Cousins, Turkeys, and Trees, Oh My!

We set a record and headed out for our third road trip to Idaho this year in honor of the passing of Aaron's grandma and of course the Thanksgiving holiday. The road trip was very different with an almost toddler than a little baby lump, but thanks to our friends, The Porters and the Baby Einstein division of Disney, we all made it there in one piece!

We thought we would be bored while Aaron's fam was in school, but we had a fun little trip to Idaho Falls one day to visit some friends and some fam there. Little did I know Idaho Falls has a CAFE RIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you Kim for making it possible. Here is her daughter sharing some quesadillas with Adelyn. So cute, and of course so tasty. We also found out they have one in Twin Falls now...yes, trips to Idaho just got that much better! :)



Now here is the babe proudly showing off her Thanksgiving feast. We had such a great day with all of Aaron's Stoker Family. Brooklyn quickly became Adelyn's favorite because she was the one most willing to get up and walk around and around and around the house with her. Adelyn is STILL missing her terribly.



Our last day there we had a fun little adventure with everyone and headed up to the mountains in search of the perfect Christmas tree. We drove an hour and a half to get there and tromped around in the snow (Adelyn stayed in the car with grandpa) to find it.



Can we say it is a far cry from the Washington tree farm experience of driving five minutes from our house, getting out of the car, and being surrounded by perfect trees. The first was definitely a better adventure, but Adelyn LOVED them both.

I'm sure she wondered what the heck we were doing bringing a live tree into our house. She still stares at it in wonder and doesn't really want to touch it. That is a good thing of course....don't need all those ornaments strewn about!

Anyway, hope you had a good Thanksgiving too. If you want a few more pics, I'll post them on facebook for ya!

Maybe we are Reading Rainbow After All!

This is Adelyn's favorite thing to do lately. For those of you who aren't related, you might find the video dull, but I of course could watch it over and over...and watch the live version of course. Who knew how entertaining flipping pates could be. Yes, the book is upside down. That's why it's awesome!

Butterflies

Some may think of Michael Jackson, some of Reading Rainbow, but for us this Halloween it turns our thoughts to the little papoose. She was so excited to get invited to her first ever Monster Bash, which gave us an actual reason to dress her up. Wardrobe was kindly provided yet again by Miss Olivia Rosado...a lovely orange and black butterfly...though you can't really see the wings in this pic.



Aaron decided the only thing we could pull together for ourselves that went a long with a butterfly would be to dress up in 70s garb. Yes, Aaron dressed up without his mullet wig, though I'm not sure how it actually happened, as that is usually the central figure of his every disguise.



We also went to the ward Trunk or Treat with cousin Jadyn and afterward had a little photo shoot. Of all the ones we took of the butterfly and the ballerina cat, this one has to be my favorite. Toward the end of the picture taking, Adelyn realized that Jadyn was already feasting on her halloween candy. Not realizing fully what Jadyn was sucking on, she figured it must be tasty and decided to give the other end a try.

We also got an awesome Halloween package from Aaron's parents that helped us celebrate. Thanks you guys!

Tis the Season of Pumpkins

I am sure we all know that this coming Saturday is Halloween and I am sure we have all been busy gearing up for this holiday season. Traditionally, summer is my favorite time of the year and I absolutely loathe its departure (I do live in the Pacific Northwest after all, can you blame me? I love sunshine!!). However, this year I have strangely been enjoying fall immensely.

That of course is aided by my love for EATING all things pumpkin, kicking that off with some ymmy pancakes. But now that we have a little one, we have been doing a little more with pumpkins than eating them. My sister does a pumpkin painting activity every year, so Adelyn and I joined her for that.



Then we went to a local pumpkin patch, which was a first for all three of us. It was an unseasonably warm and beautiful October Saturday, so we, along with the rest of the town it seemed, took advantage of it.

We finished off the week with some yummy pumpkin cheesecake muffins. I wish I could find the recipe online, but my sister brought it to me from her Rachel Ray Everyday Magazine. I suppose I will have to end it with something from last year's fall that was another pumpkin cheesecake twist. Hope you are all enjoying the season too!

