A bit or this a that.

Oh me oh my! Where has November gone?! Seriously this month has just flown by. I can't believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving! Even 2 of my sisters and their families are here visiting from out of state for the next few days! I love my family and we have some awesome things planned for this weekend. I absolutely adore this time of year. Fall is by far my favorite season and now it's almost winter! These first few pics were a couple weeks ago when the weather was perfect and not too cold yet. I decided to take advantage and enjoy playing at the park with Miss A.



Look at this little angel :)

Ava dear LOVES the slide, even the big one. But she wants me to hold her on the big twisty slide. But the little ones she's got all by her self!

I love this one.. haha the look on her cute little face is priceless. She was actually trying to climb up the slide and it wasn't workin out so well since she was sliding back down.

I love how pretty all the leaves and the trees look. I am so grateful for the beautiful place we live. I really love Utah. It really has something for everyone, 4 seasons, the mountains, lakes, lots of parks and its where I call home!

Little Ava is so fun. I can't believe how fast she is growing up. I feel like time goes by much faster now that we have Ava. And there is never a dull moment. She is so full of happiness and love I am so SO blessed to have her in my life. The other day Russ and I were playing with her and he randomly says to me, "I am so glad we had a little girl. I can't even imagine having a boy right now." It has always been my dream to have a little girl- I love dressing her in cute outfits, doing her hair, painting her nails, dancing around to girly music with her and just everything else. I do want a boy though and I know Russ does too. But for now we are completely satisfited and complete with our little girl.

Me and my little princess!

Ava is my world my everything! Growing up I couldn't wait to get married, have my perfect little house, and a perfect little family with a little girl that I could spoil and love. At this time of Thanksgiving I think about all the things I am grateful for and my family is above all the most important. I never imagined in a time of economic uncertianty when so many things and people around me are falling apart that despite everything I could still find so much happiness and joy within my own life.

As I grow older I see what truely matters in life and it truly is the little things that make all the difference. I am learning not to worry about things that don't matter and not to waste a moment unhappy when I can be having fun and making lasting memories with the people that mean the most to me. I have everything I need. I have an incredible husband that loves me so much and works so hard to provide for our little family, I have the most beautiful little girl- inside and out- she is such a ray of sunshine in my life. She has changed both Russ and I in so many ways. We are better people because of her. I love my little family more than anything else.

Ava loves playing in the leaves.

LOVE HER... to the moon and back 70 times 7.

Right before we headed off to the grocery store. She really is quite a great little helper. Look at her cute piggies. Finally her hair is long enough to all go up:) Love her little smirk her haha

I love this pic. It is so real. so Ava.. so my life. messy hair and all ;)

As I said before I love Utah and I love our house and our neigborhood.
We have incredible views and it makes me smile everyday. Lately the sunsets have been so incredible. I have taken so many pictures!

Ava loves to have tea parties with her stuffed animals. lol

And feeds them :)

Here are my 2 favs, in the last big snow storm about a week ago. I had JUST bought Ava's new winter coat the night before (perfect timing eh..) Thats what that huge tag in the middle is. Russ went out before I could cut it off. Did I mention I am obsessed with Baby Gap and all the awesome sales stores are having right now. Doesn't Ava just look adorable in her new coat ;0 Too bad she hates the snow.. I mean really she hates it. She loves to watch it come down but doesn't like going out in it. You can totally tell by her face here. She is really nervous. I need to work on changing that. I want to have lots and lots of fun snow play days this winter :)

HALL-O-wEEEEn

Okay so this post is a TON of pics.. I edited it down alot believe it or not. But we took so many fun pics and had so many fun Halloween activities going on I didn't want to leave anything good out.
Okay so here we are at over at our friends house for a Halloween party. I was a fairy and Russ was Bret Michaels, the rocker and lead singer of Poison. haha I though he looked so awesome. Everyone could guess who he was so easily so I knew I had hit the mark right on.
Here are all the girls!

Here are all the guys.

This was the Friday right before Halloween I dressed up for work. (And ended up being the ONLY one in costume there) lol Oh well, I just love any excuse to dress up. My costume is "strawberry shortcake" the cute version ;)

This was on Saturday night. The weather was awful so we ended up going to the ward trunk-or-treat. Here is Ava all ready to go... dolly and all!

