Thanksgiving 2014

We had a great time spending time with family yesterday for Thanksgiving. Dustin has to work today so we spent yesterday evening at my mom's house for dinner. It was a full house! And a ton of fun.

Here's a little picture recap from the night.

We started the day off with baking dessert! Alivia was a great help!!

Then it was time to help Daddy put the tree together (a first in my home)

You crazy kids you.

Bump shot! 34w6d

Family shot. Strange/fun/crazy to think next Thanksgiving we'll have another little one with us!

The ham safely made it into the oven this time...

Perfect chaos.

Eskimo kisses <3 br="">

Apparently the dog food needed to soak in his water first...

Ryan helping me make caramel for the dessert!

This delicious dessert was from this website; Sallys Baking Addiction

Game Time!

A good indication it's time to go home...

The smell of Autumn

Today's prompt on NaBloPoMo;
Which smell lets you know that it is autumn?
 

Hands down, the first thing I think of is cinnamon. Remember two days ago when I said Fall wasn't my favorite season? Well this goes right along with that, and the fact that a lot has changed for me this year. Cinnamon, I hate the over powering smell of cinnamon when you walk into a grocery store this time of year. Honestly the second you walk in there is this big 'ol draft of cinnamon and there's no escaping it. I guess they must dip an entire bag of pine cones into a huge vat of cinnamon and then I think they place a fan underneath the pine cones to make sure you are bombarded with the stench smell. I'm obviously not a fan.

Why are they dipped in pine cones anyway? I assume that's what they are. I never get close enough to them to really look.

For some reason, this year, it doesn't bother me as bad. Maybe it's because I'm really liking fall this year. Is it a pregnant thing? Maybe it is now that I think about it. 2 years ago I was pregnant at this exact same time and I couldn't wait for Thanksgiving. Actually...that was just about the food lol. What pregnant woman doesn't want Thanksgiving to hurry the hell up and get here?!

Back to my original thought though. Any time of year if I smell cinnamon it makes me think of fall right away. While I still don't particularly appreciate the stores tactic of attacking me with it, I am starting to appreciate it more.

And, since we're on the subject. Do you know how good cinnamon is for you? Apparently really good. My mother has told me about many remedies over the years and almost all of them contain cinnamon. To name a few potential aliments that might be helped by cinnamon;

• muscle spasms
• vomiting 
• diarrhea 
• infections 
• the common cold
• loss of appetite
• erectile dysfunction (interesting?)

Cinnamon may lower blood sugar in people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. (From Medical News Today)

There are also some out there that say it can/may help with fungal infections, Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer's.  There may be something to this, I think a lot of this is still in the research phase but you have to start somewhere right?

If you're still interested in this lovely tree bark and want to learn more about it's potential uses here's a great website I found with some good info.
http://www.learnvest.com/2012/09/20-unexpected-uses-for-cinnamon/

Oh, and apparently the scent of cinnamon can help sharpen the mind and make you more focused...maybe King Sooper's just wants us all to be smarter shoppers?

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my wonderful mother's birthday, she is 51 today. We celebrated last night by going out to dinner with the family (most of us anyway) and it was so nice being able to spend time together. It's rare that my brother, sister-in-law, sister husband and parents are all together. Of course my hubby was out of the country but it was great seeing everyone else. I know my mom was happy too. :-)

Today's prompt in the NaBloPoMo is;

"Winter and summer are two seasons that have songs clearly associated with the time period. But are there any songs that remind you of fall?"

My response to that? None. Really. I've been thinking about this today and literally there isn't a single song that I can say always reminds me of fall. Is that sad? There are plenty of songs out there that remind of of certain times of my life, certain people in my life, even winter...but not fall.

So instead of writing about the song that makes me think of fall, here I'll leave you with a list of popular fall songs. Maybe here soon I'll hear a song on the radio and I'll think "YES! That's it! This song makes me think back to fall..." but for now, I'll leave you with this...

Wake Me Up When September Ends Green Day
Gone Till November  Wyclef Jean
Girl from the North Country  Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash
October  Broken Bells
California Dreamin'  The Mamas & The Papas
Harvest Moon  Neil Young
Autumn In New York  Bille Holiday
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground  The White Stripes
Autumn  Bombay Bicycle Club
Country Song  Jake Bugg 
Autumn Almanac  The Kinks
Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy  Fall Out Boy
Autumn Leaves (ft. Kendrick Lamar) Chris Brown 
November Rain  Guns N' Roses 
Autumn Leave Eva Cassidy



Looking over a few of these songs I can say that "Wake Me Up When September Ends" does make me think about fall time. I just never realized it before.


There you have it. Are there any songs that make you think of the fall time?

Favorite Autumn Sound

I've been thinking about this one all day. Autumn brings upon many different smells, sights and tastes, certainly different feelings as the weather starts to change. But what does Autumn sound like? And what's my favorite of those sounds?

