Happy Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we stayed home and celebrated it with our small family. It was a wonderful weekend. Here are some pictures of what we did.

Here's Vienna ready for Thanksgiving dinner. Even though it was just us we still cooked a full Thanksgiving meal. We will be having left overs for a month!

Here is Clark showing off his turkey. I think that is about all he ate for dinner.

On Saturday we went to a tree farm to cut down a tree. It was fun because you walk around and choose your tree and then you cut it down yourself. Here is Vienna holding the saw.

Clark is relaxing on the tree cart.

After walking around for a little while, we found our tree. Because we live in a small apartment, we needed a tall skinny one and we found it. It was perfect.

While Jaron cut down the tree, Vienna and Clark used the cart as a teeter tauter. It was fun.

Here's our strong man cutting down the tree.

The tree is loaded on top! We were excited.

Here is our tree. We spent the afternoon decorating the tree and the apartment. It feels like Christmas. I love this time of year!

Life is going great here. We have been sick, sick, sick. Vienna caught the H1N1 Flu so for about a week I did nothing else but be a nurse. Clark has had one cold after another. But we are hopefully taking a turn for the better. Here are some pictures from recently...

Jaron came down one morning to find the kids like this on the couch. What a good sister!

Our little town had a tree lighting event last week. We had so much fun. There was hot chocolate and cookies, carriage rides, and santa. It was a good way to start the season.

Vienna was so excited to see Santa.

And this was as close as we got. Vienna got so shy that she even had me tell him what she wanted. But it was fun anyways.

I put this outfit on Clark and it was too small. The pants are floods and his belly sticks out of the shirt. Jaron looked at him and said, "You look like Nacho Libre!" I thought it was funny.

Happy Halloween

Last night we went to our ward's trunk or treat. Actually, three wards combined to make a TRI-ward trunk or treat party. Vienna wanted to be Snow White and use the cute dress and shoes that mom and dad gave her for her birthday. So in the day I put sponge curlers in her hair. When it was time to get ready, I put make up on her and took the curlers out. Then I sprayed her hair black. That stuff is messy and she couldn't even touch her hair or it turned everything black. It took us three washes after the party to get it out! Anyways, then I put a big red bow in her hair and she put on her dress and shoes. Clark wanted to be a clown but he didn't want the make up, so I spiked his hair. Jaron threw on his Austrian costume and I grabbed his work stuff to make a construction worker costume and off we went. There was a great turn out. We decorated our trunk. Jaron stayed with the van while I took the kids around. It was fun to see members of our ward. When we were done they had hot dogs and nachos. Then they had a parade/costume contest. I told Vienna and Clark to hold hands and wave to people. They marched around and around and had so much fun. When they were done, they announced the winners. There were so many kids and tons of cute costumes that I didn't think we would win. Plus, there were tons of princesses. Well they gave out four awards. When they got to the cutest costume, they announced, "The winner is Snow White, the taller one. We think the shorter one was so cute, but it's the taller one." Well, I wasn't sure if Vienna was the taller one, so I didn't do anything. Jaron kept saying, "Joni, that's Vienna." I didn't want to disappoint her by bringing her up but then her not being the winner. So the judges looked around at Vienna and pointed at her and told her she was the winner. I ran and got her from the parade and she went to the stage and got a certificate and a big candy box. When she jumped to me off of the stage, I lifted her up so the whole audience could see her. When I did, she lifted her arms above her head, clenching her fists in celebration. She did the whole Rocky-at-the-top-of the-hill pose. Jaron said it was really funny. She definitely performs in front of an audience. We were so proud of her for winning. It was such a fun night. I know it is a lot of work for activity committees but we loved it!

Here is our Snow White, The Cutest Costume Winner.

Her hair looked like the real thing. I even had someone ask if it was a wig.

Here is our cute little clown. He would squeeze his nose and say, "Honk Honk."

Here is our Austrian.

Here is our trunk and my creative construction worker costume.

This week we went to a really fun pumpkin patch. The kids had a blast.

Here the kids rode a train around the pumpkin patch. They were too cute.

We carved pumpkins on Thursday night.

Vienna was so excited to carve!

Jaron was a good dad and helped out.

Vienna and Clark showing off their pumpkins.

We have had the most fun celebrating Halloween.

