Halloween and Pumpkin Carving 2010!

This year for Halloween we went up to Midway so Sophie could trick-or-treat with her cousins. Tosha, graciously lent Soph this monkey costume, however, on almost every doorstep people called her a cute little boy, oh well. She still looks cute haha. Trick-or-treating didn't last that long because it was pouring rain and freezing outside. The ten minutes we did go out, Sophie really enjoyed. These are just a few pictures from Halloween and some of Soph and I carving pumpkins.

Sophie in her little monkey costume. I love the banana that's sticking out. Also, she's eating her favorite candy; you know it as either a "sucker"or maybe a "lollipop", but to Sophie, it's a "sicka".

Sophie and her cute baby cousin Ashtyn sporting an adorable duck outfit.

The girls warming up by the fire after trick-or-treating.

I swear Sophie has a sucker in every picture...she's pretty attached to those things haha.

The pumpkin carving begins!

I was showing Soph how to get the seeds and guts out of the pumpkin. She would laugh and then grab the seeds out of the collinder and say "eww!" It was funny.

Me and Soph having fun carving pumpkins.

The end result! I could only carve two...it takes so much time but I was committed to finish ones for Soph and I. "HP" stands for Harry Potter if you've been living in some paranormal universe the past ten years and hopefully you can tell the other pumpkin is of Mickey Mouse. Sophie absolutely loves Mickey and whenever we'd go outside she'd point to the pumpkin with great enthusiasm and yell, "Mickey Mouse" "Mickey Mouse". So even though it took a long time it was worth seeing the excitment on her face!

Photo collages of Sophie

My sister Brittany loves to come down and practice her amazing photography talent on my little sweet girl. These are just a few recents she's taken of Sophie and put into a collage for me.

Britt got these delicious cupcakes from a pastry shop in Provo, (I forgot what it was called), and Sophie just lit up and said yum when she saw them haha.

This was another day when we went out for lunch and got this yummy, "sicka" as sophie calls it.

Sophie still doesn't really get the concept of blowing a dandelion. She inhales and sometimes eats it by accident, it's so cute! This shows the process of her blowing one, obviously.

Just some random shots of her in her high chair.

2010 Update!

I can't believe it's been close to a year since I've posted on our blog. I don't know what happened to me or where my motivation went...well maybe it had to do with my little girl Sophie who never stops, therefore, I have no time to blog. Or it could do with the fact that if I do have time, I'm just lazy! Regardless, lots of things have happened this year: we celebrated our third year anniversary this year on May 10, 2010, we went to Vegas since Tanner had never been and we lived so close since we lived in St. George until recently when we moved back to Utah County where we've been staying with friends til we have money for an apartment; Tanner is going to UVU in the fall and looks forward to finishing school (YAY); Sophie is now 18 months and has all of the qualities of a "Terrible Two-Year Old", but she's still as cute as a button and so smart.
Also, a new development...drum roll please...for those of you who don't already know, I'm 13 weeks pregnant! We're expanding our family to four, pretty exciting! My sister-in-law Hannah is also pregnant, her due date is only three weeks before mine, so it's a race to see who might be having the first grandbaby boy in the family. If we do have a boy, Tanner and I have no idea what to name him because we both come up with names and when we share them with each other we complain that we knew someone with that name and they were weird. I like Emmett, yes I know it's from Twilight, but I don't care, I like it because it's old fashioned. If we have a girl, we'll probably name her Emma.
Anyway, for right now I'm hoping we'll find a wonderful spacious apartment that we can spend the rest of our time in when Tanner finishes school and then it can be my turn to finish after the baby comes. I just want to be settled!
I think I need to find some new hobbies as well since Tanner will be gone most of the day at work and at school. I need to start compiling photos of Sophie and make her a baby book...that would be fun. If anyone wants to help me, let me know....aka, Brit or Summer because you're so good at crafty things and I'm not.
I know this doesn't do justice for the last 10 months but, it's all you're going to get for now. I'll start posting more things and some photos when I get my computer to load my photos, I need an external hard drive, a big one that will hold all my pictures because our computer has reached max capacity.
Anyway, to anyone who reads this, thanks for being patient with me. Love you all!

Pizza and Pumpkins!

We had a fun family weekend just Tanner, Sophie and I together making pizza and carving pumpkins. Tanner and I love to cook together and we definitely love pizza! So we decided to buy all of the ingredients to make some homemade and it was delicious! We've also never carved pumpkins together as a family so it was really exciting for us! Sophie loved to try and help...but by the end of the night she was getting pretty bored with us and started to eat the inside guts of the pumpkin, but we finished nonetheless! Here some pictures of our time making homemade pizza and carving family pumpkins. Enjoy!

