Octoberfest!

We have had so much fun this month with Garred deer hunting, celebrating our 6 yr anniversary (love ya hun!) and halloweening it up! The girls and I went down with Garred to Salina for the last days of the deer hunt so he wasn't by himself. We had fun and got to spend time with Great Grandma Sheppard which is always a bonus. Hailey played deer hunting for a couple of weeks after we got home :) I took the girls to Gardner Village with my folks to see the witches, Hailey loved it and Ellie didn't. Afterwards we went to a pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins and took pictures on a tractor, it was so fun we will be doing that again. We decorated a gingerbread haunted house. Ellie kept attacking the house so we had to throw it away right after we were done. We carved pumpkins..Ellie loved trying to eat them..this girl eats everything if you couldn't tell. We went to a trunk or treat at Contacts and with our neighborhood. Everyone loved Hailey and Ellie's costumes. They were Little Bo Peep and her lost lamb. I made the costumes and was quite surprised at how well they turned out. Everyone thought my mom made them so I take that as a huge compliment since my mom is a great seamstress. Here are our pictures for this month:

Hailey's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe that it has already been 3 years since I had Hailey. She is a funny little girl and everyday I laugh because of her. I'm so grateful and thankful to have her in our family. I have been trying to become a good baker and I love to make big cool things (thanks food network). I have been asking Hailey since the beginning of the year what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday so I could find a cool one online and copy it....well she wanted a dinosaur cake. I was super excited to make that plus I was super excited it wasn't anything girly. I found this cool 3D cake and made it (I was quite impressed that it turned out as good as it did..even if the head fell off twice). We had a dinosaur party for her, we played pin the hold on the triceratops and had a t-rex pinata. Hailey, her cousins and friends had so much fun! On her birthday Garred and I took her to the dinosaur museum and then to dinner at Pizza Factory..it was fun and she had a blast seeing all the dinosaurs.

Projects, Canning and Cuteness

I have been itching for a change with our furniture, watching too much HGTV and looking at peoples blogs I have decided to refinish some of my furniture pieces. I'm starting small...I refinished our coffee table (before and after picture below) and I eventually want to refinish our kitchen cabinets. I got this cool desk chair at yard sale and I'm planning on reupholstering it and putting it in our office. I love the green leather on the back of the chair, but that wouldn't look too good in our office so I might have to change that part too.


My mom came over and taught me how to can green beans, pears and peaches...I also canned some salsa too! Hailey had a fun time snapping the beans. I wish I would have taken a picture of all the canning because they all looks so nice in their bottles :)


So I have these two pictures that I just love, 1st: never in a million years would I ever say that Garred wears big pants, NEVER, but when Hailey wears some of his basketball shorts they look huge! 2nd: Ellie has some of the curliest hair when she gets out of tub and I just love how happy she is in this picture.. so cute!

Annual Contacts Bash!

1-800 Contacts is one of the best companies to work for...the is were Garred and I met, I worked there for almost 5 years and Garred has been working there for the last 9 years. They are good to their employees, they give everyone an anniversary gift, they take everyone and their families to movies twice a year, they have a huge company party every summer (where they give out huge prizes-unfortunately we haven't won anything yet) and they have a cafeteria with excellent food for way cheap. This summer for their company party they did a party at Thanksgiving point. The day started out crappy with a down pour, but it cleared up and the girls got to have so much fun playing on the inflatable slides. I didn't get too many pictures of the party, but here are some :)

My Little Ballerina

Over the summer I decided to put Hailey in a dance class. The dance studio right by our house had a little 3 yr old class that did ballet, tap and tumbling so I figured hey I will be a cool mom for once and get Hailey doing something then just hanging out at home watching TV while I work...well she loved it! She loved her teachers, she loved the girls in the class and she loved wearing her leotard. Here are pictures from her different classes.

Free Boat!!

