Ashley's Nutcracker Baby Shower

This is my friend, Ashley.  We are also Visiting Teaching partners.

Ashley and her husband had tried for 7 years to get pregnant without any luck.  I really sympathized with her pain because I've been close to many women who have struggled with infertility.  Then, they decided they needed to go visit family in Arizona.  While they were in AZ they knew of a doctor who apparently has this sixth sense with infertility and has helped many women get pregnant when other doctors have failed before.  He immediately saw what was wrong, and made it so that they could get pregnant!  When she announced her pregnancy I was so excited and I had already told Ben that if they got pregnant I would want to throw their baby shower.  Ashley let me take on the party and I think it turned out great!

We created a secret pinboard on pinterest and I let her choose whatever she wanted for the party.  Basically, Ashley did the planning and I made it happen.  Ashley chose the best theme ever for this shower:  Winter Nutcracker Ballet.  I was in heaven preparing for it even though it took a lot of time.

One of the things that Ashley requested was a hot cocoa bar.  I loved that idea and so I tried out a few recipes on my family before we settled on a good hot chocolate and white hot chocolate recipe.

Lily got to attend her first ever baby shower while Ben took the other 3 out to Chik-fil-a.  When Ben got back home with the kids about a half hour into the shower, Lily was so bored she went upstairs to watch Harry Potter with Ben and Skyler.  :)

I had to post this horrible picture of one of my best friends, Melanie, and me.  I don't think we have any other pictures together so this will have to do.  Melanie is my morning walking buddy and fashion consultant.

The gifts went under the tree and Ashley ended up with so many adorable things to use for baby Madeline!

We played baby registry Price Is Right and we had two people win!

We also made lots of adorable baby bows and headbands.

It was a great party.  Ashley had so many friends come and she left with lots of presents and bows.  Now we just have to wait for Baby Madie to come next month!

Thanksgiving 2014

I didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving.  It's probably because I was busy enjoying the day instead of being busy snapping photos.

So I'm scouring the internet for pictures that might resemble our Thanksgiving to some degree.

We drove over to my parents' house first thing in the morning so we could watch the parade.

The kids mostly stayed distracted watching the parade so Ben and I could shop for the last couple of Christmas presents that we needed.  Seriously, I don't get the whole go-to-the-store-on-Thanksgiving thing.  You can get all the same deals online with free shipping and you don't even have to leave your home.  But maybe that's just me...

 We had another delicious turkey this year.  Although we're not weird and we don't garnish our turkeys with grapes.

 We ate pumpkin pie during the day.  None of us did it justice with the amount of whipped cream it deserves otherwise known as eating pumpkin pie "Becca Style" (see above).

This year was extra special because my parents also invited Pranshu (right) and Chetan (left) for dinner.  I haven't talked about Pranshu on our blog before so I'd better introduce him!  This past spring he and my mom sat together on a plane headed to Salt Lake.  The night before my dad had given her a blessing, and in it said that she would meet someone on the plane and would have a gospel discussion with them and that she would know who to talk to.  Well it turns out that Pranshu and my mom talked the whole flight about the gospel.  Pranshu just moved here from India less than 3 years ago and so he didn't have any family to invite to his graduation ceremony for his Master's Degree, so he invited my parents since they had stayed in touch.  After not being able to find a job or an apartment after graduation, my parents offered to let Pranshu live in my old bedroom.  He moved in pretty quickly after graduation and has lived there ever since.  He recently got a great job and will be moving out of my parents' house this weekend.  Pranshu has been great to get to know.  He is very kind and really loves the kids (especially Thad!).   It was so nice seeing both Pranshu and his friend, Chetan at Thanksgiving dinner.  It definitely made it extra special.  This is the first time I have ever been able to say that I've actually had Indians at my Thanksgiving dinner.  :)

New York City

So this past week I had to go to New York for business.  To say that traveling intimidates me is an understatement, but thankfully I had no problems and everything went really well with our client.  I had the evenings to myself so I went exploring in the general area around my hotel.

After my first day of meetings I went to my hotel.  Thanks to my brother, I got a pretty good upgrade on my hotel room.  When I went in, I saw this view.

Yes, that is the building that has the New Year's ball on it.  The ball is the white circle at the top of the picture.  I thought that this was really cool. I have a room that looks out on Times Square. That is until I decided to go to sleep and then even the light blocking shades couldn't keep the light from flashing.  Honestly it was a pretty cool experience for my first time in NYC.

The first night I decided to eat at the Hard Rock Café on Times Square.  It was pretty fun seeing a bunch of the instruments that my favorite bands had used.  There were guitars from Everclear, Lincoln Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even one of Ringo Star's drum sets. 

I took this for any of the Beetles fans that may follow our blog.

I then spent the rest of the evening walking around Times Square.  There are a lot of really cool stores so I tried to find different things that my kids would think were fun. 

