Announcing...

Baby Reese #4
is on the way
and due in
May!

Trick or Treat

Pumpkin carving- at our house this translates to Daddy

carving the pumpkin while the girls play with the pumpkin goo

The fairy princess

The cowgirl

The witch

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Walk

I love the Pumpkin Walk. It's a great community event held around Halloween that is all put together by volunteers. All the displays are made with pumpkins and other vegetables.

Michael Jackson

Keebler Elves

And to top it all off, the girls each got to be their favorite princess for 20 seconds...

Lydia

Rachel

Charity

In case you were wondering...

Here is a taste of what's been going on recently.

We are building a new house and it's been fun to
watch it change from this....

To this.... (Sorry about the trailer in the way). Obviously there is
still a long way to go. We'll post more pictures as the house progresses.

We've been playing the piano...a lot. We are so glad
to have our piano back. Special thanks to Mason and
Carrie for taking perfect care of it while we were in Virginia.

We went to a family reunion with Kenny's side of the family and
the girls enjoyed playing with their cousins on that side that
they hadn't seen in a couple of years.

The girls asked all summer if we could go camping. We never
did make it and now it's just too cold at night to go! So, we
settled for roasting hot dogs and smores up the canyon
and the kids just loved it.

Back to School

Lydia and Rachel started a new year of preschool here in Utah a couple of weeks ago. They are absolutely loving it. They can hardly wait to open their backpacks when we get back to our house, so that they can show me what they did in preschool that day. All of our girls love to learn, and I am grateful for that.

Rachel

Lydia

Best Friends

We made it!

Whew! We have been off the blogging radar for awhile but we are now up and running again! We said goodbye to our friends in Virginia and 7 days, 12 states, and 2,400 miles later we arrived in Utah. The drive actually went really well. Everyone had their moments but overall the kids did great. I think that we prepped them well enough that it was going to be a long drive so they didn't expect to get to Utah too quickly.

We really enjoyed the time we had together as a family and we were able to see a lot of neat things along the way. Keep scrolling and you can follow our journey across the country!

Cabela's in West Virginia- This store is made for families
on road trips. It's just like a quick trip to the zoo
with air conditioning.

The National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio-
Here Rachel poses as an astronaut

Lydia in an F-16 cockpit

Carthage Jail in Illinois where the Prophet
Joseph Smith was killed

Nauvoo Illinois- The girls loved going on this
wagon ride around town.

Kenny and the kids in front of the
beautiful Nauvoo Temple

Winter Quarters, Nebraska- Many of the early pioneers
of our Church lived here for a winter. Many died here,
including some of our ancestors. In this picture our
girls dressed up like pioneers and took a shot at
pulling a handcart.

Winter Quarters Temple

Cabela's once again- this time at the mother store
in Sidney, Nebraska

Kenny was able to go to Martin's Cove in Eastern
Wyoming. I had already been here so I stayed at the
hotel and swam with the kids. The Martin and Willie
Handcart Companies took shelter here in the wintertime
in 1856. Many died here before help could arrive.

Kenny got rattled at by this poisonous guy on the trail. It's
good I wasn't with him because I would have flipped out.

Independence Rock is fairly close to Martin's Cove. Many
people headed west in the 1800's would carve their names here.

A sample of a carving

We couldn't drive through Wyoming without driving
past our old place in Kemmerer. Yes, Kenny and I
actually lived here during the summer of 2003. The
town really hasn't changed much since we left.

As you see the girls came out after the trip unscathed
and excited for their new life in Utah. Here they are in
front of our house on our first day back at church.

Wow, this has turned out to be a long post. In short, we had a great trip. Virginians- we miss you! Utahns- we're excited to see you again!

Farewell Virginia

That time has finally arrived. This is our last blog post from Virginia. I'm getting homesick already. We have absolutely loved our time here in the DC area but the time has come for us to leave. We are headed back to Utah where our house is waiting for us. Our upcoming move is really quite bittersweet... we are excited to be back in Utah with our extended family and friends there but we will greatly miss our friends here in Virginia and living near our nation's capital.

We will be driving back to Utah so wish us luck! We are going to take it slow and stop and see some sights to break up all the driving. Though we'll be on the road for a long time, we look forward to spending that time together as a family.

Here's our family when we first moved to Virginia

Here's a recent picture of our family- our kids
have grown up a lot while we've been here

We love DC!

We will always have fond memories of our time here in Virginia, and we look forward to what the future holds for us in Utah!