Because of the rain they moved the activities inside and had everyone going from classroom to classroom instead. I actually liked it better. Ava was so funny! She was hesitant to take the candy from people at first, especially any of the elderly people. lol

Just us.

Then that night we went out dancing with friends to another Halloween party. For this one I was a VS Angel.

The next day, Sunday-- the real Halloween I wanted to do something fun. So I talked to my sister-in-law Becky about planning a family Halloween Party. At first the idea was just to have the kids dress up but after my parents-in-law were on board they decided to go all out preparing yummy Halloween treats and dinner and everyone dressed up. It was such a fun party! I am so glad I suggested we all get together. Plus it was such a hit we are gonna make this a tradition to do every year!

Below are Ava and her cousin, Ethan. They are about a year and a half apart and area already becoming such cute little friends. He followed her around the whole party hugging on her and playing so cute. She just adores him and all the attention he gives her.

Here is me and my little witch. I thought Ava was so adorable in her little witch costume. She even let me do her make-up and put glitter and stick on gems. Aww my little cutie! Love her!

Our little Family.

Here she is with her witch broom I got to go with her costume. She loved "helping" by sweeping the floor.

I helped Ava cut out some sugar cookies.

Here are Ethan and Ava playing again so cute. I'm not sure what Ava is trying to tell him here. haha

Oh wow whatever he is telling her sounds interesting!haha Russ!

This one is by FAR one of my favs! Look how sweet they are! I love the look on Ava's face like she is holding back a big grin but being shy about it.

And finally decorating the cookies.

Mmm.. yummy and eating them.

Here is Ava with her grampa Child. Look how tired she is-- it was a long exciting day.

Well, that about sums up our Halloween this year! It was for sure one of the best so far! We had a blast and having Little Miss A only made it a million times better! Now we are getting so excited for Christmas! Ava has been such a good little girl that Santa has already agreed to spoil her this year ;) Hope you all had a great Halloween too!

First the HALL-O-wEEN activities

First of all let me say this was by FAR one of the beST Halloween's ever! We did everything possible to celebrate and have fun. With every holiday I realize more and more how having Ava just makes everything more magical. Its almost like us being able to be kids again. I love how she truely brings back all the magic of the holidays. And EVERYTHING festive I wanted to do Russ was right there wanting to as well. haha what a great man he is!

Soooo.. first of all we decided to carve us some pumpkins. Let's be honest I thought it would be alot harder than it was. I am SUCH a perfectionist and it took me twice as long as Russ to finish up my pumpkin but I think it was well worth it. They both looked amazing and I was so proud of my carving skills ;)

Here is my man and my lil' muchkin startin out. I love the look on Ava's face.. haha priceless. She is def gettin into her terrible 2's. she is one sassy girl!
I let little A help with takin out the pumpkin inner goo.. she thought that was fun for a SECOND only then was done. It went by so fast I couldn't even get a pic. The pumpkin looks so big compared to her here huh.

Ahh and the finished product. THis one is mine, the bat in the cave. Oh and did I mention this was my FIRST time ever carving a pumpkin by myself. And I loved it! WAYY fun I gotta say. This is for sure something we will be doing every year from now on! I quite liked how it turned out.

Here is Russell's-- a werewolf. He did great too and was super fast. He finished in half the time as me!

Both of them.

Another way I wanted to get into the crafty side of the holiday was I really wanted to make and decorate sugar cookies. This was my first time doing that to by myself. I bought all the cutouts and decorating colors and just went to town. It was fun. Then I took the finished product to a friend's party and dropped off some to my parents. They were a hit! Here are just some of them. I made 3 dozen cookies. I think I am gonna start making cutout cookies for all the holidays now ;)

Some more Fall pics

A few Sunday's ago we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and take Ava to the duck pond again.. this time prepared with bread for the ducks. Well apparently everyone else had the same idea.. the ducks weren't interested and so instead of that we decided to take a walk around all the trails.

Ava LOVES being outside and loves nature. She was just so interested in everything.

There even was this cool amphitheater place we hung out there for a while.

Just me and my bebe :)

Me and lover boy.

There was this waterfall and these stairs leading to the top where the road is. Too bad the pic is a bit blurry. It was really pretty.

And here we are just the 3 of us. My happy little family :)

Every day I think about how happy I am to have these 2 amazing people in my life. I have learned so much from both of them. They are my world, my everything!