This picture is 100% for Ella.  She loves Frozen!  I had to get a pictured with the life sized Sven.

Going down the escalator at the Disney Store they have "lanterns" from Tangled which I thought the girls would like.

Lego Buildings for Skyler.  There were a ton of them. And they were huge!

Lego Statues of Liberty.  (She was probably 25 feet tall)

The next day, between meetings, I went down Penn Station to grab some lunch.  There were all kinds of foods, but I decided to try some NY stromboli.  It tasted great, but was pretty greasy.  This is a picture of where I got it.  There were three or four stores jammed into that little space.

After my meetings the second day I decided to go and look at some of the history/architecture of New York.  Anybody who knows me well knows that I love history and I love detailed architecture.  So I started out and went through Bryant Park.  This park has to be one of my favorite place that I visited.  It was beautiful and had lots of little shops that sold everything from maps, food, wooden puzzles, to clothing.  It really was fun.

I then ran to Rockefeller Center to try and see if I could get into the Jimmy Fallon Show.  I got there 2 minutes after they gave the last ticket away.  Heather was pretty disappointed about that one.

I was a little early to see the Rockefeller Christmas tree in its full glory, but I think this picture helps you see how massive it really is.  Each one of the layers of scaffolding is 6 feet tall.  That makes the tree 54+ feet tall.

St. Patrick's Cathedral.  This is the real reason I wanted to be by Rockefeller Center.  To my disappointment they are in the middle of a restoration project so the majority of the building (inside and out) was covered in scaffolding. It was still a really cool experience and I am glad that I made the trek.

The naïve for the Virgin Mary.

St. Elisabeth.  I found it very interesting, the portrayal of John the Baptist baptizing Christ.

This painting went through World War II and was vandalized.  Despite a very careful restoration the slash marks across her face can still be seen.

The main part of the cathedral.  Sad to say it, but none of my pictures do justice for the beauty of the carving in stone and wood or show some of the beautiful symbolism that I found there. This was definitely worth the time for me to come and see.

Later in the evening I stopped by the New York Public Library.  Again the architecture here was amazing.

They had a Gutenberg Bible that was on display. 

This was in the periodical hall.  The entire room was paneled in wood and the wood was covered in intricate carving.  I can't even begin to imagine the amount of time that was put into building both of these buildings and the detail that was used. 

The rest of that night was spent getting a couple of things for the kiddos, and eating at an Italian restaurant called Sofias.  The food was excellent and the atmosphere was great.  All in all my trip turned out really well.  The only thing I wish I could have done differently was to bring Heather along.  It was fun, but it would have been so much better if she would have been able to be there with me.  I love you Wife.

Indians and Reindeer

Let's just all nod our heads in agreement that Kindergarten productions are adorable.  Since Lily and Skyler have both had Mrs. Lockhart as their kindergarten teacher, we knew that Skyler would be putting on a production for their annual Thanksgiving Feast.  Many a song were sung, but I only know this because Ben recorded everything for me since the whole thing took place during the babies' nap time.  I get to volunteer in there every week thanks to Ben being home every Friday, so we thought it was fair to let Ben go to the feast.

The kids could choose whether they wanted to be a pilgrim or a native American.  Skyler chose to be an Indian and so we got to work making his shirt.  I'm getting better at letting the kids take the reins on their own art projects and not being such a control freak.  Skyler painted clouds and part of our family and asked me to paint the worst looking cheetah ever (thankfully not visible in the pictures).

We don't let our kids buy lunch often even though they think it's so special, so Skyler was practically counting down the days until Ben bought him his "feast" of pizza, mashed potatoes, strawberries, and an apple.  

Apparently they honk when it's time to put a period at the end of the sentence.

Ella is so obsessed with reindeer now that she can't even say the word "rain" by itself anymore..

Happenings

Sometimes you lose your camera charger and sometimes that leaves you with just your iPhone to take pictures with. I went through my phone's pics and found a few I wanted to share.

Ben and I both agree that we prefer living in small towns.  Holly Springs is no exception.  Here, we have a lot of great stores but it's just small enough that you start to know people personally.  Pretty much everyone is kind and the town is so family-centered.  Every October Holly Springs throws a mini-fair called Hollyfest.  It's basically like the NC state fair except it's free and the parking is just a few feet away.  

Ben was busy finishing the fire pit during nap time so I grabbed Lily and Skyler and $10 and we went to Hollyfest.  We grabbed snow cones and deep fried girl scout cookies.  They had free rides, rock climbing, bounce houses, and even pig races.  They also had a bunch of tents to look at that were promoting local businesses and organizations.  The kids scored lots of free things like frisbees, frozen yogurt, and pumpkins.

Lily and Skyler exploring a fire truck.

Overall, I think this will be a yearly tradition.  I loved that it was the fair on a much smaller scale (and a much cheaper one too!)  The kids had a blast going from bouncy house to bouncy house.

