Catch up

So life has been crazy.  Very crazy and busy.  I was cleaning out my pictures on phone the other day and noticed that I forgot to put in some pictures of Nathan, Hannah and I these last 4 months.  So here we go.

We took advantage of the 4th of July sales this summer and bought our first lawn mower -- ever! This was big for me because, well, my family never owned a lawn mower.  We always hired people to mow our lawns so this really is the first time I have ever owned a lawn mower.

When fall came we started taking advantage of the warmth from the fireplace.  Nathan was getting cozy on the floor, and Hannah decided to get cozy with Nathan.  It was very cute.

After Halloween went, Hannah took some yarn I was using to make a wreath with and decided to have a little fun with Kronk.

Hannah loves -- LOVES -- to get stickers from the cashiers at Target.  Well, one day someone gave her 4 stickers.  Before we got out of the store she had them all on her.

We started getting The Friend (a church magazine for children) seeing that Hannah is starting to get old enough now.  She enjoyed browsing through it with Nathan when we first got it.  Now she enjoys finding the sheet music in the magazine and playing the piano.

In November our church had an event called Young Women in Excellence, and we did a black and white theme.  Young Women in Excellence is an event in which young women (ages 12-18) are recognized for the good things they are doing.  It's a celebration of Personal Progress.  It was fun to help decorate with the girls for the evening.

Hannah enjoyed having Joy (one of her babysitters) come over and do her hair, along with our neighbor friend Claire.

Helping Daddy shovel the driveway.  It snowed a few days before Thanksgiving, and this is really the first time that Hannah has ever played in the snow.  She LOVED it.  The neighbor kids came over with their sleds and Hannah and Nathan played and went sledding while I played catch up here at the house.

A few days after Thanksgiving, Hannah got a little sick (just a head cold), but it meant that she got up several times in the night and took some well needed naps.  I managed to snap this shot one afternoon just after I put her down.  Life is just too precious.

Hannah had a dentist appointment, and honestly, I thought it was going to be somewhat disastrous but she was AMAZING.  We practiced a few days leading up to her appointment on opening big and behaving like a big girl.  It must have paid off because she was great.  She didn't even want to sit on my lap.  She hopped right up on the chair, asked for the sun glasses, and laid down in the chair ready to go.  That's mommy's little girl. :)

One of the prizes that Hannah got from the dentist was a new princess Belle toothbrush. Hannah is obsessed now with it and only wants to use that toothbrush, period.  It's actually quite cute and she gets super excited to brush her teeth.  Again, that's mommy's little girl.

One Sunday afternoon, we went next door and helped decorate sugar cookies.  Hannah decorated one cookie, but didn't want to eat it seeing that the frosting was gooey.  She did however keep steeling the sprinkles off all the other cookies.

Hannah and Harrison (one of the neighbor kids).  Hannah loves to play with Harrison.  A funny thought -- the age difference between Nathan and I is exactly the same age difference between Hannah and Harrison.

Lastly, Hannah has enjoyed reading The Elf on the Shelf book (about 4 times a day).  Jasper came to our family last year, but this year she is thoroughly enjoying it.  She likes to go and find Jasper each day as he usually ends up in odd places.

And yesterday, we all helped shovel our driveway.

Hannah's Birthday

Hannah had birthday!  Boy it's crazy how fast time flies.  Our lives have been so blessed these last several years with our little munchkin that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without her bubbly personality.

Hannah enjoyed opening presents and video chatting with grandparents on her birthday. Technology is great!  Here is what some of her day entailed.

Hannah enjoyed laying out all the tissue paper on the floor as she unwrapped one of her gifts.

After getting all the tissue paper spread out, she found a Mrs. Potato head.  Hannah calls it "tato-head."

She also received a block train set -- that Kronk had to inspect of course.

A Rainbow Brite ornament (Mom...she LOVES IT!).  She told me later that she was going to be Rainbow Brite in 20 years.  Hannah is starting to say some really funny and random things these days.

A pretty dress and sweater.  Hannah received a plethora of compliments on her dress yesterday at church.

Hannah enjoyed wearing the paper crown that came in Grandma's and Grandpa's card.

And as all the unwrapping of gifts was happening, Kronk continued to be the idiot that he is, jumped in the bag, and just hung out while Hannah opened the rest of her gifts.  We love how Kronk makes us laugh.

Hannah was excited to eat her cupcake.  The entire time at the store she kept saying "eat cupcake, eat cupcake."  So when we got home, I put her in her chair and her wish was granted. But just as we predicted, she didn't even want to eat it.  Seriously, this girl has issues with any sticky, gooey, or tacky foods.  Nathan and I ended up eating her cupcake we bought for her (there was no way I was going to make a big cake if she wasn't going to eat any of it).  We forgot to take a picture of Hannah with her cupcake so I took a screen shot of the video.  Not great quality, but oh well.

That was Hannah's big day.  All and all she had fun.  She has been looking forward to opening her presents and she kept talking about them all week so I know she enjoyed that part at least. Happy Birthday Hannah!

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.