Every blog needs a trip to the pumpkin patch!

It was a charming afternoon. Usually I go to the grocery store and pick the pumpkin out of the fake patch they have set up. Not this year. I'm slowly turning into a "real" mom. Firstly, a themed birthday party, second, pumpkin patch, third coordinated Halloween costumes. Now all I need to do is send out Christmas cards and I will feel like I've made it. Anyway, the patch. So it was this cool place with a hayride out to the acres and acres of pumpkins. For $20 you get as many pumpkins as you can carry. So we loaded up our friend Joe. :) Eva searched high and low until she finally found a green one. Sophie just squirmed the entire time to try to get down into the dirt. Now I feel like fall can come.


The tale of the Binky Fairy. Eva spotted this castle at Target and I told her that is what the Binky Fairy brings. So she went home, gathered up all her binkies and put them by the door for the B.F. She was so excited she could hardly sleep but finally fell asleep. The next day she got her princess castle and was elated. She was too excited to even think about a nap. Then night time came and she was tired and she wanted her binky. We put her to bed and hear this slow, mournful cry, "biiiiiiiiiin-ky, biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin-ky, BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN-KY!!!!" She couldn't fall asleep. She stormed out of her room crying. "I HATE my castle!!! I don't WANT my castle! I WANT MY BINKIES!!!" I was just happy to displace her anger from myself. But anyway, after about 3 hours and the most fervent prayer I've offered in months she finally fell asleep (a couple minutes after the prayer. How's that for a testimony builder!? Coming to a Relief Society lesson near you....) Then in the morning she came out of her room all happy saying "I'm not mad at my castle anymore." We went through this for about three days but now she doesn't ask for it anymore. Bad news is she will not take naps anymore. She was a consistent 3-hr/day napper... Gone. I miss nap time terribly.


As a little treat we took her to a Yo Gabba Gabba concert with Myla and Kim. These two were so incredibly excited. They wouldn't stop dancing and cheering for even a second for a picture.

We had to grab them and squish them together to get them to hold still for this shot.



They had so much fun dancing to the music. Eva was distraught when it was over. She sat stone cold staring at the stage for about ten minutes when it was all over.


The scream: I'm hoping someone will have some advice for me. How do I get my one-year-old to stop screaming? This isn't a normal baby scream. It is loud, incredibly high pitched, ear splitting and comes frequently and without warning. When Sophie screams whoever is with me runs to her like she's being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. The problem, aside from the fact that I'm going deaf, is that it scares the living daylights out of people when I'm in public. She'll be sitting quietly in the cart and an unsuspecting shopper will walk past her and get blasted off her feet or she'll be sitting quietly in church then all of a sudden she'll belt out and all the old ladies will be cradling their hearing aids. Any advice?

How are those feet doing?

I'm nearing my 9 month anniversary since I busted my little doggies. Here I am a few days before. Just getting back from Christmas vacation and settling into life with two little kiddos. It's funny when you think back to the day before something big happens. You had no idea how much your life would change in a few short hours.



Here's a pic from the party where I broke my feet. It is so hard to explain exactly how I did this in a bounce house obstacle course. (Don't forget to put the "obstacle course" in there. It sounds way cooler... Or makes it sound a little less ridiculous... take your pick.)

I was not in this picture...



This is where I was. Sitting in a bench, trying to balance my legs on Sophie's car seat. I have no idea what I was thinking in this picture (which I didn't know existed until tonight) or why in the world I'm smiling. But it was probably something like "ice, pills, home, ice, pills, home, ice, pills home..."



Once I got home I went to bed hoping I'd wake up and the swelling would have gone down.


Not a chance.



So I spent the next couple months crawling...

Dragging...

and rolling. (Don't ask me why my baby is lying in the middle of the kitchen floor and Eva is wearing only leg warmers as pants. But I can't say that I'm surprised.)


The beautiful thing about injuring yourself at a party is that everyone there feels partially responsible. So I never ran out of help and believe me, my life required a lot of manpower. Truth be told, once the shock of it all wore off it was a pretty fun winter. I had a constant stream of play dates and friends walking through my door and I had visits from almost every member of my family. I even got to be a gimpy tourist for a week.



After 8 weeks of being completely helpless the casts came off and I got my sweet moon boots. I had to use a walker for a couple weeks. I'm so happy no one ever took a picture of that phase. It was bad, really bad.



But eventually I learned to walk in them pretty well.


This summer I graduated to the sweet white sneakers. There's about $200 worth of equipment in there. Steel bars running through out, custom orthotics... they weigh a ton but I couldn't walk without them for about 3 months. I wore them literally everywhere, to church, the temple, around the house. Without them I just shuffled like an elderly Chinese woman. It's only been the past month or so that I've been able to transition to other types of shoes and even at that I'm limited in how much I can walk in them.



I have started exercising again. Even running. It isn't pain free and it takes me a few days to recover but I'm trying to figure out if the impact will help strengthen the bones/muscles. I know, it sounds weird. Anyway, as of now, I'm not certain I'll make a full recovery but I can usually walk normally as long as I have decent shoes on. (And walking in my bare feet is only slightly painful.) I still limp every so often but I do think I'm getting better... slowly. So there you go. There's the update. Maybe next time I post an update I'll be wearing a pair of these!

Milah Moo and Sophie Sue

Here's my latest How Does She posts. These ones were really fun to do. We have a Conference tradition to get together with a couple friends and make up a ton of moose munch to pass out. (Ok, so maybe this was my first time but I can still call it a tradition, right?) It was fun to have so many little "helpers". Here's the link to the munch post...

http://www.howdoesshe.com/munchy-crunchy-crazy-yummy



And this one is a combination of my favorite tart crust and my favorite key lime filling. Don't you think my chair makes a nice background?

http://www.howdoesshe.com/key-lime-in-a-pinch-or-for-a-party

5 Years

Yes... we have only been married for 5 years. Or if you've known us for awhile.... yes, it's already been 5 years. They have flown by for us even though much has changed... specifically the addition of two little girls to our family. It really is a miracle to find the right person and I'm still so happy and thankful that we found each other. Even after 5 years I'm as happy as I was the day I realized he was "the one". This may be a little self indulgent but here are some of my favorite wedding pictures. It was a perfect day from start to finish and I've been reliving little moments all week.










To celebrate we went to lunch at the Tobacco Company downtown. Devin had my favorite cookies shipped in from Knoxville, TN. (Cookies my friend Whitney and I discovered 3 years ago and I've been craving ever since.)

OBX At Last

It took me about 2 years of living in Virginia to figure out that OBX stood for the Outer Banks, NC. I've wanted to go to the famous Duck Beach ever since my single years when I heard about the famed Memorial Day weekend Singles Bash. It's only a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house. Finally we were able to put together a trip and it was a blast. We rented this great beach house in Duck and my parents were able to fly out to meet us.





September is the perfect time to go. Lower prices, warm air, warm water, hardly anyone on the beach. It was perfect and so were the waves.





There are four different lighthouses to visit...



Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers first launched their airplane, is out on the Outer Banks. They have this cool museum with cool life-sized statues. And who can resist taking silly pictures with life-sized statues? Not me.





We went on a drive up the Banks with my dad one morning and the road turned into the beach. All these trucks were taking off up the beach and the tracks went for miles. Supposedly you can go up there and hang out with wild horses. My dad couldn't resist taking the rented Impala for a spin up the coast and luckily it had just rained to we didn't get stuck. Next time I'm taking a 4x4 with me b/c it was one of the funnest things we did.



Our cute little beach house with a fantastic observation deck. We could see the entire peninsula from up there.



I'm already planning my next trip to OBX! Loved it!!