We're having a baby!

We are excited to announce that baby #4 will be joining our family sometime in the middle of April 2015!

The children were very thrilled when we told them.

We are almost 15 weeks along in the pregnancy now. We ended up having an early ultrasound this week, and we were excited to find out the baby is BOY! Two girls and two boys sounds pretty perfect to me. We are looking forward to meeting him!

Fall Fun in Florida

October in Florida is a lot of fun. Temperatures are almost cooler (some of the time), and there are plenty of carnivals and festivals and parties to attend. Our calendar has been pretty busy!

The first weekend in October was the annual Butterfly Fest at the FLMNH. We go every year, and this year we enjoyed seeing (and even touching a few!) the live snakes and baby alligator, the fruit bats, a tarantula, and others. We went first thing in the morning so that we could be home in time for the start of General Conference (since it starts at noon for us on the east coast).

The children did pretty well during the conference speakers, mostly staying busy with coloring and activity sheets and iPad apps. We enjoyed our traditional conference food: crepes for breakfast on Saturday, and cinnamon rolls for brunch on Sunday. This year I also tried a breakfast casserole (recipe from Our Best Bites) that turned out yummy. The theme that I noticed from a lot from the speakers was an exhortation to live the gospel, focus on our spirituality, take responsibility for ourselves and for the poor.

Painting during conference sessions

Diligently working on conference packets

Cinnamon roll baking helpers

Jared made these delicious cinnamon rolls for us to enjoy on Sunday conference day.

The elementary school carnival was Oct. 16th. The PTA puts on quite an event, and we all enjoyed ourselves. The girls got some glittery dolphin skin stickers (that are still going strong after a few weeks). The children had fun with the bounce houses, hay ride, and games. I was able to volunteer one shift to run one of the bounce houses.

Posing with the police horse

Zach on the bouncey obstacle course

Anwyn's turn

Lily in the bounce house

Dolphins on the skin

Anwyn picked dolphins too!

Ready for the hay ride

Silly teeth for a prize.

Anwyn and Lily both had friend birthday parties to attend this month, and we celebrated Lily's 7th birthday (more to come on that).

Zach had a sunbeam lesson this month about honesty, with a tie in to the armor of the Lord. All the sunbeams were pretty cute in their armor!

Anwyn has become our Sunday night cookie baker!

Another favorite fall activity we like to attend is the annual Bat Fest. We went later in the afternoon since Jared had stake conference meetings in the morning, and it was pretty sunny and hot. But the fruit bats were neat to see, and the snakes and baby alligator. 

Celebrating Lily's 7th Birthday

 Lily turned 7 this month! She is growing up a lot (first grade), but is still our sweet, silly Lily.

Jared took her out for a private photo shoot on the afternoon of her birthday.

She decided that she wanted to have a horse theme party this year. The planning was pretty easy, once we realized we could just take a field trip to the Mill Creek Retirement Home for Horses. She invited three new friends from school, and the Olsen girls from down the street (unfortunately one friend got sick and couldn't come).

 The party started on Saturday at 10:30, painting little horse sun catchers. We had an easy lunch of sandwiches and chips, then loaded up cars to drive to the horse farm. We have been there many times and the kids enjoy feeding carrots to the horses. The weather was great!

Unfortunately, Zach had a run in with one of the horses. He had a carrot in his hand and was standing too close to one of the pushier horses, and it bit his arm. Ouch! It didn't break the skin, but it turned quite reddish/purplish. It wasn't until bath time that night that we discovered his back and side had been bitten also. Poor kid...he was pretty traumatized but is just fine now.

After the horse farm we came back home for Texas Sheet Cake and presents. Rather than try to attempt a fancy horse cake, we just stuck some lego horses on top of the cake and called it good. Then the kids just had fun free play time for an hour or so.