Lemonade for Sale

Vienna wanted a toy from the Disney Store but she was $15 short.  I suggested she try to earn some money and she decided to have a lemonade stand.  So Jaron made some yummy lemonade and I made a sign.  We set up shop and soon the air was filled with Vienna's cries of, "Lemonade! Come get some Lemonade."  She made $20 in about an hour and a half.  With that good of profit, we might turn this into a business!  (Child services would probably get called, so maybe not a good idea.)

Here is Vienna selling some lemonade to a neighbor.

So I have been trying the book called "Deceptively Delicious" where you sneak vegetable purees into the family's food.  Here are my beet purees ready for the freezer.

Here are some pink pancakes, with beet purees in it.  Guess what?  The beets make the pancakes better!  The kids love them.  I will never go back to plain white pancakes!

Clark is pretty happy about pink Mickey Mouse pancakes.

Happy 4th Birthday Vienna!

Our sweet little Vienna turned four today.  What a wonderful little girl she is.  She has the biggest heart and loves everyone.  I am so glad she came into our lives four years ago.  I don't know what I would do without her!  I love you Vienna!

Jaron's mother made this beautiful dress.  She is very talented.

This is at the Oakland Temple.  It was a beautiful day.

We were lucky enough to have had my parents visit for the weekend.  It was pure joy!

Vienna had a great birthday!

Here is a picture of her gifts.  Looks like a good birthday!

Jaron's mom made Clark this apron and my mom gave him a motorcycle so he wouldn't feel left out.  It was a fun day for everyone.

A friend gave us this puppet theater so I sewed some puppets.  The kids thought it was great!

Jaron's parents gave Vienna this cute styling set along with a craft kit.  Just what a little girl loves!

For Vienna's birthday we went to Chuck E Cheese's "Where a kid can be a kid!"  Vienna is showing off her new birthday shoes.  She used some of the money Jaron's Grandma Lewis sent to help buy them.  Very cute!

Clark loved this place.  This horse really moved up and down like a horse.  Clark really got into it!

The kids had a blast.  It was a good choice.

Clark is a very happy kid! All in all, it was a great birthday.

Labor Day Weekend

On Wednesday before Labor Day the kids and I went to a children's museum.  It was right next to the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay.  The view was amazing and the kids had a great time.  The theme was ocean and fishing, which was really fun.

Here are the kids in the bird's nest of a ship.  

Clark was the captain.  He would get mad if other kids tried to take away his wheel.  He could have driven that ship all day!

Here is Vienna at the top of the fishing boat.  The kids had a great time playing on this pretend boat.

Vienna got to help build the golden gate bridge.  She thought she looked like her dad in the construction gear.

Clark is our little digger.  He loves trucks and shovels.

They had an art section and the kids loved it.  It was really messy, but so it is with kids!

For Labor Day we went north a few hours to the Fort Bragg area.  It was beautiful with lots of redwood trees and the ocean was beautiful.  Here we are Friday stopping at a local diner.  It was in a cute old house on main street.

The kids loved that we were next to this huge moose.  

On Saturday we took a four hour train ride on this old fashion steam engine.  The train took us along a river through a redwood forest.  It was so much fun.  I was just taken aback by the beauty.  To have this beautiful steam engine puffing away next to a beautiful forest, it was the best!

One of the cars was open and you could stand out in the air while riding the train.  We loved to stand out there because the smells were wonderful.  Also, the trees were so tall, it was cool to see them against the sky.

We walked through Fort Braggs and found this gigantic redwood.  They said  it was planted in 100 AD.  That is amazing!

We went to Glass Beach.  Long ago people used this area as their dump and the waves took the glass and turned them over until they became smooth glass.  These pieces were all mixed up in the rocks on the beach.  It was pretty cool.

Here is us standing on glass beach.  The waves and rocks were amazing.

We hiked along the cliffs above the ocean.  We saw some beautiful views.

On Monday the little town had a parade for Paul Bunyan.  It was very small townish, but really fun.  

On our way home we stopped at a light house.  This is the house of the keeper.

That is the lighthouse in the background.

This was a beautiful place.  It made me wish we lived at a lighthouse.

Here we are standing at the edge of the cliffs by the lighthouse.  We had a great weekend!