october is over

october was nuts!

but in the best kind of way. 

we celebrated our 10th anniversary, jack's 8th birthday, halloween, the fall season, and are enjoying a visit from grandma and grandpa brower. whew! thats not to mention all of the projects we've been involved with for school, church, and of course growing a human should be added in there somewhere too.

bart and janie flew into town just in time for all of the festivities and the kids are in heaven! we get three great weeks with them before they head home and begin their adventure as missionaries in ohio for the second time. we love love love them!

on to our activities...

traditionally, your 10th anniversary is celebrated by giving diamond jewelry (trust me, i googled it). but chris and i don't do things very traditionally. instead of jewelry, we opted for something a little more exciting... chris built an AR-15 and i bought a 9mm handgun, which is a little easier for me to handle than our 45. and that way we don't have to take turns when we're shooting :) we also got our family a membership to an outdoor shooting range outside of town at a place called Thor. needless to say, our anniversary was explosive.

charlie tags along and collects all of the shells he can find, calling it his gold treasure.

the day after our anniversary is jack's birthday.

usually we make the kids wait to open presents until the evening, mostly because we can and its fun to watch them squirm and get all hyped up. but since daddy was going to be working late, jack got to open gifts before school, which he thought was AWESOME.

we visited him for lunch at school

he got a metal detector (best gift for an adventurous boy that doesn't really play with traditional toys) and tested it out on grandma's knee replacement... it works!

charlie even likes it

here's jack learning how to use his new pocket knife from grandma and grandpa. all of our pencils are sharp now, which makes me smile and think of my dad because thats how he always sharpened pencils.

jack had such a wonderful birthday and to top it off, he was baptized on the 26th, which i'll blog about separately. but it was a great and proud moment for our family.

celebrating fall in the ozarks!

we enjoyed an afternoon trip to Cox Berry Farms to go apple-picking, which was a first for me and the kids. it was great fun and even though the orchard wasn't much of an orchard, the kids are still talking about "the time we went apple-picking", which makes it a total success.

i'd love to say that we've made apple pies and crisps and applesauce and all things apple with our pickings, but we've just snacked on them and made caramel apples for FHE last monday. nothing too exciting, but tasty nonetheless!

halloween!!!

we celebrated this year with three different outings: a school trunk or treat, a ward Fall Extravaganza, and a Halloween Fiesta at the smiths on the 31st.... all of which produced a whopping amount of candy.

this year we dressed up as harry potter, hermione granger, and dave the minion. i am seriously loving this harry potter phase in our home right now!

there was face painting at the ward party and this is what charlie looked like most of the night :)

chris won the chili cook-off for the "heartiest" chili at the ward Fall Extravaganza. he spent the afternoon smoking beef ribs then adding the meat, along with sausage and bacon, to his chili. obviously, it was out of this world delicious.

here he is accepting his award. 

he's very humble.

he has since put his "trophy" on top of our kitchen cupboards, out of my reach. i've reminded him that i am very accurate with my handgun and will have no problems taking care of it if it stays up there for too long :)

i was a bit of a grinch this year and said we wouldn't be carving pumpkins because when "we" carve pumpkins it really means "me" and i just wasn't feeling up to it this year. well, thank goodness chris isn't a grouch because when he announced we'd be carving pumpkins for FHE last week, the kids thought he was the best daddy in the world. and with all the extra adult hands around, i wasn't the only one scooping and carving, hooray!

chris had last week off of work. on thursday, we kept the kids home from school and took grandma and grandpa on an adventure up to the bentonville/rogers area. since I'm only a couple weeks away from delivering, i stayed home and went to a dr.'s appointment.

after an enjoyable visit this summer, chris took everyone to the gorgeous Blowing Springs for a picnic and a hike and also made a trip to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

what a month!