It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. . .

Oh Oregon. It has been too long since we have been here last. It has been so much fun spending this month here. We have been outside, played with cousins, enjoyed Christmas festivities, and have taken in all the beauty that we can before we had back to West Texas. 

Maggie has liked the colder weather for the sheer fact that she can wear her snow flake hat that Grandma Matthews made her and her mittens. I think she feels like Elsa when she wears them.

Sam made a new best friend, Lucy. I don't know if I can same the same for Lucy because as you can see, Sam loves to grab fistfuls of hair when they play together. His favorite is when the dog licks him, which is pretty gross.

Maggie has liked her cousins. She went to Rita's preschool one day and had a blast with the letter "K" doing kickball, eating Kix, making a kite, and making a kindness coupon. Her coupon was good for sleeping on the floor. I don't know where that came from.

One of the first things we did was visit the Zoo lights. It was quite impressive all the lights that they had up. Maggie even got to ride the train with Mike. I love carrying Sam around because he was my own personal space heater.

We cut down our own tree for a tree farm down the street. Kids had a blast being outside, getting a bit muddy, kicking over stumps, putlling off the needles, and running through the maze of trees.

We decorated the tree that night and drank eggnog. 

Autumn Love

These two crack me up. We had a big pile of leaves a few weeks ago that was begging to play in. It had to end short when Sam learned that leaves are fun to eat. Yuck!

According to Maggie

The captions to these photos are all written by the beautiful Maggie. Hope you are can understand what is going on in the photos. (...) are by me.

(since she is not in the photo, she didn't want to comment. Sam was all ready to order at the resturant with Rachel and Jared)

Jesus. Jesus Statue. It's not scary. (She was really scared to see the Jesus statue. She also had an accident right afterwards and striped toher bum before we could see what was happening)

I see water. At the temple. Water. water. (She really liked the fountains and asked to pose up by the doors)

I see a water. water. water. (see a theme with the temple photos) 

Sam all buckled up. (We went for a Sunday walk to Bridal Veil falls with the Barbers)

Mommy, Jack, Daddy. (Nicole-she still talks about Jack and how Jack's mommy made her a tiara)

I put stick in the water.

I don't know. (Again, she is not in the photo, so she could care less. But look at that cutie)

Mommy and Sam go into the water.

I painting. I painting in there. 

Maggie and daddy going in the water.

 Maggie and Grandma making cookies.

Timothy and boy James are funny. (We had a couson sleep over that was really fun, crazy, and had included little sleep)

Secret club house.

I watching the tv. I watching the newspaper. (I thought it was super funny that she was so desperate to watch TV that she was watching the news, in her Ariel dress)

My car. I sit on it. (For our "w" day, we made a car with wings and wheels)

Our Week at Catherine's

We just finished our week at Catherine's house, meaning we are also done with Utah county. We kicked off the week with a BYU Football game with Mike's parents. Rumor had it that they sold a "Cougar Braut". It is a maple bar with a braut in the middle. We had to try it. Surprisingly, it tasted like breakfast: the doughnut was like a pancake, the frosting was like maple syrup, and the braut was like the sausage. Sadly, the cougars lost, but we still had a great time being back in cougar country.

These three hooligans were quite the team. They all got along so well. Henry really should be part of this photo because when he wasn't in preschool, he was the ring leader of them. Maggie fell in love with Henry's energy.

While being in Utah, I have wanted to show Maggie as many temples as possible. I know that we won't see all of them, but it has been so good talking about temples with her. This first temple is the Provo City Temple (you would think that they would come up with a more distinctive name). Maggie was not liking all the loud cars near by. At the Provo temple, she had to use the restroom. Normally, I would let her do her busy on a tree, but I didn't feel like that would be appropriate here. She was so excited to go inside to use their restroom in the visitor's room.

We went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was more for older kids, but really well done.

Sam loved the area where you can dig for bones in the sand. I was a bit nervous of him head diving to eat the sand, but luckily only came out with two mouthfuls.

Life with cousins is the best.

This photo comes from a very eventful night. Maggie and Hazel were playing in the basement by themselves really quietly. I had just told Mike that we should probably check on them, but we didn't. Two minutes later, Maggie comes up with no pants or underwear on. Mike asks her where they were. She tells him that she went poop on the floor, but that she is cleaning it up. Oh great. Sure enough, she had pooped her pants, and managed it to fall on the floor as she was taking off her pants, and was smearing it across the floor as she tries to wipe it up with toilet paper. Mike didn't see it on the floor, so he stepped into it. While I was trying to clean all of that up, Sam got a hold of his strawberry oatmeal and dump it over his head. I officially lost the battle.

Larena came up that Saturday to watch kids play soccer and help them decorate spooky Halloween gingerbread houses. Maggie was in heaven. Her face looks horrible because every time we tried to take a picture, she would stuff another handful of candy into her mouth.