Of Songs, Guitars & Pumpkins!

It's been a fun week at our house and the weekends not done yet!

We've been doing lots of work around the house, going through boxes, throwing things out, taking things to put into storage (and bringing back Halloween decorations from storage!) and I'm happy to say that we finally have our living room back! For awhile there we couldn't find it! 

On Thursday this week Alishea & I competed in a singing contest called Star Search at a local country bar. It's hosted by KX96 which is a major country station in Toronto. There's 8 weeks where they pick a winner and then the finally week all the winners compete in the finals. Alishea has done the contest before but I never have and I've always wanted to. This year I finally got the guts to do it with her thanks to all my karaoke practice this year. This week there were 8 of us competing. Alishea did fanominal! One of the best performances I've heard her give. Loved it! There were so many talented singers and a lot of them played guitar. I felt very out of my league. But I got up there and did my songs and even remembered all the lyrics which I was worried about! I'm used I having the words right in front of me all the time. In the end the girl who won was exactly who I'd have picked. She was amazing! And in second place....me!!! I was totally shocked. With so many great performers I didn't think I was anywhere near that good but I feel very honoured! It's much better than I anticipated I'd do. I may do it again this week. It's fun and great practice. Since I came in second I'm actually in a draw to be a wildcard for the finals so hey, you never know! Mostly I'm just thrilled to have finally had the guts to give this contest a try!

After seeing so many great performers playing guitar I got the big again that I want to play too. I pulled out my guitar last night and played around with chords and songs for several hours. I'm no good at all but I can muddle through songs with easy chords. I got online and started looking into lessons and this morning Phil and I had our first lesson with a teacher who lives nearby. I'm sooo excited about this! Phil and I have both said we want to learn guitar but we've just never taken the plunge for lessons. I'm excited we'll be doing this together and helping each other learn and practice along the way. I'm also excited because I want to write my own songs and this is definitely a step towards that. 

Today we took the girls to the local farm to pick pumpkins. Always so much fun! 

Monday is Thanksgiving here in Canada 

(still so odd for a girl from the states!) and we're having our big turkey dinner here that evening! So excited! I love Thanksgiving! I love it so much we'll probably celebrate US Thanksgiving too just so we can have it twice and because it doesn't feel like the start of Christmas season to me without it! 

Happy Fall Everyone! And to all our Canadian family & friends, Happy Thanksgiving!!! 

If I had a million dollars....I would buy you a horse!

This weekend we had the girls again and we kept busy busy! Abrianna's friend Kylea spent the night Friday and Saturday we had a lot to do! 

We started off with cleaning the church. Our families job was to wash the windows and set up chairs. It was nice for the girls to get the chance to do some service and help with the cleaning. Chloe even got to share the experience in primary yesterday and drew a picture of herself cleaning the windows :) cute stuff! 

After cleaning, we headed to the dollar store for Halloween costumes for the girls. Our Halloween party is coming up in a few weeks! I love Halloween and can't wait to get the house all decked out for the occasion! Phil and I went nuts grabbing even more decorations (because we don't have nearly enough already! Haha) and the girls got their costumes picked out. 

We grabbed some subs for lunch and then headed off to Phil's friends horse farm! We got to help groom one of the ponies and the girls had a blast playing with the new kittens and their many dogs. Me...I've decided we need a horse! Haha I've always wanted a horse....maybe someday we'll have one. For now, Phil's friends wife might me giving me a few riding lessons. I'm very excited for that! 

After the farm we did some work on our yard at home and finally got all our weeds pulled! They went crazy while we were in BC this Summer! Yard looks so much better now! 

Saturday night I went with my friend Melissa to karaoke and Alishea and a few of her friends joined us. So much fun! I love singing and going to karaoke has really helped me further that talent. Alishea did amazing too! She's such a great singer and has so much confidence while performing! 

Sunday we had testimony meeting at church and it was a much needed spiritual boost for me. I hated missing church the last few weeks. Being there really helps me get through each week. I have so much gratitude in my heart for Heavenly Father and His love and help especially with my eye issue last week. It's healed up much quicker than we thought and I'm so grateful there won't be any lasting damage. We are very blessed! I spent the afternoon listening to the General RS meeting and felt more spiritual strength from it. I love the gospel! 