When I was younger the sounds were different this time of year. I'd be starting school again, getting ready in the morning with the birds chirping, listening to other kids in the neighborhood piling into their cars, the school bell ringing and lots of talkative friends.

I don't hear those sounds anymore. Someday, when Alivia is starting school I'm guessing those sounds will come rushing back to me. But now, as an adult and a married woman and a mommy? It's the crunching of the leaves under my little girls feet. The sound of her little voice saying "Mommy crunch!" and her shoes running across the pavement or sloshing through the wet grass as fast as she can go to crunch the leaves on the ground. It's the sound of her giggles and smiles as she looks up at me while stomping her little feet in the leaves and looking around for more to chase.

The sound of  leaves blowing down the sidewalk in the wind is also quite nice. It's a little unsettling as it usually reminds me of some scary movie but it's also calming when it's the only thing you hear.

My favorite sound of fall has changed over the years, that's for sure. My liking for the season at all has changed, and that's a good thing.

Can I do it?

So I've decided to join NaBloPoMo for the month of October. I was initially looking for info on "blogtoberfest" but didn't see exactly what I was looking for. Or at least it's not what I thought I was looking for. Either way, I remember seeing Heather from Heather Drive post about joining this before so I thought I'd give it a try.

I was happy to see that this month is all about Fall. Which I love. And I'm not sure when that happened. I used to only really love Spring and Summer but I guess as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate the wonderful season of Fall! Now the challenge will just be weather or not I can actually blog every day. This will be my first time joining in on something like this but I think it might be fun.

Basically there is a prompt for each day of October, though it appears that the "weekends" are whatever you want to post about. Here's a link back to the original website I found this on. I'll have to search around on the site to see what "NaBloPoMo" even stands for and learn a little more about the history of her blog. BlogHer.

Well...we'll see how I do!

Mini Hiking Trip

Last month Dustin, Alivia, my mom and Tim all went up to Estes Park to go for a nice little hike. The weather was great and we had a good time. Alivia started "hiking" which we tried getting on video but true to form she stopped each time we tried.
She had fun chasing the squirrels, looking for "bear prints", and making grandpa run around like crazy.

The hike includes a trip around a very beautiful lake. We'll be stopping by here again for sure!

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” 
-- John Muir




Pretty Bluejay

Don't jump in little monkey!

Beautiful lake!

The family!

Interesting pattern to the seaweed.

Trying to smell the flowers.

She was washing the ground...

Now that's first class service!

Love

Baby girl was worn out!

 I was trying to upload another video but it's a bit too long for Blogger to accept. Therefore I have to figure out how to edit it...you may never see it.

My little helper

I only pray that she loves doing this as she gets older!

4th of July

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I love fireworks. The only time we really get to see them is Independence Day and New Year's Eve. There really should be more reasons to shoot beautifully sparkling explosives into the sky...

I worked for part of the day and unfortunately Dustin had to work the entire evening so Alivia and I were on our own. I planned on walking her down to the local recreation center where they put on a pretty good show. I had no intentions however of staying there until the fireworks started. It would have put her up way past her bedtime and that's not something we ever mess with. The plan was to go walk around, see all the people, play in the grass and have a few treats.

Before setting out I snapped a few photos in the same spot we did last year.

Look at my squishy baby! My goodness what a difference a year makes!!!

 

We had a lot of fun once we finally got to the park. There were so many people for Alivia to watch. Tons of babies and dogs which she loves so much. She wants them all to give her puppy kisses on her hand.

One of the best things about the 4th is the great food vendors. Luckily something sounded good to me because lately nothing does. Here we tried a Philly Cheese steak but made with turkey. She sure liked it! 

I also thought I'd throw in a few more photos from last year.

 

I may have also sprung for a funnel cake...since Alivia doesn't usually get treats like this, and I planned on eating some anyway, I knew there was no way getting around her trying some. :-) She mostly just wanted to pinch off the powdered sugar and eat it lol.

We had a good time together and it was so exciting to watch Alivia watch everyone else. There was a family right in front of us that had a big brother dancing around with his little sisters. It was so adorable and Alivia got up and tried dancing like they were. Then she wanted me to get up and dance with her too. When I figure out how to post a video I'll show you!

 As the night got further along she was actually doing really well and I felt bad leaving before the big finale. Since she was in such good spirits I thought she could make it through the evening. She did start to get a little upset right before the parachute jumpers came down but once they were out of the plane the look on her face was priceless. There were 4 or 5 of them and in the dark sky with their bright sparklers trailing behind them Alivia was in awe. I wish I could have captured that in a photo but I'm glad I got to see it.

 

The firework show was great as always. The music was incredibly loud but that didn't seem to bother Alivia. Actually she fell asleep half way through. But while she was awake she just stared up at the sky with the biggest eyes ever :-) 

Thinking about it now I'm really happy that we stayed and watched them together. Next year we certainly won't be staying up with her to watch them as we'll have another little one at only 6 months old and I don't think we'll be staying out all night.

I wish of course that Dustin could have been there. That would have made the night perfect!