Good Bye Logan

As happy as I am to say that we FINALLY GET TO CLOSE ON OUR LOGAN HOUSE TODAY, I am sorta sad. We really enjoyed our time up there and although our house wasn't our dream home forever, it was perfect for us while we were there.  But all good things must come to an end...I just hate finality.  Once we sign those papers we will never be able to call it our house anymore.  Bitter sweet.. bitter sweet. 

November Nephews

November is chalked full of birthdays for our 2 families.  This year we get to add one more to that number.  My oldest brother, Garth, and his wife, Tori, had their 5th baby......... and their first boy, on November 5th.  That just so happens to be the same birthday as the other Frandsen grandson, Jacomo.

Introducing:  Bridger Garth Frandsen.  We loaded up for a Saturday afternoon drive down to Price to meet the little guy.  He is adorable and we can't wait to see him again! Congrats Garth and Tori!

While I'm at it, happy birthday to the rest of the November's:  Monica-2nd, Jacomo-5th, Tori-15th, Casey-18th, and Raleigh on the 18th as well!  Love you all!

Halloween 2011

This year I was grateful the major Halloween events only lasted a few days. Last year it felt like we did Halloween 20 times! 

This year we attended our new wards "Harvest Hurrah" and trunk-or-treat.  It was a little bit of a mad house, and not very helpful in meeting people.... since everyone was dressed up- including the Bishop who was in an awesome Gnomeo costume.  

Our little Minnie and our Minnie Minnie sure had fun! I was Little Red Ridinghood and Luke was my hero, the Woodsman : ) 

GARDNER VILLAGE: 

The 29th the lil ones and I went to Gardner Village to check out the witches.  Tianna loved posing with them.. (surprised?) but Adelia didn't want to be within arms reach of any of them!

 I love Gardner Village. the end.

HALLOWEEEEEEEEN:

Breakfast- Ghost Toast (Used cookie cutter to cut out a ghost in the bread.  Poured egg into it. Fried it. Ate it. Loved it.) 

Then we went and bought our pumpkin for Dinner in a Pumpkin.  So.. FYI- buy pumpkins on Halloween because they cost like $.50! Awesome! so we got a pumpkin for our din din and one to carve since Minnie had bit the dust. 

We made ourselves a cute witch jack-o-lantern.  Cooked our dinner and got ready for the festivities.  Our friends' Blake and Chantel joined us for the evening.

We took the girlies through the neighborhood trick-or-treating and then came back and ate our delicious dinner. 

Sad.. no pics. But it looked about the same as it did last year. so no biggie. 

Post dinner and candy devouring, the girls went to bed and we watched "The Haunting." 

ps: this is what our porch looks like. 

 My pretty Minnie's.  Grandma Theressa Minnie Frandsen would be so proud. Actually, she hated her middle name. I love it!

 Blogger is irritating.

 Blake and Chantel were Pumpkin-Pie. : )

 Luke is sporting his "I stick my tongue out every time Mary makes me take a picture when I don't want to" costume. Nerd!

 It was a nice low-key event.  My only gripe is that we bought tons of candy because we heard we get hid hard with trick-or-treaters... but apparently our house doesn't. It's located just right that not many people bother because if you turn at the house next to ours you can go down another street.  So.. we'll be eating the stupid candy until next Halloween.  Maybe I'll just save it for them next year! haha. 

Octoberness: hunts and corn mazes and such

Somewhere in the middle of October while Luke was elk hunting the girls and I went with my sister and her fam and their friends to a Corn Maze in Castle Dale. Who knew there was one?! Well, turns out, there isn't. It's actually sorghum {a grassy weed that looks kind of like corn}  It was kind of lame but kind of fun! :) At least it made for some cute pictures!

 I have such posers for children!

 Could have been a good pic were it not for terrible lighting, shadows and the squinting! : ) and no.. i don't hold the photographer responsible.

DEER HUNT:
 The day after we moved in our house, Luke and the girls went down to C.D. for the opening of the hunt.  I opted to stay home and unpack more.
They had a fun opening day and it ended with our brother in law, Chris getting a deer. So he came home and we went to our new ward on Sunday and that night drove back down so he could hunt on Monday the 24th.

Since we really had a lot of house stuff to do, I not-so-subtly told him, he had to get his deer that day or he was done. Preferably at first light so we could get home and get some stuff done.
He graciously obeyed!

