Halloween 2012

This year, Easton and I courageously braved 4-yes FOUR trunk or treats.  My mother-in-law invited us to her trunk or treat the Saturday before Halloween.  I invited my mom and brother out as well.  My little brother wanted to get candy and no candy was being passed out so after eating and visitng with my in-lawes, we hopped in our cars and went to my wards' trunk or treat.  As usual, the people in my ward decked out their cars with lights and all sorts of amazing decorations.  Two days later, my mom invited me and Easton to her stakes' trunk or treat where we ate chili again (for the third time) and gained more candy while trunk or treating.  By the time Halloween hit on Wednesday I decided I couldn't handle one more bowl of Chili.  So right after work, I donned my witches hat and Halloween colored clothes and headed to Chipotle where I bought TWO chipotle burritos for 4 dollars total (normally each burrito is 6$ a piece but if you wore a costume that evening, Chipotle gave you a nice discount).  After Chipotle, Easton and I went to my brother's ward's trunk or treat which was really fun.  They had lots of games boothes, popcorn, cotton candy, a small petting zoo, and an area filled with snakes and all kind of bugs that a man in his ward collected.  It was pretty fascinating to see some critters that I had never heard of!  After the trunk or treat, my family went to several houses and did some trick or treating with the little ones.  Easton scored his mom and dad a decent amount of candy which we will gladly enjoy over the next several weeks.

 

Me dressed as a witch with Easton the "jack o lantern"

 My brother and his family

 At the petting zoo, checking out the chickens

 Seeing Easton's cousins pet the snake

 All the grandkids with their uncle Kyle (my brother)

 Trick or Treating in the neighborhood

 Cousin love:   Easton reached over the give his cousin Dallin a hug.  After awhile, Easton still wouldn't let go and it made Dallin a little upset.

Easton turns 1!

I can't believe it has already been one year since the birth of Easton.  Thinking back to all those sleepless night, postpartum blues, and nursing my little guy...it seems like so long ago.  Easton has brought so much joy to our lives.  I like to call him my little "ham" because he is hilarious!  He laughs so hard at the most random things-which of course makes us want to laugh hard ourselves. 

 

For his first birthday party, we decided to do the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" theme after Eric Carle's book.  We made seven days of feasting on different foods and a caterpillar cupcake/cake to top it off. 

 

I realized that the letters "O-N-E" are in Easton's name so I took his name letters off his wall to have him post for a picture. Happy birthday little guy! 

 Now that he is ONE, he is old enough to ride the lawn mower with Grandpa Bunzell-and boy does he LOVE it!

 

July

On July 5th, my sister Stacey was able to commander more Diamondbacks tickets and so the whole family got to watch one more game for the season.  I love the atmosphere at professional baseball games!

 

 

We spent July 25-30th vacationing in Utah and Idaho.  Easton was very sick most of the trip and had a fever for four out of the six days we were there.  On our way up, we briefly stopped in Vegas for lunch and found this creepy "Hello Kitty" on the strip.  Let's just say Easton was NOT a fan.  This was the first time that David had been to Vegas.  I promised him we'd go up another time to actually spend time to browse around and maybe try the slot machines ;)

 

David and I didn't get much sleep, especially the first two nights where we stayed at a KOA cabin in Utah.  I was grateful we had mattresses and a little "home" to stay in rather than a tent!  For breakfast one morning we made pancakes and bacon and my sister in law shared some of her eggs with us-YUM!  Some of the pancake mix spilled and Easton enjoyed "finger painting" in the tasty batter.

On Thursday the 26th of July, my family all went ziplining down Provo Canyon.  So much fun!  I was terrified at first because I am not a huge fan anymore of dropping at a rapid rate (I used to love roller coasters, but I have found that they don't agree with my very well these days!).  Although I flew down the ziplines, I felt very secure in my harness.  I am definitely looking forward to finding a new location to go ziplining-I hear there is a place in Colorado that is amazing.