To top off our weekend we had a family movie night and watched The Great & Powerful Oz. Cute movie! It was a really nice family weekend! 

Happy Anniversary!!!

Can't believe it's been 3 years! Time is flying for sure! I'm so very grateful Phil and I found each other! I love him more and more every day and feel so blessed to be his wife! 

Love you Phil! You are my everything! 

Xoxoxoxoxoxox

New App, New Blogging Attempt!

Now that the Blogger App has become much more user friendly I am going to once again resolve to make an effort to keep this blog up to date....of course it's been almost a year since my last update so no promises! Haha But really, the new app on my phone will make updates very easy so I don't have any good excuses now! 

Rather than review the whole last year, we'll just say its been busy and awesome and then get right to the present! 

This weekend we had our lovely girls with us. Friday night we had family movie night and watched Over the Hedge. Totally love that movie! 

That evening I started coming down with a not so fun head cold which I'm still trying to kick. But did my best to not let it stand in the way of fun! 

On Saturday we went apple picking at Watson farm. It was a lot of fun and the weather was perfect for it! 

After that Abrianna had a birthday sleepover to attend and Phil was called into work so Chloe and I went out with our friends Melissa & Mia for dinner and some karaoke singing! The girls did a great job! 

Sunday the cold got the better of me and I spent most of it in bed, but after dinner we played a round of SkipBo which Phil won. Other than the cold it was a very nice weekend! 

Fall Full of Fun!

Our Fall so far has been very busy and a lot of fun!

A couple weekends ago we had family photos taken out with the beautiful fall colors. I was so excited for this because we have never had nice professional family photos done. The best we've had up till now were a few family shots at our wedding and thanks the late night of prep before the big day Chloe was super tired and scowling in every picture! Needless to say I really wanted a good family portrait! Our friend Dawn has a friend who does all their photos and does a beautiful job so we headed out with them. The weather was perfect and I can't wait to get all the photos back! May even get holiday cards out this year! Here are a couple shots the photographer showed us as a preview before she does all the editing:




While our friends family got their pics taken I took a few quick shots with my iPhone (which takes surprising good photos! Especially when combined with Instagram!) and was happy with the results:




Last weekend we hosted our annual Halloween Party! We all had such a blast! I love having this tradition and look forward to the years of Halloween parties ahead of us. Phil and I dressed up as Batman & Catwoman, Alishea was a scary puppet doll, Abrianna was a black cat and Chloe was a pink sparkly devil :)





This week for Family Home Evening we carved our pumpkins and they all turned out great!







We also celebrated Chloe's 7th birthday this past weekend! Can't believe how big she's getting! Chloe helped me look at some cake ideas and decided on a Hello Kitty cake:



For Halloween last night we visited Phil's cousin Heather, her hubby Mike (who's one of Phil's best friends) and their three girls. As soon as we arrived and the girls saw I'd dressed up in my Harry Potter garb they asked me to come trick or treating. Loving Halloween I agreed knowing how silly it was at 30 years old but apparently no one cares because I got a ton of candy! Haha awesome Halloween!



Other than birthdays and holiday fun our other big project this month has been our living room. Phil has been working hard doing new light fixtures (including all the electrical wiring involved in adding sconces!), and getting the walls painted. I've been picking out rugs and throw pillows and curtains! (you know, the fun part!) and our living room is well on its way to looking amazing!




Happy Fall Everyone! Hope you're having as much fun as we have!

Thanksgiving #1

Here in Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated in October. As an American girl...this is rather odd for me :) I'm used to Thanksgiving weekend in November and all that comes with it...Four day weekend, Black Friday shopping, and the official start of the Christmas season! As a kid we always put our tree up Thanksgiving weekend and I always start listening to my Christmas music.