Zipping through the Rainforest

On our anniversary I posted about our trip to Whistler. In that post, I said that we had gone ziplining and promised more pics, but forgot about it completely until now. It was so fun! We debated beforehand whether or not we were too chicken to try it out (I never was much of a thrill seeker, but now that I am a mom, it's even worse!), but we figured we might as well give it a shot. We were so glad we did because not only did we have a great time, but it was in the most picturesque setting too, in the canyon up above the Whistler Village where there is a beautiful rainforest.

We tried our hardest to capture the beauty on film, but as you saw from my picture of Mt. McKinley last week, our camera is not the fanciest (I refuse to blame it on personal lack of photography prowess). We were going off one of the lines and the guide went backwards and flexed. I thought it was a cool shot of her seemingly suspended in the air, flexing. So I suggested that Aaron go first and try to turn around so he could pose and flex for me to take his picture. Unfortunately...this is what I got.



Thankfully, there was a safety net to our little plan: they were taking pictures for you. Of course they were expensive, but we needed to capture Aaron's poses somehow. If only we had realized!! Then we could have saved the trouble and he could have just posed for them to begin with. You can decide for yourself who caught the better shot:



More posing that I hadn't even seen him do because the camera had shut off right when I didn't want it to.



Kickin it over the creek.



They took some of me too of course, but I wasn't quite as adventurous!

But I did have a moment of bravery toward the end of that line, that thankfully they caught because Aaron hadn't even seen it! Now it is captured eternally for our posterity.



On the last line they taught us how to go upside down and I ALMOST redeemed myself by ALMOST catching Aaron fully inverted. It still looks pretty cool though!

Our advice to would-be zipliners: just go crazy from the beginning because when you get used to it and stop being worried about crashing head first into the pointy rocks below, it is a lot more fun when you aren't holding tightly to the rope!

Happy adventuring!

The Last Frontier

A lot of you have been asking about our recent trip to Alaska. Unfortunately, I didn't really get too many good pics to share with you. This was due in part to Aaron working most of the time and part to the less than best weather that we had while we were there. Lucky for Adelyn and I the first few days were pretty nice, sadly for Aaron, the day that he actually had free was the rainiest and yuckiest of all. So we probably had more fun than he did, but all in all it was a good trip, and always good to get away on a little adventure. This was the first plane adventure that we had taken with Adelyn and this first pic should show you how much fun she had on the plane ride.




She and I went to the zoo one day and it was a very nice little zoo--with a lot of animals local to really cold regions that we don't see too much down here--polar and brown and black bears, Musk Oxen, Yaks, Snow Leopards, Moose, etc...we had a lot of fun but it was already soooooo cold!! Strangely enough, Adelyn seemed to love the Alpacas the most. We actually ran into a group of Taiwanese people, so that was random and cool.



One thing that was cool was that we could see Denali, Mt. McKinley, from the window of our hotel room. I know it's not the best picture in the world, but we were amazed by how big it still seemed so many hundreds of miles away. I really wanted to go to the park, but it, like most of the rest of Alaska, shuts down mid-September, just in time for us to miss it!



Anchorage is pretty much surrounded by mountains except for the inlet where the ocean comes in, but even on the other side of that you can see mountains. It was beautiful, especially with all the fall colors all around.



The babe liked the flight home a little less than the way there. I suppose you could say that Aaron and I liked it less--she was still having a ball but was so tired and trying so hard not to fall asleep that she just finally crashed. She was sitting on Aaron's lap one minute, and the next minute looked like this.




So there's a short version of our trip. We had a great time, but would recommend to all interested in going to Alaska, do it in the summer!!

She's on the Move!

Well she's not quite crawling or walking by herself, but she has developed a style all her own for each that we thought we'd share with you far away relatives. She's not quite up to getting on her hands and knees yet, but here is her army scoot!

And this is her true love here. If we put her on her tummy too long she cries and screams as though we were torturing her. But she will walk with Dad until she can't think straight...this is one such time...she was so tired but still wanted to walk! The other day she and Aaron actually walked a lap around the entire backyard. What a cute little nut.