So yummy, both the pizza and my hubby haha.

Yay, we're such good chefs!

A picture of our pizza masterpiece! We bought the pre-made dough from Harmon's, made a sauce out of heirloom tomatoes and roasted garlic, then bought some italian meats at the deli at Harmon's consisting of: soppresata, proscuitto, and capocolla. Then we roasted some red bell peppers and pine nuts. Then put that all together on the rolled out dough with some mozzerella cheese and basil on top. It was divine! Almost Settebello good, if any of you know what that is besdies my family haha.
Sophie eating pizza!

Sophie playing with her baby pumpkin before we carved it.

Our pumpkin carving mess.

" Get me out of this mommy!! I want in on the action!"

Sophie trying to help me carve my pumpkin.

I accidentally dropped my pumpkin on the ground after I finished, I was so disappointed but thank goodness for gorilla glue!

My sad face when I dropped my pumpkin on the ground.

Sophie entertaining herself by finding a bag of goldfish, dumping it on the ground, and eating them while Tanner and me carved our pumpkins haha.

Tanner carving his pumpkin.

The finished product! So cute! Tanner and I didn't even mean to carve our eyes looking toward each others pumpkins...it just happened that way, cool huh? So I guess you know what happens when pumpkins look at each other that way...they produce a baby pumpkin named Sophie haha.

Much needed update!

Hey everyone. So, it's been over a month and a half since I've posted. Sorry for the wait: Gram, Cort, etc. haha. Anyway, I'll just let you all know what we've been up to the past few months. Tanner, Sophie, and I moved down to St. George and are staying in my parents second home. We absolutely love it! It's beautiful and we love St. George because it still has somewhat of a small town feel. Tanner is in school at Dixie: he's studying Psychology. Sophie and I stay home most of the day but I am currently looking for a job; I applied at Costco so we'll see how that goes. I swear that's the best store on earth haha!

Sophie mastered crawling at around six and a half months and ever since then she stands up on her own (with help from furniture and our legs of course) and wants us to help her walk everywhere. She's so smart and has turned into a darling little girl. She's now almost 8 months and I guarantee she'll be walking by 9 months. She definitely has a little attitude now...not a bad one. She just knows what she wants and commands attention whenever she's awake haha. She also can say "Da Da", "Ma Ma", "Ba Ba", "Ya Ya" and she does these really cheezy smiles that make you laugh on everytime she does them. She's my adorable baby girl!

I turned 21 on Sept. 16! Yay! Thanks Non and Gram for the birthday cards, they were great! I bought some awesome clothes and got a spray tan with the money I received for my birthday. Tanner and I got to go out to dinner and went and saw "The Proposal" while our friend Marie babysat Sophie. We had a great time! Overall, it was a great birthday! It's funny to be old enough to go and do anything I want now. Not that it really matters since I don't drink or go to clubs or anything haha.

That's pretty much been our lives the past few months...school, play at home with Sophie, hang out with friends, watch movies, read amazing books, and go to church. Nothing too exciting but entertaining nonetheless! We absolutely love our ward down here. Family wards are so much better than married wards. I have a group of girlfriends who are darling! We went to the St. George Rodeo last Thursday which was a blast!

My family comes down from time to time. They came down for Labor Day Weekend and we went hiking in Zions, which was really fun. I like when they come down. Even though I love living down here it's sad to be so far away from family. We're going up to Standrod this weeked, finally, to see Tanner's family! We're both really excited to see everyone...it's been three months. I'll be sure to take pictures and post some when we get back.

Oh also, I didn't post anything about CT because I have a gazillion pictures and it would have taken me forever but we had an amazing time and you can look at all the pictures on my facebook! Now, I'll let you see some pictures of stuff I've described in the text above and just some goofy ones of Sophie...since that's why you really look at this blog anyway haha. Enjoy!

Group of girlfriends from my ward. This is us at the St. George Rodeo! We had a blast! Also, the little kids in front of us don't belong to any of us haha...they belong to the woman taking this photo. Girls from left to right: Kari, Georgia, Alyssa, Marie, Serenity (Ren), Me, and Cindy.

I asked this Rodeo clown to take a picture with me after the Rodeo was finished just for the fun of it and after I came home and showed Tanner this picture he said that this guy is one of the most famous Rodeo clowns in the West! Pretty cool huh? Who knew?

