The Scooby Doo gang

Here are pictures of the kids from Halloween. Payton was an orange ghost driving the Mystery Machine, Elaina is Daphne, Luke is Fred and Jared is Scooby Doo. Velma and Shaggy are missing, we will try to get a picture with everyone if we can and I will add it. Weren't they cute? As you can tell, Elaina gets lots of attitude when dressed as Daphne and Jared was VERY excited to be Scooby Doo. I love my kids so much! Thanks honey for doing Halloween without me, I am grateful for such a supportive husband!




I had a lot of fun spending time with Brandon, Sara and Roxie over Halloween in DC. They had a fun party at their house and I was the winner of the girl's doughnut eating contest. Oh, yea! I have a big mouth, what can I say... I will have to get pictures from them and add those too.
`

I will hold you and squeeze you and call you Ollie...

Ever since I found out that we lost the baby I have been feeling like I really need something to nurture and have been trying to talk Dave into a dog. Last Friday we stopped at the animal shelter in Logan while we were over there and there was a 1 year old Jack Russel Terrier that I thought was really cute but he wasn't very cuddly (one of my requirements). We decided to check out the breed over the weekend and see if it might be a good fit for our family. We decided that it might require more exercise and have a little more energy than we could deal with. I went to the shelter in Brigham yesterday and there was a really sweet dog there so I decided to have Dave meet me there after work to see it. It was cute and cuddly but not very soft and would require quite a bit of grooming since it had longer hair. Anyway, we did seriously consider getting that one but decided we wanted to go check the Logan shelter again since there were a lot more dogs there. We got the Jack Russel out again and decided that he definitely wasn't right for us. Then we decided to look at a beagle (Dave has always wanted one) but this beagle was a little bigger than I want running around the house and it nearly knocked over 2 of the kids while we were there and it isn't even full grown. So, we decided neither of those dogs would be good for us and were about to leave when the worker said there was a terrier mix that she wanted us to see. He looked a little like the Jack Russel but is a Feist Terrier and he might be part Chiuahua. He was so soft, cuddly and cute we couldn't leave him there. We have named him Oliver but call him Ollie. He did really great last night, I have only heard him bark once when he was playing with another dog and he whined a tiny bit when we put him in his kennel last night but then slept all night without a peep. Now we just have to get the potty thing down since he isn't housebroke yet. Luckily no number 2 accidents in my house yet! Anybody out there know a great way to housebreak a puppy? I've never done this before.

School days, school days, dear old golden rule days!

Am I the only one that is really happy when kids go back to school? Actually we had a lot better summer this year. We had a lot of fun trips we took and the kids didn't get to the fighting stage until about the last 2 weeks of summer. Here is Payton on his first day of 4th grade, he is in Mrs Bass' class this year:

Elaina on the first day of 2nd grade, she is in Mrs. Howard's class:

Both of them together:

Canning

This is the real reason I was so far behind on my blogging, ok one of the many...Here is what I canned this year:

salsa, whole tomatoes, tomato juice, spaghetti sauce, applesauce, apple butter, jalepeno jelly, pickled beets, mixed pickles, dilly beans, peaches, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, apricot jam, apricot-pineapple jam, frozen corn and corn-on-the-cob, zucchini, beans, grape juice and apple juice.....

whew! I am so glad that canning season is done!!! Here are some of the pictures of my storage now:

Payton's Birthday August 3rd

Payton decided that he would like to go to the Ogden Raptor's game for his birthday this year. We met Dad at Cafe Rio in Riverdale and had dinner and cake and opened presents and then headed to the game.




We got to the game early and as we were sitting there one of the ushers motioned for Payton and threw him a baseball. Dave told him he should go down and try to get some of the player's autographs as they came out of the dressing room. He probably got 20 autographs in all. He was pretty excited!



The game was really good, started out boring but ended with a thrill. The raptors were down 4-0 at the end of the 7th inning. In the 8th they scored 2 and then in the 9th there was 3 balls and 2 outs and the score was still 4-2 and someone hit a homerun to bring 3 guys in and won the game 5-4. Happy 9th birthday Payton!

Wham!

You know how sometimes you feel like everything is going pretty good in your life and then, wham! I had one of those days yesterday. I went in for my 13 week appointment at my doctors office and found out my baby didn't have a heartbeat anymore. This is the first time I have had to deal with this kind of thing and feel like my world has fallen apart. I am so sad, angry, frustrated, worried.....the list could go on and on. I love you little one even if I won't get to meet you in six months!

First OB Appointment

For those of you that haven't noticed the pregnancy ticker to the right, I am pregnant. I had my first prenatal appointment today and was able to see the baby and the heartbeat through an ultrasound. The doctor says I may not be as far along as I thought but that the ultrasound might have just been too fuzzy to get a good measurement. He isn't changing my due date yet and will do another ultrasound at my next appointment to see if the baby is still measuring small. Anyway, I better be 9 weeks and not 7!!! I am already in maternity clothes for heaven's sake! We decided to have one more baby (this is definitely our last!) to try to have a little sister for Elaina! Send pink vibes our way!!! We will be just as happy if it is another boy since our boys are so darn lovable but Elaina will just have to grow up the only girl in a house full of boys.....