Also, as a side note -- Clay Aiken was at Hollyfest campaigning for his future (now lost) election.  He was having his picture taken with random people coming in and out and he looked right at me and started putting his hand out to shake.  I basically said, "Um, no," under my breath and kept walking with Lily and Skyler.  Needless to say, I ended up having so much respect for NC for not voting in an American Idol runner up.  

The Tuesday before Halloween, Lily's dance class was supposed to come dressed up in their Halloween costumes.  So proud of myself for remembering, I grabbed Lily's costume on my way out the door.  It was about 2 minutes before the bell rang for school to get out that I realized I had grabbed Ella's costume.  Luckily, the dance studio always has costumes there and so Lily was able to borrow one.  Whew.  That was a narrow escape from scarring her for life.

One of our favorite things to do on weekends or days off of school is to head over to my parents' house.  They do arts and crafts and run around in the back yard.  Typically, Papa takes them for a walk down to the neighborhood park and then we eat Cook Out for dinner.  It's always fun to visit and the kids are always asking when we'll be visiting Nanni and Papa next.  Whenever I tell them I have a surprise their first response is always, "Are we going to Nanni and Papa's house?!"  I hope the excitement never fades.

For a few months now we've been preparing for our fire pit.  It was the first project we had in mind after we moved into our house.  Obviously we were going to build it ourselves since Ben has those skills and it would save us a ton of money.  But if you've ever looked at a step-by-step guide of how to build a fire pit with a paver patio, it's not as simple as you'd think.  I think the actual fire pit building part was the easiest.  We did our research, found the best prices on things, and got to work.  We ordered our bricks and pavers on sale online and picked them up.  When we looked at the price of sand and gravel (since it requires a lot of sand and gravel to flatten out the ground) we just kind of laughed it off and went without buying any.  Instead we went back to the creek behind our house and dug out several wheelbarrows full of sand and gravel.  We kind of laughed about how cheap that made us, but hey, it worked.  

We finally had the chance to use the fire pit on Friday.  We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores.  The kids thought it was the coolest experience ever and thanked us for letting them stay up so late.  FYI it was 6 PM.  Sometimes daylights savings ending has its perks.  But it was great because Lily and Skyler took a huge step toward getting over their fear of fire.  On the other hand, we discovered that Ella is a pyromaniac.  So there's that.  But I'm so excited that it's done because we will be able to have a lot more fireside dinners and Ben will be able to make dutch oven dinners far more often.

Halloween was greatly anticipated this year.  The kids may have prayed multiple times the week before that they would have a fun Halloween.  I think trick-or-treating in the mountains and trunk-or-treating at the church really got them excited about the real deal.

The kids get off the bus at 4:30 so we ran home, made dinner, ate, and changed quickly so that we could get out early.  During dinner, Lily's front tooth started bleeding again.  It had been loose for forever -- she just didn't have the courage to pull it out (even though every time she loses a tooth she talks about how it doesn't hurt that badly).  She got so annoyed with it because she wanted to eat her dinner quickly and get on with trick-or-treating, that she asked Ben to pull it out.  The tooth fairy visited that night with money and a butterfingers that may or may not have been stolen from her own bucket.

The tooth fairy may or may not have also run out of cash on her visit here and had to steal money out of Lily's piggy bank and left an IOU.  She feels very guilty about it, but considering she made Lily a very happy girl and the money will be quickly replaced, she doesn't feel too guilty.

 Ella at the last second stuck a sticker on her forehead and thus made the best Halloween picture ever.

Last year our neighborhood was swarming with kids by 5:30.  This year it was 5:45 and still no one was out.  But the kids were going crazy waiting so I went ahead and took them while Ben stayed home with Thaddeo to hand out candy.  Going early had serious advantages!  Everyone kept saying, "You're our first trick-or-treaters!  Here, take a handful!"  

Don't mind if we do.

For many a year now, I have been highly discouraged by the lack of modest women's costumes.  Then one day a couple of months ago it dawned on me.  QUIDDITCH.  I instantly became excited and told Ben right away since he was working from home on the other couch.  I think he then realized that he didn't have much of a choice and that we would therefore both be Quidditch players.  He did slowly get excited about the idea and if we're being honest, he did 95% of the work in making them.  We spent a couple of Saturdays together sewing, ironing, pinning, etc. but the sewing pattern we were following was in Ben's head so he really did have to do the majority of the work.  I'm so glad I have a modest (and AWESOME!) costume to wear now!

We were done trick-or-treating after two hours and we came home and talked with neighbors.  We truly live in a wonderful neighborhood.  I couldn't be happier.  Once the kids were in bed, Ben and I finished our traditional October Harry Potter marathon.  With a very sore tummy, I went to bed happy -- thinking about how I'll never eat so much candy ever again.  So naturally I did it again the next day.

Happy belated Halloween everyone!