They made me show off my sexy cow girl boots. :)

Zions National Park.

Sophie, Car, and my Mom getting ready to start the hike.

Brit would put Sophie on her shoulders and Sophie would pull Britt's hair and laugh. It was so funny!

Sophie listening to "The Sounds of Zion". As you can see she's focusing very intently.

This is the first time I saw Sophie actually drink water haha. It was really hot outside that day so of course she needed a drink.

One of Sophie's cheezy smiles. It made you smile right?

My adorable baby girl in her Sunday dress, ready to go to church.

Sophie eating a wheat teething biscuit. Whenver she eats one of these I have to give her a bath after because she gets it everywhere, as you can see :)

This was the first time Sophie stood up on furniture by herself, I was lucky enough to have the camera right by me so I could capture her standing!

Our friend Marie, lent us this jumper for Sophie. She absolutely loves it! The first time she jumped in it for 45 mins. straight...awesome babysitter haha.

Hanging out by the pool at the Washington Rec Center.

Me and my baby girl..I don't think she really wanted to be there haha.

Brit, Sophie, and Car hanging out in the kiddie pool...again Sophie didn't seem too happy.

My sexy hubby working on leveling the dirt for the yard down here in St. George. Of course Sophie had to help :) Tanner's really good with machines!

I love this picture of Sophie for some reason. The hat is way too big for her but she's still so darling. This is back in July when we first moved in and were getting ready to go on a bike ride. So cute!

Videos of Sophie

This is Sophie's first time in her little jumpey thing..sorry I don't know the actual name.

This is our last leg on the airplane from Connecticut. She's saying "Da Da" which you can't really hear all that well but you can sure tell what she's saying because she uses her tounge to over emphasize da da.

Sophie's first time swimming!

Over the holiday weekend we took Sophie swimming for her first time atTanner's aunt and uncle's pool. She just let us swim with her in the water and splash around. I think she liked it but she was tired and didn't really show any emotion; she's funny like that when she's tired :). So here's some of us swimming with her.

Sophie's first swim with her Daddy!

She wasn't too excited but she looks cute even though her head looks overly large in this photo, haha.

Sophie is obviously distracted by all the pretty water.

Brittany and Bradley Clark's Wedding!

I finally got around to blogging my sister-in-laws and I guess now my brother-in-laws wedding and reception. The reason for my abscence is due to the fact that my internet was shut off for a week! It really sucked....anyway, now I can blog about how wonderful the wedding was! I love Brit, she and I are very close in age and I'm so happy that she found her soulmate! Anyway, they were married on June 27 in the Salt Lake Temple...as were 67 other couples that day, crazy, I know! Luckily, it wasn't too hot, except when I took my shoes off because I thought my feet were going to fall off and I had to run on the pavement, which felt like 1,000 degrees, not fun! These are just a few from the many that I took, I didn't feel like putting a gazillion up so if you want to see the rest check out my facebook...anyway, enjoy them!

The beautiful Bride and Groom..this is by far my favorite shot of them!

Brit with the family she nannied (sp) for in Texas for five months! Tracey, Rob and their three triplet boys, which I forgot their names.

Exiting the temple as companions for eternity!

Cute kisses! I'm glad that they kiss cute because some couples are just disgutingly awkward...Brad and Landon, you know who I'm talking about.

My cute little family! Sophie is getting so big it's crazy!

The Hansen girls..sorry not a very good shot but it's the only one of me in with all the girls.

The Hansen kids...every single one accounted for: (top left to right): Summer, Shad, Landon, Tanner, Sally (Middle row): Echo, Hannah, Brittany, Brad, Tosha, Faith, Brooke, Ethan, (Bottom row): Ammon, Lad, Chandler, and Ian.

The gorgeous Skinner family...Hannah, you're gorgeous and Jeremy...you're pretty cute too haha. Their beautiful girls: Molly, Maddie and newest baby, Halle.

Cutting the cake!

Brittany with all of the grandbaby girls. You're probably thinking, 'Why would Manda put up a picture with crying babies'...well, when Molly joined the group she was very upset...somehow, unintentionally, of course, she grabbed Sophie's hand which made Sophie start crying. Then Remi, on the right, is looking at her cousins like "what in the world is your guys problem!", Faith is thinking, "you guys are the weirdest people I know, I can't belive I'm your aunt" haha, and Maddie is in her own little world. But we successfully got a picture with all of them so it was okay! I just find this picture comical for some reason!