at my door. A cute little girl was standing there with my most favorite choc. cookies in the world. I gave her a big hug and told her to go home and give it to her mom. (I hope people stop paying attention to the little thoughts they are getting about me with cheesecake last week and this treat, I am afraid to think about something next sunday)
6-Mady has been blessed with WONDERFUL nursery leaders. She is learning so much and is loving all the songs. I am catching her singing them to herself and when I start singing with her she get so excited to learn that I know them too!
7- One more thing I love about Fall is the World Series. I love Baseball and we are going to keep cheering on the Angels this week. Last night was a great game and they played their hearts out.


Last year was the first year that we had our trailer and needed to winterize it. We were a little nervous about the whole thing and wanted to make sure that we got is done correctly. After talking to alot of people and going to a little instruction class that Bish's held one Sat. morning, Nate felt he was ready to take on the challenge. We got the antifreeze and within 15 min the job was complete. This spring when we opened the trailer back up and were getting it ready for Nate to stay in, this is what we found....


For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a water heater. Yep. Nate forgot to empty the water heater. After going down to State's Trailer, we found out that it was going to cost us about $650 to replace. The shop couldn't get it in for 2 weeks, and by then Nate was going to be gone. After talking to the "mechanic" he told Nate they were easy to replace and he could buy the heater and do it himself for $300. A couple hours later it was all taken care of.

In Sept I received a post card in the mail from Bishs RV. It stated "Bring this card in for free Winterization on your Trailer". Nice I thought. Where was this card last year?

Don't forget to empty your Water Heater!

7 Smiles on Sunday- week 2

1- The week started with one child sick, 3 days later all of us had caught the bug in one way or other. I personally HATE throwing up. Nate laughs at me cause I whine and cry through it all. I would seriously go through 4 labors than have to throw up. Anyway, the smile is, hopefully we have had our share for the season and we are done with the stomach flu.

2- This weekend was our stake conference. My friend's husband was working in the ER on Sat night, so we went together. We went to dinner, then the meeting. I am so blessed with wonderful friends, who are such great examples to me. The meeting was wonderful and I was so blessed that I attended.

3- Jaxon's Parent Teacher Conf. went well. Of course I heard the same thing that I have been hearing for 3 years now. This time is was said like this. "Jaxon is such a lady's man. The thing that is so funny is he is SO vocal about it" I am just glad that Jaxon can be friends with everyone.

4- MyLeigh's Conf. went well too. She is loving school and soaking everything up like a sponge. I love her enthusiasm to learn. Both kids have wonderful teachers that inspire them.

5- My wonderful Visiting Teacher brought me a cherry cheesecake today. It totally made my day. It is my most favorite thing in the whole world. How did she know?

6- Jordan's birthday is in 2 days. He has been counting down since day 24. He will be 5 and he is still alive. (well, he does have 48 more hours)

7- This one is for Nate....Get out your brooms out, the ANGELS swept the Red Sox 3-0. Game 3 was a nail biter!

For those of you with a trailer, you will want to see the post that will be up in the next couple of days. It is a GREAT winterizing tip!

7 Smiles on Sunday

I am taking this idea from my cousin, Tara. I hope that it will be a new little Tradition on our Blog. Wish me luck!

1-This weekend is my most favorite of the whole year. It must be Fall and Conference!

2- A sweet little almost 2 year old that has snuggled up with me all weekend. She even let me rock her to sleep. I don't think that has happened since she was a month old. Alright, the truth was that she has not felt good, but I love the cuddle time with her.

3- A daughter that has cried because they didn't have school this last thur and Fri and she just found out that she only has school 3 days this next coming week. I am so blessed that she loves to learn. I pray that she is always this eager.

4- Smiling cause Jaxon's football game this week didn't go into overtime. It was barely 40 degrees and I was freezing. An hour was long enough.

5- Jaxon's football team won 28-7, which turned into no practice on Thurday. This was a blessing to me cause we do football every night but friday and it gets a little crazy.

6- Pulled out a box of New Fall clothes for the kids that I had packed this summer (cause I thought for sure by the time they needed them, we would be moved) Anyway, realized that I won't be needing to shop for their birthdays. I think I knew this awhile ago, but I forgot!

7- Loved that Nate came home with weekend. We thought he would be home Friday late late, but Jordan looked out the window and saw Nate's car in the driveway at 6:00. Not only was that great, he had also talked to our neighbor and got FB tickets to the ISU game on saturday afternoon. He took all the kids and they has a great time. Thanks so much for the tickets Jeff, they were great!