festival of trees

now that we're back in utah, we get to go to festival of trees again!  i love festival of trees.  it's so inspiring and uplifting and it is such a great cause to contribute to.

 

on our drive down to festival, i kept thinking i smelled something foul, but i couldn't figure out what it was.  when i finally pulled reese out of her car seat i found the culprit.  reese has pooped all over her outfit and her carseat!  tyler and i had to make a surprise trip to target to get reese some new clothes.  here is reese waiting for her new outfit while trying out katelyn's carseat.

she quickly discovered that katelyn keeps treasures hidden next to her seat and decided to explore.

one of my favorite parts of festival are the fabulously decorated trees. each tree is dedicated to a loved one that has passed on.  it is a very bittersweet experience walking around reading about those loved ones and seeing those trees that they most likely would have loved.

we of course had to take a picture of the green bay packers tree

speaking of the packers, while we were there, tyler's siblings gave tyler his birthday present which happened to be a green bay packer jersey.  and not any jersey, but aaron rodgers jersey (the quarterback.  tyler often got told by strangers he looked like him while in wisconsin).

we also spent some time in the kiddie area where they had a whole slew of fun activities for kids.  grandma and grandpa were so nice to spoil our kids while we were there. they let them do any activity they wanted.

 

the girls chose to get their fingernails painted.  reagan was a little nervous at first, but she loved the end result.

katelyn was in heaven, of course.  she's a girly-girl that's for sure.

the kids also got their faces painted.  katelyn thought it was so neat that her music teacher from her school painted her face.

katelyn and tanner also chose to go in the bubble machine and did a great job.

 

 

 

grandma and grandpa also let the kids choose one thing to buy and take home with them.  katelyn chose fairy wings and a wand and tanner chose cookies.  very fitting choices for each kid.

 

the whole gang

 

motivation to crawl

reese really has no motivation to crawl.  for now she is content in one place.  i decided to give her a little motivation.  i put out some puffs (which were a big hit at nine months) and she took my bait.  instead of trying to scoot though, she just rolled herself around until she was close enough to reach the goodies.

and boy was she proud of herself!

cousin fun

we've loved living close to my sister erin and her family.  our kids have a chance to get to know each other, and they really seem to love spending time together.

these pictures were taken back when it was much warmer out.  the kiddos wanted to go out and play, so we indulged them.

 

and they all indulged me and let me take individual pictures of them.

reese at nine months

reese has such a calm, sweet spirit to her. i can tell she is growing up and understanding so much more.  reese just loves food, especially table food. if we are eating, she wants it, and gets frustrated if we don't share with her.  right now reese always has a huge smile when anyone looks at her and makes this new cute old man noise. reese doesn't want to miss out on the action. she loves being where the party is. reese's first tooth finally popped through!  reese loves looking at books. right now she is really into animal books and loves to try to touch all of the animals in the books.  we love this little girl.

dressing up at school

katelyn made this cute little getup at school for thanksgiving.  i thought she looked pretty darn cute in it.

thanksgiving week and tyler's vacation

tyler's first vacation week happened to be the week of thanksgiving.  it was so fun having tyler around.  we decided that instead of going somewhere big, we would do a little staycation around our area. 

 

the first day of tyler's vacation we headed out to park city for a night.  we found a great deal on a hotel, so we decided it was the perfect one-night stay for our family.  we swam in the heated pools, grabbed some fast food where we attemped a group shot,  watched a movie that night in the hotel and walked around the outlets the next day before heading home.

tyler and i had been talking about taking the kids to a fun indoor amusement park called jungle jims.  we checked ksl where we found a deal and were on our way.  the kids loved it.

 



 

thanksgiving day tyler and i didn't have a ton of cooking to do.  we were in charge of the pies this year and had done most of the work the night before.  so while tyle was out playing football, the kids and i talked about pilgrims.

 

i found this idea online.  you write out a timeline of the pilgrim's voyage on pieces of paper, then flip the pages over and read about what happened.  the kids thought it was really fun.

thanksgiving dinner this year was at the hedin's house.

our pies.  tyler made the pomegranite and the caramel apple pie, and i made the pumpkin pie.

the whole gang.  i didn't realize how dark this picture was until i looked at it later.  katelyn and tanner are not shown because katelyn was sitting at the kid table on her own.  tanner fell asleep on the couch.

for our vacation we also hit up ikea and worked on things around the house.  it was so nice having tyler home!