Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving was very low key for us this year, for which we are actually very grateful for.  It was a pretty eventful November for us, but perhaps that deserves another post someday.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at our friends house, who happen to be our next door neighbors.  They are wonderful people and Hannah loves to play with them.  They went all out this year with the food -- ham (nope, not turkey this year), mashed potatoes, rolls, baked beans, green beans, asparagus, artichoke spinach dip, fruit salad, berry pie, and key lime pie.  We were pretty stuffed when we finished.

Of course, Hannah doesn't go for any of that kind of food (I seriously think she has a food phobia. She freaks out if any food is sticky, gooey, wet, etc.).  So Hannah enjoyed some cheerios and yogurt melts.  Silly girl.

We were able to talk with both of our families either on the phone or by video chat.  We felt of their love from being thousand miles away, and we hope they felt of our love as well.  We miss them very much.

During the fall season, our house was decorated to help us get in the harvest mood.  Here are some of our decorations.

Halloween 2013

I know.  Halloween was a few weeks ago, but this post is better late than never so here we go.

Hannah was Rainbow Brite and she ended up wearing my former Halloween costume from when I was 3 years old.  My mom made this costume for me when Rainbow Brite was in it prime, and I loved it so much that I ended up wearing it for 2 consecutive Halloweens.

As Halloween was approaching, I thought to myself "I know I can make something for Hannah, but I just don't have the time or energy for it, and I don't want to spend money buying a costume.  What is she going to be for Halloween?"  That is when it happened.  I was getting out some Halloween decorations, and I saw this costume in the spare closet and thought "hmm...I think it will fit Hannah."  And that is how she became Rainbow Brite for Halloween.

As Hannah went trick/trunk-or-treating, the kids didn't get who she was, but all of the adults did and they were amazed at how awesome the costume was.  So way to go Mom!

This year Hannah definitely "got" Halloween.  She enjoyed going from house to house (or sometimes trunk to trunk) and saying "trick or treat," "please," and "thank you."  Hannah loved it so much that she covered our entire street (about 25 houses), and she still frequently asks us to go trick-or-treat.

Hannah enjoyed picking out candy, and then coming home to see her stash.

This year she also go to eat some candy (she hasn't really been interested in it before).  We let her pick out what she wanted to eat and she picked Nerds and she loved them.  She still asks to eat Nerds so that candy must have made a good impression on her.

The day after Halloween, Nathan and I went to an adult Halloween party with some members of our church.  We decided to dress as Guess Who? characters (though we changed the names of our people to make it a little more eccentric).  We highly recommend these costumes because they were really easy to put together, they were very comfortable, and they didn't cost us one penny!  It doesn't get better than that.

Well.  That was our 2013 Halloween.

Conference

General Conference was this weekend and it was wonderful.

We enjoyed the talks that were given and received answers to many questions/concerns that were on our mind.  Just to give you an idea on how helpful conference was, I wrote down 10 questions and every single one of them was answered in some way or another!  That's pretty remarkable.

I am looking forward to reading the talks in the upcoming Ensign, and seeking more guidance and help with things yet to come.

As usual, Nathan and I did our conference song pool again.  We didn't do that great but we still had fun.  Here are the results:

Nathan 16%
Rachel 23.33%

President Monson photo courtesy of lds.org

Palmyra

One of the perks of living in PA, is that we are a less than 4 hours away from Palmyra, NY.

Palmyra has special meaning to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It was in Palmyra that the First Vision took place.  Other reasons why Palmyra is special: the first copies of the Book of Mormon were published here, it was at the Hill Cumorah that Joseph Smith received the plates, there is a Temple there, and Palmyra is close to the Peter Whitmer home where the church was officially organized.

Last weekend, Nathan and I headed up to Palmyra for a day and a half anniversary date.  It was great!  Our wonderful neighbors watched Hannah for us so we could enjoy a short weekend together.

Friday afternoon, after Hannah went down for a nap we drove up to NY.  The drive was gorgeous because it was green everywhere!  We checked into our hotel, and then went over to the Temple.  The Palmyra temple is really neat.  All of the windows are stained glassed to depict the sacred grove (where the first vision took place). **FYI, since our camera is out of commission, the temple photos below are from ldschurchtemples.com**

However, there is one window in the temple that you can see through.  In fact, it is the only window in the history of the church's temples that is a two way window.  It's called the "Hinckley window."

Apparently President Hinckley wanted a clear window in the reception area so that people could look out of the temple and see the sacred grove.  Pretty cool, huh?  President Hinckley thought of everything!

The next day, we ate breakfast and then headed out to see some of the other church history sites.  We stopped at the Hill Cumorah visitors center to get a map of the sites, and we ended up running into one of Nathan's former professors.  Small world.

After visiting with Nathan's former professor, we took a small trek up to the top of the Hill Cumorah to look at the monument the church has built.

Here is the view from the top of the hill looking out.  This is where the Hill Cumorah Pageant takes place each year.  Isn't it gorgeous?  Look how green it is!  This is one plus of living on the east coast.

Of course, there was no monument on the Hill Cumorah when Joseph Smith received the plates.  It looked more like this back in the 1820s:

We noticed that the monument has a small creature hanging out.  Check out this little frog on Angel Moroni's arm.

