Halloween

This year Haylie was a bat for Halloween and Zander was Mario.  We had many opportunities to celebrate including the ward carnival and trunk or treat and the school carnival.  Zander and Dave had a battle of the wills on Halloween night.  Zander refused to eat dinner and Dave told him he couldn't go trick or treating unless he ate it.  Zander chose to not eat dinner and not go trick or treating.  Kind of a bummer but one of those things that comes with parenting I suppose. I think I was more upset than he was about him not getting to go.

Sally Ann Holzer

In October we had a few days off of school so we decided to make a trip to Wyoming to visit Dave's family.  We hadn't seen his Grandma, Sally, (or Gram as we call her) in about 3 years so we wanted the kids to be able to see her and know who she was.  She played a big part in raising Dave and is an important part of his life.  The first full day we were there we went to the nursing home to visit her.  She looked better than she had in quite a while and absolutely LOVED seeing the kids.  Dave's sister, Dawn, had her daughter, Alexa, there too so all of her great grandchildren were there.  We visited until she grew tired and the children were getting restless.  That night, right before we went to bed, the nursing home called to tell us that Gram had tried to get up to go to the bathroom without waiting for help and fell.  She sustained quite a few injuries, including some bleeding in her brain.  We spent the rest of our visit there with Dave spending time with her in the hospital and me staying with the kids.  We didn't want them to see her all banged up since we had just had a great visit with her.  The morning we left we stopped at the hospital on our way out of town so Dave could stop in one last time.  He went in and came out a few minutes later saying she was asking to see the kids.  This was about the first time she had been awake and coherent of what was going on since her fall.  We unloaded the kids and went in.  She was a little confused and very tired but she looked at each of the children and talked to us a little bit.  We all gave her a hug good bye and headed out of town.  That was one of the last times she was coherent.  Dave's parents called the next week and told us that Gram had passed away.  I am so thankful for the prompting we had to go to Wyoming in the first place.  It isn't an easy trip to make.  I am thankful that my children got to visit with Gram and that she got to see them.  She was such a positive influence in Dave's life.  What a tender mercy to be allowed to visit her one last time.  Love you, Gram!

Bubble bath

One of the kids favorite things to do is to fill up the jetted tub, throw on their swimming suits and have a party in the bubbles!

Haylie's bike riding

This is definitely old news at this point for anyone reading the blog but I am determined to get caught up on my posts so that I can continue to make blog books.  Haylie has always been very cautious.  When she was a toddler she wouldn't even go under a table to get a toy for fear of hitting her head.  So, as you can imagine,  getting her to have the confidence to ride her bike without her training wheels was quite a feat. Last July, she got a new bike and we didn't tell her it came with training wheels. She caught on right away but still wanted someone to walk or run beside her just in case.  We live across the street from church with a nice parking lot that is empty most of the time so we spend a lot of time over there doing bicycle practice.

Independence Day in Perry

 The kids and I seem to be making a tradition out of going to Grandma and Grandpa Oberholtzer's house for the 4th of July.  Dave usually can't get off work, or in this case, was working on the house.  We had a wonderful time! We got to see some fireworks, play and have a weenie roast in Grandma and Grandpa's beautiful yard, see a parade, and even make a parade of our own! We spent a day at Willard Bay swimming and playing in the sand. We also got to go fishing with Grandpa O at Mantua.  I was so glad my kids got to go fishing with my dad because I can remember many times fishing with him myself.  It worked out wonderfully because they both caught a fish within the first 3 casts!  We didn't catch anything else the rest of the afternoon, but it was still fun.   

After the parade and kids activities in the park.

On the beach at Willard Bay

Our very own parade!

Weenie roast on Grandma and Grandpa's fire pit.

Haylie's Fish

Zander's Fish

Fishing with Grandpa

Reel it in!!

Chester

Here are some pictures of our new cat, Chester. He is a pretty nice cat as far a cats go, but definitely has a classic cat attitude. Sometimes he comes when you call him over but mostly he just looks at you, then turns his back.  He started out as an inside cat but we transitioned him to be both in and out.   Now we fight the daily battle of our neighbor, Betty, letting him inside her house and spoiling him so he doesn't want to come home.  That is definitely a post for another day.

Sam

Looking back through some of my previous posts, I noticed a post about the stray cat we adopted in November of 2010.  I chuckled at the post because I titled it Ballerina, the name given to the cat before we found out she was actually a he.  His male name was Sam. Sadly, sometime in July, we couldn't find Sam anywhere and finally decided he must have met up with a coyote while wandering the fields across from our house.  Besides fish, he was our first family pet and really made a place in our hearts.  Haylie was especially heartbroken, but we all shed a few tears over our sweet pet.  For months the kids prayed that Sam would come back in our family prayer.
I decided to write a post dedicated to Sam first because he was a part of our history as a family, but also because when I think of him and our new cat Chester, and about how we got both of them,  It serves as a good reminder to me of how much we matter to our Heavenly Father.  When Sam came along, we were living in the apartment and Haylie had been hounding us about getting pet.  We kept telling her that we couldn't have a pet in the apartment, and I kept feeling like my children's whole childhood was slipping away in a tiny apartment.  I felt like they were missing so many experiences and it really had me depressed.  I know, it sounds a little dramatic, but what can I say...apartment living gets to a person!  Anyway, we came home one day and Sam can running over to the kids, then a scrawny little cat so skinny his purring seemed to rattle his bones.  We decided to keep him as a outside cat, and amazingly my outlook, and Haylie's, changed.  She spent hours outside that first winter playing with him.  He was such an unexpected answer to our prayers.  It probably sounds corny, but I think about this a lot and know that Heavenly Father was watching out for us, even for something so small.  Here is a picture of Sam that Dave took while the kids and I were out of town and he was working in the garage with Sam as his companion.  We are pretty sure this is the last time we saw him.

Just when we were giving up hope of Sam coming back, some friends from our ward brought over a stray cat that had been hanging around their apartment.  They knew we had recently lost our cat.  We named him Chester, and he sure helped all of us get over the loss of Sam.  Again, an answer to our prayers, not what we had planned, but a mindful Heavenly Father at work.  Small examples, but good reminders.