Festival of Trees

My amazing mom and I (and my Dad did all the securing hard stuff) decorated a tree for the Festival of Trees this year. Holy cow! Lots and lots of work! My mom said next year we're just going to buy a tree :)

Here is our tree it's a Snowman can you tell? It's hard to see in the pictures but he has lots of little snowman ornaments all over him. It's definitely not the grandest tree but everyone told us it was "cute" and "creative" which I think is pretty good.

Here is the info for the festival be sure to check our tree out! http://www.festivaloftreesutah.org/File/View/9de9a937-0a3a-4214-9ac6-ccc2d42026d0

A Nice Morning

I rarely get an opportunity to just go out and take some pics with my camera. Sunday morning though I was taking the dog out and the trees along the back of our complex mixed with the sky were just beautiful! I was in luck because it was a Sunday so Zach was home and could watch May while I went out and snapped (what a good husband huh). I've always loved snow pictures despite the fact that I hate the snow. Since getting this camera I've realized the reason good snow pictures are good is because they are edited. It's good to be in on the secret. Anyway here are a few of the fruits of my half hour of quiet time with the camera. It was so very nice.

Do you see the little black dots at the top leftish middle of this picture? They're birds! I didn't even notice them until I was uploading and I'm like, "How did this picture get spots on it?" I wish I had seen them so I could've gotten a better picture of them.

So...how about that "blizzard"? It was like nothing. It made me giggle in an annoyed way that all the schools closed down and people got off work early to get home. The reason for the annoyance is I still remember a few years ago (2008 maybe?) when there was that huge storm and it took me like 4 hours or more to get from Orem to Murray. I was actually even lucky to have made it home. If I had been about 20 mins later than I was I wouldn't have been able to go over the point of the mountain and probably would've spent the night at a church in Lehi somewhere. Worst drive of my life. Anyway, they didn't cancel school or work that time and it was way worse! Zach got home about an hour early though so I guess I can't complain to much.

My brother flew in last night for Thanksgiving. The army let them go home for a couple days if they paid their own way. I'm glad we got to see him another time before he ships out.

I can't believe that it's almost the end of November already. I'm not sure if I'm ready for the craziness of December! Zach has had us listening to Christmas music for a couple weeks now. It makes me happy because it's the only time of year he sings along to songs at the top of his lungs.

Disney On Ice

For May's birthday my mom bought her tickets to go see Disney on Ice. She of course loved it. I was a little worried that she wasn't going to sit through it but she was totally enthralled. They had a bunch of their shows smushed in to one big one but the ones she knows were The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan (she just knows Tinker Bell but you could tell they were catering to the girls who only know Tinker Bell because she was pretty much the star of the Peter part), and of course Mickey and friends. She was most excited to see Mickey and Minnie. Which is pretty interesting because I thought she would be most excited to see a princess-but maybe she didn't realize the girl on the ice was supposed to be Ariel.

In the picture she has her Mickey spinner which she has almost had for a week and she still looks for it when she wakes up. Also, please note the flounder bowl that the snow cone is in. Ask me how many times a day I've washed this thing because she doesn't want to eat out of anything but this. My answer will be far too many!

For a couple days after we went May kept getting her shoes and coat and going to the door saying, "Mickey Mouse, ok lets go!" apparently she thought Mickey and moved in next door and we could now go see him anytime we wanted.

We had a really good time-thanks mom!
Okay camera savvy people I have a question. We have our SLR camera which I love love love. I find myself not taking it places though because it's big and I don't really have room for it alongside the kiddos necessities or because I'm afraid it's going to get ruined. But then I miss out on some great pictures that I really wish I had had the camera for. Case in point the picture below. It's taken on my phone because I didn't have my camera and there were some even greater shots that were completely missed because my phone is so slow. I'm kinda glad I didn't have it though because before this May took a huge dive in the mud and on my way to get her to the bathroom I was covered and if I had my camera slung around my neck it would most definitely have gotten kicked and covered as well.

Anyway, so my question is for those of you with nicer and/or bigger cameras do you just buck up and take them and how do you protect them without a huge camera bag or do you have a smaller camera you take places you don't want to take your nice camera? Seriously, please answer this question-I thank you ahead of time.

Pumpkins

Zach's family has a fun tradition of getting square pumpkins at Arctic Circle when you get get your pumpkins. So when Zach got off work we ran to the pumpkin patch close to our house to get some pumpkins. I'm a little sad we didn't get any cute pictures but it was dark and they were closing. Afterwards we got our square pumpkins. May was quite enthralled with the spiders that came with.
We decorated our pumpkins a different day. I got some cute sticker packs from the dollar store that we used instead of trying to carve them. Zach refused to put stickers on his pumpkin and insisted he was carving his-but Halloween is over and it sits uncarved still. Not to worry though May pulled all the stickers off mine and hers and divided them up evenly amongst the 3.
May loves pumpkins. It cracks me up. She spots them everywhere and when she sees the big stack at the grocery store she gets all excited and has to touch everyone. She is so funny.

Ok, funny Halloweenish story. I looked at costumes at target this week because they are on clearance for 50% off. They had a really cute Dorthy costume. We have our little black dog Goob. And we are planning on having a baby by next Halloween who can fill the lion costume May wore last year. And then Zach and I can dress up like the scarecrow and the tin man. Cute right? Well May is super convinced that we bought Snow White's dress (she has no idea who Dorthy is obviously). She wore it around all day. I literally had to wrestle her out of it so we could go play at the park and as soon as we got home she put it back on. It'll be interesting to see if next year she realizes she isn't being Snow White...and how big of a fit she'll throw when that realization kicks in. It was just too perfect to pass up.