 

 

On the trip, we also got to meet my sister Heather's first boyfriend.  He is also attending BYU. Later, our family enjoyed a picnic and fun evening at Bridal Veil falls.  The water was FREEZING and I had to borrow my sister in laws sandals to walk in the water up to the falls area where we took this picture.  It didn't help that the rocks were razor sharp. 

Friday we spent at Lagoon Amusement park and David's cousin Ben and his wife Megan were super sweet to watch Easton part of the day so that we could go on some rides together.  Saturday we spent at my mom's family reunion.  The Idaho Falls fire department/bagpipe brigade performed for us since our family is of Scottish descent.

Saturday evening we enjoyed visiting David's cousin Suzanne and her kids.  We went to the Splash Park in Rexburg for a short period and decided the water was too cold!  It was so fun to catch up with Suzanne.  We definitely miss the Rexburg cousins!

Sunday morning, we were fortunate to have David's cousin Kate (who also lives in Rexburg) take our pictures for us.  David and I stayed up until midnight chatting with Suzanne the night before and Kate was  at a wedding taking pictures until slightly after midnight.  We had to wake up around 4:30 (before sunrise) to take pictures, so we were all super tired.  Bless Kate for even being willing to take our pictures with having such little sleep!  Here are some pictures Kate took for us.

Sunday we spent driving home and visiting the Rexburg, Idaho Falls, and Salt Lake Temples.  We walked around Temple Square and took a tour of the Beehive House where Brigham Young used to live.  So fascinating seeing the way people lived in the 1800's.

 Sunday morning, (backtracking), David and I were sleeping and he woke asking what the buzzing noise in our cabin was.  I looked at my phone thinking it was vibrating, but it wasn't.  I pulled my fleece sleeping bag over my head, telling him it was nothing and tried to go back to sleep.  Well I started hearing the buzzing noise and it was right by my head.  By then, I had to go to the restroom and I figured I would just go shower. When we started packing our things up, David was like "I wonder what the buzzing noise was".  So he checked my fleece sleeping bag, and said "Oh my gosh, it's a live wasp".  I thank my lucky stars that neither of us were stung.  I think originally, the wasp was by David's head and eventually the thing made it's way into my sleeping bag-YIKES!

 Late Sunday afternoon, we arrived in Kanab and stopped for a delicious lunch at a smalle cafe called "The Three Bears". It was a small family owned cafe.  We stopped to take Easton's picture on top of the three bears pole.  We enjoyed a gigantic ice cream rocky road/mint chocolate chip ice cream cone from the cafe while we continued our journey home.

 All in all we had a great trip and got to enjoy the beauty that Utah, Idaho, and Northern Arizona holds with its vast farmlands and lush forests.  It got into the upper 90's everyday but cooled off at night.  We were happy to get home.

 

Family Pictures

Recently our family got pictures taken.  My sister Heather unfortunately was not able to make it to the photo session since she was in Utah going to school at BYU and we were using a groupon that expired not long after it was purchased. I am so luckily to have such a great family.  They bring so much joy!

All the grandkids

 My parents with all the grandkids

 Easton with cousing MaKenna

 Shortly after the two were put on the miniature couch, both leaned in to give each other a kiss.  So sweet and innocent.

About two weeks ago, we headed over to my inlaws home.  Grandpa Bunzell entertained Easton.  We had ice cream and played the card game "Oh Heck". 

 Little Makenna celebrated her first birthday earlier this month.  She enjoyed a rainbow colored mini-cake and ended up looking like cookie monster with face and hands smeared in blue frosting.  She wanted to share the love with Easton :)

June has had its highs and lows but we are looking forward to the next few months.  Yesterday David found out that he has been selected to interview at Philadelphia University for their Physician Assistant program.  The interview has been set for August 22nd.  I am so proud of him!  We are waiting to hear back from the other 6 schools he applied to and pray that year 3 of applying is the lucky one.  Keep your fingers crossed for us! 