Garred and I have been lucky enough to receive two boats for free! We got our first boat when we were first married and living in our apartment in Sandy. The lady I use to visit teach said we could have her boat..it was a big boat and could have been an awesome boat, but after getting the boat and letting it sit in my folks circle for over a month we decided we just needed to get rid of it since it needed a lot of TLC and we couldn't afford it then, so we took it to the dump. Now our current free boat is a beauty..she is a 1958 (or 1957) Glass Magic. A lady in our neighborhood was trying to sell some of her dad's things and she had the boat listed as one of the items. Garred was joking around with her saying that if her dad needed someone to just haul it away for him for free he would do it..about a month later I get a call saying that if we still want to haul it away we can have it. Garred was so excited! I love the boat too because it is so retro with it's fins (Love them!!) The girls love playing in the boat and Hailey is so excited to take it out fishing. The boat needs some TLC too, but we have been able to do all of the repairs our self so far.. here are some pictures of the boat when we got it and after some repairs (We had to remove a piece of wood at the back (transom) of the boat, removed the seats and carpet and then had to remove the flooring since the wood below the fiberglass had rotted away (that was pretty gross)). We will keep everyone updated on the progress.. Garred is hoping to have the boat water ready by the spring :)

Snapshot of the Week!

When Garred and I were dating his roommates use to call him Mr. Sportsman or the Ultimate Sportsman and I always thought it was kind of funny, but now that we have been married for a while it's not that funny anymore. Reasons why: one of the two main topics always talked about around his brothers is hunting/fishing, Half of the shows set to record on our DVR is hunting shows, fall use to be my favorite season, but now that it's the hunting season I like it less and less each year and either Halloween/my birthday or our anniversary had to be moved because of a hunt.

One thing that has redeemed Garred from this is he entered a couple of pictures of the girls into a photo contests on a local hunting show called "Roughin' it Outdoors" and the girls won the snapshot of the week! I know I have dang cute girls, but I was so shocked when the pictures won. We had gone to Cascade Springs over Memorial Day weekend and stopped in Midway to fish a little on the Provo River and I took the pictures on my camera phone. The girls won us a two burner camping stove and a lantern (unfortunately we already had both of those, but heck we can have two of each!). Here is the link for the snapshot of the week: http://connect2utah.com/roughin-it-story?nxd_id=98785 and here are the pictures:

July

The day of Ellie's birthday party Garred got a call from the Stake President wanting to meet with Garred. We just laughed because he knew a call was coming, but didn't think it would be so soon. So after Ellie's party we went to meet with the stake and Garred was called to be the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. I just laughed- Garred thought he was being called as the Elders Quorum President (the previous one was moving). The Stake President thought it was so funny that I was just laughing and not shocked or overwhelmed by the calling. I told him I knew Garred would do a fantastic job in that calling and I wasn't worried about it. Since his calling Sunday's, Tuesday's and Wednesday's have been a little lonely without him, but we have been so blessed since he accepted the calling that it's worth it. Garred is over the YM/scouts and was able to go with them on a hike for "Operation on Target" they hiked up above Y mountain and they had to signal other YM/Scouts across the valley/county/state with mirrored panels they had to build. The boys were able to sign a group all the way down by Mt. Nebo, up to Lone Peak and across the valley to Tooele.

I took the girls to Tracy Aviary with my mom and nephews. Hailey and Ellie loved seeing all the birds and being with Grandma, Spencer and Zach. Hailey loves her cousins so much and would love it if she could play with them everyday!

We went to the Lehi Rodeo with my family at the end of June (forgot to put that down for June). Hailey and Ellie just love horses. Then we went down to Salina to celebrate the 4th with Grandma Shep. We stayed up at in a cabin at Fish Lake one night with Devin and Ashlee. Hailey and Parker slept out in the family room. During the night We all heard Hailey crying and we went out to see what was wrong...Parker got cold and got in her sleeping bag with her and she didn't want him there with her and her blanket. It was the funniest thing. We went to Cold Springs were Hailey and Parker out fished everyone. Hailey loves spending time with her Great Grandma Sheppard and Ellie loves to give Great Grandma Sheppard lots of kisses (which Grandma Shep doesn't mind in the least). After fishing we came back into town and went to the Salina parade and the the Stubbs family reunion. Hailey and Ellie got to play with their cousins and ride horses. Hailey loved riding the horse, but Ellie not so much. She would rather look at them from afar.

For the 24th we got to stay home and celebrate the holiday with just us. It was nice to just spend time together as a family.

Ellie's 1st Birthday

I can't believe my baby is already 1..it's amazing how fast time goes by with even one extra kid. I made Ellie's cake and flower cookie's. All the kids loved the cookies and I will have to make them more often, they are so fun to have since they are on a stick!

New Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken at the begining of June by Nicole Baldwin (my sister-in-law's friend) and here were my favorites:

Pictures Jan-May

So it has been way to long since my last post. I will be adding a lot of posts for the months that I missed and maybe for once I can stay caught up :) I hope you enjoy the multiple posts!