After the visiting the Hill Cumorah, we headed over to the Smith family farm so that we could go walk around in the Sacred Grove.  There was almost nobody there so we pretty much had the entire grove all to ourselves.  It was pretty awesome.  We sat down on a bench, enjoyed the peace and quiet there, and read the account of the first vision in the scriptures.

When we were done with the sacred grove we got back into the car, drove over to the site where the Book of Mormon was published, but we didn't have anytime to stop and do the tour.  That will have to be another time.  It was approaching lunch time so we actually headed back up to the top of the Hill Cumorah, busted lunch out of the cooler, and ate while enjoying the view.  It was pretty incredible.

When we finished lunch we decided that it was time to head home.  Hannah was excited to see us, but sad to leave the neighbors house.  She had a lot of fun playing with Claire and Harrison.



Palmyra temple picture courtesy of ldschurchtemples.com
Stained glass windows picture courtesy of ldschurchtemples.com
Hinckley window picture courtesy of ldschurchtemples.com
Sacred grove view from temple picture courtesy of ldschurchtemple.com

Another year of marital bliss

Happy Anniversary Nathan!

You still make me laugh just as much as I am in this photo.

August -- stressful, decorative, painful, and puzzling

**A reminder for those who may have forgotten -- we couldn't purchase our PA house until we sold our IA house.  With that reminder these next few paragraphs will make more sense.**

Stressful part:
The first two weeks of August took FOREVER to complete simply because of our house.  There were many esthetic repairs (and a few structural ones) that needed to be made on our house and those repairs got delayed until August 12th -- grrrr!  So we had to wait around for a few weeks before we could close on the house which made things stressful, trying, taxing, difficult, hard, tough, traumatic, tense, and extremely frustrating.  Those words alone cannot even come close to painting an accurate picture of what we went through the first few weeks.

However, the day finally came and we closed on our house here in PA.  Hallelujah!  It is all over with!

The day we closed on the house we went to Home Depot, picked up some new door knobs, and changed the locks on the house.  Hannah enjoyed helping Nathan using his tools.  She LOVES to help.

Decorative part:
In our little moments of spare time we have spent the last few weeks putting holes in our walls and making it OUR home by hanging pictures, mirrors, shelves, and other decorations.  I'm hoping that in several months we can slowly start painting our house to add more color and character to it.

First, we hung pictures above our mantle (for the last 14 months we had them on the mantle leaning up against the wall).

We bought this mirror on sale over a year ago at Home Depot with the intention of hanging it in our bedroom.  Well, we finally hung it this weekend!  Now I just need to find a dresser or some other kind of furniture to re-finish so that I can put it underneath the mirror.

Nathan (with Hannah's help in finding wall studs) also hung this mirror that I found at Hobby Lobby a month ago.  It was originally a $180 mirror, and I got it for $36.  Gotta love Hobby Lobby!  Again, now I just need to find a small table to re-finish to put underneath the mirror.

In April, I found this letter decoration at Hobby Lobby for $13.  I thought it would look awesome in our entry way so I purchased it and have been holding onto it for 4 months.  I knew I wanted to change the color of the letter, but I wasn't quite sure what color so I waited (you'll see the final product a few pictures down).

Earlier this summer one of my friends from church gave me this shelf that she no longer wanted. I took it off her hands and figured I could refinish it.  So I sanded it down, spray painted it, and we just hung it on the wall, along with our newly colored letter decoration.  I think it looks pretty good.

Before:

After:

So far, those are the decorating things we have done to the house this month.  When I get my fall decorations our house will look more festive.

Painful part:
Many of you know I've been taking horseback riding lessons from a dear friend, Shawn, who owns several horses.  Earlier this month I went for a riding lesson and got to ride a different horse so that I could see/feel how each horse has different strides, trots, canters, behaviors, quirks, etc. This here is Ilana, but she is nicknamed "Lans."

Things were going great and we were all having a good time.  But then Lans got spooked by something in the training rink and bucked me off.  Not very fun!  Apparently I did everything right during my fall so I didn't get injured too much.  My nerves were a little rattled, but that's normal.

I knew that the best thing for me to do was to get right back on the horse, so I did.  Shawn attached her training rope to Lans' apparatus in case of another incident, and we started to walk around some with me on the horse to gain my confidence back.  After 10 minutes of walking, we headed back over to the scene of the accident and Lans got spooked again by something, reflexed causing me to loose my balance and fall off again.

With this fall I got some minor rope burns on my hands and I knew that my entire body would be sore the next day.  As I was getting up from my fall I noticed Shawn went right into action and started disciplining her horse by doing some training exercises with Lans in that corner of the rink.  I just sat back and watched Shawn work her magic.  It was pretty cool.  Ten minutes later, she had me get back on the horse and we walked around for about 5 minutes before I dismounted and called it a day.

The next several days were filled with aches and bruises, sore muscles, and a few bandages on my hands for my rope burns.  All of this, of course, took place at the beginning of the month with the drama of the house.  Timing was awful.

I am happy to say though that since then I have been back for another riding lesson (with my original horse) and things are going great!

Puzzling part:
My house has become the gathering place for some of the kids on our street during the summer. I think it's because they get bored at their homes so they come over to mine.  One day the kids wanted to play with puzzles so I let them go to town.  That inspired me to do this 750 piece puzzle of the World Trade Center.  Pretty cool.

Well, that is what happened to us in August.  Glad it's over with!