 By 7:30 he shot himself a nice little 3 point! We were so happy for him and ... well... he was quite pleased I think!

 The girls thought it was so cool to be with their daddy when he got his deer!
 Funny little side story: Tianna is kinda gruesome! She thinks its cool when there is blood and guts and all that gross stuff.  When luke slit the deers throat to start cleaning it all this nasty stuff ran out. She didn't say anything.  Pulling out the guts, the lungs  etc. Nothing.  When he grabbed his boy parts to open him up she asked what they were. He said it was his boy parts and she was "EW GROSS!"  hahahahaha.. it cracked us up!

 See See. I was there too!

 While we were cleaning the deer, Luke's dad shot a 5X3.  It was a successful morning!

 The great white hunters needed some grub so we made some pancakes in their honor.

A few days later we took the kids to the Corn Maze right next to Luke's work in Payson.  Sadly, I didn't think it was much better than the Sorghum maze... but hey, it was at least CORN! : ) oh. and it was really really cold!

After the corn maze we came home and carved ourselves a minnie mouse pumpkin.  It looked great. Sadly, I did not take a picture of it. Even though it should have lasted the 4 days until Halloween, it did not.  So, just picture us having a pumpkin similar to this one:

Next post: Halloween Festivities!

finally.

Well, my friends, as most of you will know, we are now finally in our new house! We signed papers on the 19th and moved in on the 20th of October.  Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!

It brings us great joy. We love our house. We love Santaquin.  We love our new ward.  We love living close to Luke's work.  We just love everything about it!  Well, okay, there are a few little quirks about our new abode that we wish were different, but hey. Without designing our own house, it's bound to have a few little weirdo things. This houses' particular oddities are: Our long awkward walk in closet. (But at least we have one.)  The one drawer we can't open all the way because it hits the handle of the other drawer.  And the toilet in the basement bathroom that is set on an angle.... but let's not dwell on it's faults. 
Some of it's best features are:  the kitchen. the view. the girlies having their own rooms. the fact that is has a garage! and so much more. It's a very happy place. 


*disclaimer. Yes mom, we do miss you. and we do miss seeing you every day.  (she wasn't thrilled with our excitement "to leave her" as she kept saying.  But she really did understand why.


We are just about all settled.  Everything except our office and storage stuff is put away.  A lot of the decorations are up and once they are finished, I will post pictures. I just took some to of the outside to add to this post but my camera battery died. SO.. next time folk!

October is Upon Us

The first half of October has been kind of crazy! That Friday, my dad, my brother James, and I went to Logan to make a few repairs on my house that our buyers requested and to clean out the rest of our belongings.  Luke had to work so he missed most of the fun.  By the time he made it up there we were close to heading out.. but it was already 9:30 pm.  By 11:00 pm we turned off the lights and drove away.  It was very much a bitter sweet moment! We truly loved our home in Logan. We loved our friends, our neighborhood, our WARD, and we loved our time in Cache Valley.  What a sweet chapter it was.
Anyway...

We got to Scofield by 2:30 am on Saturday morning. Once we slept enough to survive we got up and enjoyed the next 2 days of General Conference.  I LOOOOVE conference. It is always such a spiritual rejuvenation and the talks always have so much personal meaning.  I come away wanting to be a better person, a more dedicated member of Christ's church, and being reminded how loved I am by a Father in Heaven.  We are SO SO lucky to have the privilege of listening to a Prophet of God and those who work directly with him.  

That day we also celebrated my cute niece Joelle's first bday.  

Monday we went up to Payson with Luke and after we dropped him off at work we went to Ikea with my sister in law, Val, and shopped around for some new couches.  

I had great helpers

That afternoon we drove up to our future house and drove around some many times the people who live there probably thought a freak was stalking them.  Oh well! They are mostly right! 

We hung out at the neighborhood park for a bit, and then went to The Red Barn to pick up peaches for canning.  

 Just as I drove away to pick Luke up for a party, he called at said it was changed to 1 hour later. I didn't know what else to do to waste time, so I drove back around through Santaquin to the Red Barn again.  I saw them giving wagon rides out to the pumpkin patch and thought that sounded fun. And it was.  We found ourselves a cute lil pumpkin.

Finally we got to pick up Luke.  His work buddies were having a barbecue at his supervisors house.  It was really fun getting to know them.  Luke certainly works with (and for) amazing people!