Summer of 2012 has begun

Whew!  Summer has begun and boy has it been busy!  At the end of the school year, I opened up the curtains in front of our back door and was pleasantly surprised to see a mom and dad quail along with 10 or so of their brand new baby's following them in a straight line.  They were so adorable!  While David was trying to figure out a way to keep them in the back yard so they wouldn't run into the street,  a baby accidently ran into the house.  When David came back inside, he saw the poor baby running around with Easton eagerly chasing after it.

 In December, David and I purchased two nightstands off of craigslist.  It has taken us five months to refinish the dang things.  We rigorously tried sanding with a power sander, but after several nicks were taken out of the wood, we resorted to manually hand sanding and attempting to use stain remover.  I vowed to David that we would NEVER do such a laborious project again!  However, after David finished putting new stain on this week and we put on new handles, I have to say the final product is gorgeous.  I told David "Call me crazy, but I kind of want to refinish a dresser now".  The stain is a beautiful Mahogany color that perfectly matches our bed frame.

 Final Product

This week my sister Stacey was able to get several free tickets to the Diamondbacks vs. Rockies game so David and I seized the opportunity to spend some time watching good ol' baseball. The Diamondbacks won, 7-1 which made for a GREAT game. We even got to see a home run!

 I planned a playdate for several ladies in the ward (church) and we took our little ones to the San Tan Mall Splash Pads for some fun.

This past Friday, June 8th, David and I got to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary.  We started the morning by going golfing at Golfland-Sunsplash.  The golfing was free, sponsored by a local radio station.  It was quite warm, but we had a GREAT time.

In the evening, my mom watched Easton while David and I went to eat and play games at Dave N' Busters.  One of our favorite games to play there is "Deal or No Deal".  Well, on our second round of playing the game, we picked suitcases wisely (or rather we were lucky and picked good ones by change) and ended up winning the 300 ticket Jackpot!  We were elated!

We then went to Tempe Town Lake and took a romantic hour long rowboat ride at sunset.  Poor David's hand were nearly blistered and his back hurting by the time we were done, but he wouldn't let me take the oars.  How fortunate I am to have this handsome of husband of mine.  He makes me life so fun and interesting and he is a constant source of strength to me.  He is bright and funny and makes me laugh!  Happy 5 years my love!

Another room change

As the school year came to a close, I packed up my Speech Room, again (third time in two years), and started hauling my things to my new and bigger classroom (we will now by in a huge Kindergarten room instead of the Janitor's old closet).  This left me with bitter sweet feelings.  This room had lots of memories.  When I first started working at Islands Elementary two years ago, we (two SLP's) were in a TINY office room.  Only one of us could fit in the room with a table for 3-4 children and there was only one desk between the two of us.  We put our everything we had into fighting for a larger room, and the psychologist was kind enough to offer to switch places with us.  So two months into the school year, we switched to the psychologist's room, AKA the "janitors closet".  About a month into being in the new room, the water heater in our room exploded, flooding our floor and many of the rooms next to ours.  Dead cockroaches were displaced out of the water heater closet and we were told that we would have to leave the room for several weeks while walls were ripped out and new carpeting put in-just to be sure mold did not grow anywhere.

So back to our old TINY room we went-thankfully our psychologist friend again let us borrow her room.  After our room was cleaned, walls put it, painted, and furniture back to normal, life resumed as normal.  Last summer I decided to pay a chunk of money to paint one of the walls in our room a beautiful royal blue.  You see, the entire Speech Room was WHITE-and I can't STAND all white walls.  Makes me feel like i'm living in a doctor's office or insane asylum.  I pleaded to get a white board installed, which we eventually recieved.  I loved our cozy office which we had turned into our home. AND there was room for bookshelves, storage cabinets and TWO desks.

We just got a new principal at the end of this school year and some changes were made with classrooms.  He presented us with the opportunity to moved into a full sized Kindergarten room, since the Kindergarten census has been so low that less rooms/teachers have been needed for that grade level.  It will be great to have more space, but I feel like so much work was put into our old room that I don't want to leave it.  Plus our now old room was connected to the Reading team's room and what fun those ladies are!

On to welcoming the new changes and hoping for the best!