Well in Canada Thanksgiving is a bit different. Here we have Thanksgiving Monday. We get a three day weekend and its all before Halloween so it can't officially start Christmas...to me it sort of feels like Thanksgiving butt the line in front of Halloween and Halloween is standing there fuming silently.

But at the end of the day this means I get 2 Thanksgivings each year and a girl who loves food like I do can't argue with that being a good deal!

I must admit though, while I spent the whole day cooking up a storm, I also spent it listening to Christmas music! I simply can't cook a Thanksgiving feast without Christmas tunes! The tree however will wait until after US Thanksgiving next month :)

Our Thanksgiving weekend started off with 2 really cool spiritual highs! 1) It was conference weekend! Yay conference! 2) One of our good friends was baptized on Saturday and Phil was able to perform the baptism! Such a wonderful experience and such a wonderful spirit was felt during the baptism and during the program for it.

After the baptism the guys took off for Priesthood session and I got to hang out with Phil's cousin and her kids...we spent the evening watching Harry Potter. Always a good time!

On Sunday Phil and I headed up to the trailer for the last time this year to help close things up for winter and bring back Phil's mom's van. But first, we both woke up with sore throats and headed to the doctor's office...two strep throat diagnosis! UGH! With antibiotics in hand we made the trip to the trailer then headed home for some rest and fingers crossed we'd feel okay the next day for Thanksgiving.

Luckily we woke up this morning feeling much better...gotta love the drugs! I started cooking like a crazy person and spent most of the day in the kitchen. Since we only have one oven this year (last year I was able to use the basement oven as well but this year we have tenants living down there so I was stuck with just our oven upstairs) I decided to take a leap of culinary faith....this year my turkey was cooked in *drum roll* A CROCK POT!

Yes...that's right...a turkey in a crock pot! I was very nervous about this idea but I found a blog post from a lady who said it could be done and gave some good tips. The toughest part was stuffing that turkey into my little crock pot but I somehow managed it. By the time dinner rolled around the meat was falling off the bone! It wasn't the prettiest turkey in the world as it was impossible to take it out in one piece, but it was certainly a tasty one! (Pay no attention to my scary looking husband or the sharp object he's holding...he's just excited to eat turkey!)

In addition to my lovely crock pot turkey I also whipped up apple/cranberry stuffing, cheddar/bacon mashed potatoes, dill new potatoes, sugar glazed carrots, green bean casserole (my FAV!!!), sweet potatoes with mini marshmellows and for dessert I made my mom's amazing holiday stolen bread! She always made it with cherry pie filling, but for Thanksgiving I decided to go with apple pie filling and cranberries with cinnamon and super sweet cream cheese...now picture all this ooey gooey yumminess braided up in a yummy sweet bread and then drizzled with icing! SOOO good! Of course we were all so full after dinner we didn't break into it very fast, but I did sneak a piece after I'd cleaned up the kitchen tonight and it turned out really well. This was the first time I'd made my mom's stolen bread all by myself! Very happy with how it turned out. Definitely going to make the cherry version this year for Christmas!

It was so nice having all 3 of our girls here with us for Thanksgiving. Alishea's friend Holly also joined us and was a big help in the kitchen today! Thanks Holly!!!

Phil's mom and step dad also joined us on their way back from the trailer today. So glad they were able to spend the evening with us!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian Friends! We are thankful for you all!

Bring On Fall!

Our family spent the weekend at the pumpkin patch and decorating the front yard for Halloween! It was so much fun. We got our pumpkins picked out, got some awesome corn on the cob for dinner and treated ourselves to candy apples. So yummy! We also played on the farm's super slide :)








While we were out we picked up some decorations for the yard and got it all set for Halloween...





Later this month we're hosting our second annual Halloween party and I'm super excited about it! The girls picked out costumes this weekend. Chloe is going to be a pink devil and Abrianna will be a black cat. As for Phil and I....still undecided. :)

Next weekend is Canandian Thanksgiving...can't get used to that! Thanksgiving before Halloween? Totally throws me off! But it's fun getting 2 Thanksgiving's year!

Happy Fall Everyone! Hope you're all enjoying it as much as we are!