On Tuesday we attended the First Annual (??) Peacock Pumpkin Picking Party.  The girls dressed up in their cute Halloween costumes and we headed off to Orangeville.  Luke's grandparents had planted a pumpkin patch this year and each grand kid got a giant pumpkin to take home.  We ate yummy food, drank hot wassail, and the kids got a cute little halloween treat bag.  It is a fun tradition-- i hope we get to continue it other years. 

The rest of the week was filled with peaches, peaches and more peaches.  My mom and I canned 70ish jars of peaches.  It was the first time I've actually helped AND paid attention as to how the actual canning takes place and not just zone out while peeling them.   

Saturday the 8th was the baby shower we held for my sister in law, Tori.  After 4 girls, her and my brother our having a little boy.  He's going to be one spoiled little brother! : ) 

For the shower we went to Groggs for lunch and then came back to my mom's house for presents and dessert.  

Luke was elk hunting that weekend with his dad and pretty much got snowed out of all hunting.  Sunday after church we went to the cabin so that he and my dad and brothers could hunt on Monday.

The weekend as a whole was pretty rough.  Friday we found out it will take $1300 to fix our car, Luke's first time being able to hunt elk since before his mission were ruined, Sunday morning we received word that our buyers financing had fallen through.  But we were still hopeful because we had the back up offer.  We would just need to find out if we could still get financing on our new house with just being under contract even if we hadn't closed yet...since our scheduled closing was only 10 days away.  We got word that we could! YAY! So we started the paperwork to become under contract with the back up buyers.  Then we heard they didn't want it.  

It was horribly depressing.  We have fallen in love with the new house in Santaquin AND spent a lot of money on inspections and appraisals and all that. We did not want to lose our contract, but it seemed inevitable.  

All morning on Tuesday I was so depressed. I told the repair shop we could not get our car fixed because without our house sell we don't have the money.  I prayed and prayed and cried and prayed some more that something would happen.  We had to find new buyers or all would fall apart. 

Then James called.  Our loan officer was doing all he could to get our loan to go through still.  We waited and waited and waited for the next few days and FINALLY FOUND OUT WE CAN STILL CLOSE ON OCT 19th! Now, it's 3 days away and I am dying with anticipation!! And.. i am dizzy with all this back and forth stuff.

Now........... to top it all off, tonight we received another offer for our house. We feel so blessed. Whether this one works out or not, I don't know, but I do know it is all in the Lord's hands and if it's what He wants, it will work out. If not, something else will come.
  Until then..... I will just go to bed with a smile on my face because I know that in 3 more nights I will be sleeping in my new house.  

Where Was I When the World Stopped Turning

Before I finish up September, I need to remember the 10 year anniversary of the day "the world stopped turning."  That Alan Jackson song has been in my head for weeks before Sept 11th and for weeks since.  The world truly did stop turning and it's important to remember where and what we were doing that fateful day.

When I woke up on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, it seemed like an ordinary day.  It was Homecoming week and as a Junior at Carbon High School, I was getting ready  for Cowboy Day.  My mom told me about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and I thought it was weird and sad because I knew that meant some people would die, but I had no idea what it really meant.  I had never heard of a terrorist. I hardly knew anything about the places called Iraq or Afghanistan. I had no idea who the Al Qaeda were or who Osama Bin Laden was.
I went downstairs and while my mom was braiding my hair for my cowboy ensemble, I watched, horrified, as the second plane ran itself into the second tower.
When I got to school for an early morning meeting the news starting buzzing around like crazy.  Once school started we just spent the entire day glued to the television.  I witnessed the towers crumble to the ground. The reports of the wreckage, the other planes, the fear on the victims faces, the rubble.... it all left me confused, scared, and completely uncertain what was happening to the country I believed was invincible.  Life was never going to be the same.
Although it was a horrible experience and I get a lump in my throat just thinking about 9/11, I must say, I had never been so proud to be an American as I was that day.

We celebrated Sept 11, 2011 like we do most Sundays, but with our hearts turned and our memories filled with all the sacrifices of our military and service men.  We talked to Tianna about what happened that day and tried to explain as best we could to our little 5 year old  why we now celebrate Patriot's day. Our hearts still ache for the victim's and their families and for a country that was wounded that terrible day.  But I do believe in America and I know that if we include God in our lives, we can and will be a great nation forever.   GOD BLESS AMERICA and I will ALWAYS remember.