February 2015

Our trip back from Oregon included an overnight stay at Thomas' sister, Elizabeth's place in Idaho. We got to see their brand new, just-a-few-days-old, baby boy.

Thomas sent me flowers :)

I got together with a girl in our ward and made sugar cookies. Way fun!

We went to a Valentine's Day dance. I didn't do a whole lot of dancing! :)

My darling visiting teacher threw a baby shower for me.

We borrowed a slide scanner from Thomas' brother and cleaned up some old negatives we found in the box of letters I scanned in January. Thomas scanned those for me.

I crocheted a baby cardigan and beanie.

We got to attend You Can't Take it With You, directed by Thomas' cousin.

We acquired a nice little chest freezer that I've basically filled with additional homemade freezer meals! It feels like quite an accomplishment to build up our food supply in this manner while sticking to our grocery budget. Plus, it feels great knowing that if I don't want to/have time to cook this next little while (particularly after the baby comes), we can just pull out homemade pizza, lasagna, quiche, egg rolls, chimichangas, etc. and have a home-cooked meal in a fraction of the time it would take from scratch! 

Anyway, we think we're about as ready for baby as we can be... Now we are just awaiting his/her arrival!

oxox

January 2015

January was my first month as a full-time homemaker! We are both excited about this and that our situation allows for me to be home (a) now to prepare for the baby and (b) as a stay-at-home mom when the baby is born.

I've spent my days working on various projects -- mostly things I've been wanting to get to before the baby is born. I finished scanning a box of old letters & other documents that belonged to my great-grandmother (a project I started about 3 years ago...). I re-finished the inside of a silverware box. I finished sewing a couple things for baby. I've gone through & tried to pare down a bunch of our stuff. I finally read Preach My Gospel. I've been putting together some freezer meals to have on hand.

We attended a wedding reception for my cousin Will.

Thomas' grandfather passed away and we drove to Oregon for a memorial with Samuel & Sarah. It was a whirlwind trip but we are so glad we were able to be there.

oxox

September 2014

September was a good month! The weather started to turn more autumn-like & we got a fair amount of rain. We had a couple of "weird" Sundays (stake conference & a temple dedication) that convinced us we could get used to just 2 hours of church at 10 AM. We also got to enjoy harvest a little.

We went to a u-pick raspberry patch south of Provo (you can see the Payson temple if you look closely at the next picture, taken just around the corner from where we picked berries):

About 5 lbs of raspberries!

We went to a Bradshaw wedding:

We saw Sterling's band at their 9/11 memorial performance:

Sterling's family allowed us to glean their peach trees. We processed about 30 lbs of peaches (with the help of our canner, purchased that weekend!):

Coincidentally, we also announced to our families that our own little "peach" will be here in March.

We bottled 8 pints of peach halves and 10 pints of peach jam, froze a few pounds of peach slices, and used the remaining fruit for 2 9*13 pans of peach crisp!

We spent the following weekend up at the cabin, with a family from the ward joining us for one night & a day trip to Cascade Springs:

We decided mid-September is the ideal time for the cabin. The surrounding trees were turning their fall colors, the nights were cool, we got a day of sunshine and one of rain... it was really beautiful and the perfect start to autumn.

oxox