Hi Pumpkin.

One of my favorite things that we get to grow in our garden are our pumpkins. This year we ended up with about 20. We shared some with cousins, took a couple to work to display and then saved the rest for our 3rd annual Baker Pumpkin Carving Party.

This year was our best year yet. They were the real deal and not some cross pollinated weird mutant pumpkins. Oliver loved them and quickly learned the word "puhkin".


We headed over the my parents house for dinner and then quickly moved on to the carving. (Luke was actually the first one to start...he's pretty hard core about it-remember this and this?)

Oliver wasn't too sure about touching the pumpkins insides...I don't blame him. It is pretty gross.

The group working on their creations.

And of course...

Our Baker Pumpkin Carving Party wouldn't be complete without a little chaos and someone getting the pumpkin belly. I think my dad was happy it was him this year.

But as you can tell, Oliver loved it.

2nd Annual Murder Mystery Party

I love Halloween. I love everything about it including the change in weather, the fun costumes, watching scary movies, trick or treating, pumpkin carving, decorating, and the parties.

Like last year, instead of reading a book for our ward book club, we decided to have a murder mystery party. This year since we all knew what to expect, we went all out and had a great time. I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard as I did that night.

The group:
Top row- Andrea, Robyn, Audry, Emily, Celia, Julie, Jenny and Janet
Middle row- Camila, Tracy, Joslin, Charity and Kamee
Bottom row- Brittany and Me


I was supposed to be dressed up like the bride of Frankenstein....

But I ended up looking more like KISS.

Either way, it was fun to dress up and have such a great night with these ladies. Did I mention I just LOVE HALLOWEEN???

Climbing trip

UEA quickly became one of my favorite weekends so far of this year. Luke and I decided to take full advantage of the few days he got off of school and head down to Moab with some good friends of ours. Luckily, they happened to be climbers and adventurers, so I don't think I need any additional introduction as to how we spent the weekend...

First we hit up some boulders on the day we arrived. Bouldering is definitely hard to master, but it was fun to have something to work at and to warm up our hands and legs for the next days full day of climbing.


We stayed at an awesome campground right in town...However we may be the only ones that thought that being that we were the only group with wee ones that cried a lot during the first night. Lucky for us, the people around us were awesome as well and we heard zero complaints.


Day 2: Climbing on Wall Street.

Luke

Kim

Kassidy

Brittany

Our kids did so well just hanging out in or by the side of our cars. Honestly, I was a little worried, but I think they had just as much fun eating all the treats they wanted, peeing on rocks and being able to pretty much do whatever they wanted as long as they stayed away from the road. Awesome I tell you.


We finished off the trip by going on a hike for the kids where we saw petroglyphs and dinosaur prints. The kids loved it and we loved that it was free, easy, and actually pretty cool.

We also hit up our favorite t-shirt shop ever! Where we ended up leaving with 7 shirts total...yikes. We discovered the delicious food that is the Moab Brewery, and we loved that the fall weather there was perfect with weekend highs reaching 79 degrees.

Moab, We'll be seeing you soon.

Saturday Oct. 9th

We are Wasatch Women and to prove it, we ran up at Thanksgiving Point for the Love Your Body 6k and 10k Races.

These are some of my closest friends in the ward and I'm so happy we got together to spend a perfect morning running together. They are awesome!

I ended up placing in the top 100 finishers and 19th in my age. It certainly wasn't my fastest time, but it definitely was one of my most fun races.

It was also my sisters first race ever. I talked her into running it with me and she did awesome. Just 30 seconds behind me. Sadly, I haven't gotten any of the pictures we took together.

Can't wait to do it again next year. Any and every woman is welcome to join our group.

lacking and almost non existant

I am so far behind on my blog. The end of summer was fun and super busy and to say the least, I'm not home much these days except to sleep. Anyway, there are more posts to be seen here shortly. Stay tunned...

last weekend

I got to spend the majority of last weekend protecting the Jensen Hoard while their parents went out of town. It was so much fun...work...but fun. Here are a few pictures of how we spent the weekend together.

We watched a lot of movies and snuggled here and there. LOVE it when I get some cuddling time in.


We ate LOADS or Otter Pops...


And I mean LOADS!


We went to the boys soccer game...where Aiden scored 1 of the two goals for his team. I was a very proud aunt watching my 3 nephews play.


Oakley and I had a little photo shoot/funny face contest/sing along/video making time. It lasted a while and this girl had me cracking up.


Love her! (and she placed her cute little hand on my face all on her own)


Among other things that we didn't get pictures of we:

* Cruised around in the Beast. One of my favorites!
* Ate out quite a few times. Sadly, I'm not much of a cook.
* Went to our Elders Quorum night where the kids played and ran around for a few hours.
* Went to the store to buy treats one time and a movie the other.
* Took them to church.
* Had friends + kids come play
* Took them to play with my other nephews where they did not want to leave
* Made forts with uncle Luke

Like I said, It was a fun weekend. I just hope they don't get sick of having their aunt and cousin Oliver around so much.

When it's time to party we will always party hard!

We threw Oliver a party. When I first had the idea to throw something together for him, I didn't think it would be anything big...well, it turned out to be huge (to me).

Of course we had a pinata! This was something that I loved as a kid. My mom would always make us a HUGE pinata and so I thought I'd do the same for my kids (minus the making part...I'd rather buy).


Batter up! These kids had some wicked swings but I think out of all of them, little Oakley's was the best.

Although they swung like mad, we still had to bust open the poor little penguin when his head fell off.

Oliver was spoiled by all his cousins. Thank you so much for bringing him such nice gifts.


We sang happy birthday...Baker style of course. And then indulged in the oh so chocolaty birthday cake. Thanks Costco!

We even let Oliver stay up way past his bedtime to have a cookie and a shower and take a quick family picture.

September 12th 2010 was awesome. Thanks again to everyone who came out to celebrate Olivers Birthday with us!