November Sum Up

November has been way busy for us.  I am now writing this in December and trying to remember everything.  The most fun the kids had was playing in all of the fallen leaves:

These pictures were taken about the 14th of November.  Russell told me I was getting cabin fever because I was ornery all the time and I never left the house.  So he booted me and the kids outside so we could do some yard work as a family.  We cleaned out our garden area and got it ready for next spring, planted bulbs in the flower beds, and the kids raked what little leaves we had:

Emily and Colby had fun raking the leaves all around Logan, and Logan had fun throwing the leaves and even trying to eat a few. Yuck!  Well Russell was right, being outside did help my mood. I guess I need to get out in the yard more often.  Thanks Dear!

November 19th was Cub Scout Pack Meeting and Arrow of Light Ceremony.  As Cub Master, Russell made this awesome plaque for Greg Shipley, the boy getting his Arrow of Light:

This was the first Arrow of Light ceremony Russell has had since becoming the Cub Master and he wanted to make something special for the boy.  The Arrow of Light is to the Cub Scouts what the Eagle Award is to the Boy Scout.  He got a little guff from the Cub Committee Chair about making the plaque because of what it would cost but the Primary President (me) told him to make it to reward Greg and inspire the other boys.  After seeing the finished plaque, the Committee Chair was so impressed and all of the boys wanted one.  Greg thought it was really cool too and carried it around proudly.  So Russell has had many requests for more plaques in the future.

November 23 was haircut day in the Farnsworth household!  We all got our haircut except for Dad:

Russell cut Logan and Colby's hair with a little bit of a fight from Logan.  I had to take a picture of Colby after the haircut because all of the hair clippings stuck to his back and made him look like a hairy back biker especially with the temporary tattoo on his arm.  Hee Hee!  Russell had given me a gift certificate to get my hair cut for Valentine's Day and I finally got to use it!  Emily and I had a mother/daughter date and went to the hair salon to get our hair cut while we left all of the stinky boys at home!  We had a blast and even went out for ice cream afterward.  Emily now wants to be a hair cutter when she grows up (along with a princess, mermaid, fairy, and of course a mom).  I told her to do it because it would be a good job.  Don't we all look so much better with our hair cut?

We cannot forget Thanksgiving.  We had a great Thanksgiving this year.  We spent the holiday with the Morwoods this year.  It was fun to get together, eat a great meal, and be thankful for the things we have especially family.

My sisters and I also hit up the Black Friday shopping deals.  The dumb thing about the deals this year was that the sales began at 6 pm on Thanksgiving.  We were really disappointed that the world has imposed even more on the holidays so we can't even enjoy them.  We originally told each other we were breaking tradition and not going shopping but we caved and did anyway.  My mom even went with us to Wal-Mart which was fun too.  So we spent the night driving from store to store chasing the deals, eating McDonald's at one in the morning, and finally ending at CAL Ranch where we saw the funny highlight of the day/night.  Two guys had set up couches outside the doors of CAL Ranch and had spent the night outside the store freezing their butts off I am sure.  We all laughed so hard when we saw it!  We had to look through the ad again to see what was so important that you would need to spend the night at CAL Ranch!  (Best Buy or Target maybe but CAL Ranch?)  Well come to find out, they wanted the Carhart coats that were a great deal.  When we got inside, however, CAL Ranch only had extra large sizes of coats so the guys didn't even really get what they wanted.  You could tell they were mad and rightfully so.  They ended up getting a Dr. Pepper and leaving! Poor guys...  Well we decided we won't do Black Friday next year because it will most likely start even earlier on Thanksgiving and totally ruin the holiday.  We decided it would be more fun to just take a trip to Vegas or somewhere and do our Christmas shopping and then get what we really want rather than the stuff that is on the sales that the stores want you to buy.  We'll see what happens next year.

And the day after Thanksgiving we were able to play in even more leaves:

As you can see all of the leaves on the tree finally fell.  It has been getting colder lately.  The kids had a big pile to jump in this time.  They especially liked grabbing handfuls of leaves and dropping them on Logan's head:

Luckily Logan loved every minute of it. Colby and Logan liked getting buried in the leaves too.

Who would think that a pile of old dead leaves could be so much fun?  My kids loved it.  In fact, ever since it turned Fall, Emily has been asking when we could make a pile of leaves so she could jump in it. Well she finally got her wish.

Finally, November 30 was Chrislyn's baptism:

Here are all of Chrislyn's cousins that came to support her on her special day.  It was nice to see Chrislyn's baptism.  She was so excited to be baptized and you could tell she was so happy. It reminded me of the people of Alma at the waters of Mormon in Mosiah 18.  When Alma explained to them what it meant to be baptized and the covenants they were making, he asked them if that was the desire of their hearts.  All of the people clapped their hands with JOY and said yes.  They were so excited to be baptized and be called God's people.  I could tell Chrislyn felt that same joy.  Congratulations Chrislyn on this important step in your life!

Well, that pretty much sums up November for us.  Now on to December and Christmas!

National Christmas Tree

The 2013 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree was an 88-foot-tall Englmann Spruce from Coleville National Forest in northeast Washington State.  As the tree travelled from Washington State to Washington D.C, it made several stops along the way.  One of those stops happened to be the Red Cliffs Mall in St. George!  We were not missing this historic event  so we were there:

This is the full shot of the tree.  We technically did not get to see the tree, just the trailer and truck that was hauling it but it was still cool.  The trailer was so long!  Well it had to be to house an 88 foot tree.  The back part of the trailer had windows that we could look in and see the tree.  The school children in Washington State made decorations and helped decorate the tree.  You could see these decorations on the tree through the windows in the back. 

Here is our mark in history!  The trailer was really just a huge tarp over the tree so at each of the stops along the way, people could sign their names on the tarp.  Here is our names among the other thousands!  We were there!!!

There were also some fun picture props for photos and we got to see Smoky the Bear.  We also got free pizza, listened to some Christmas music from school musical groups, and learned all about the tree from the forest rangers.

The semi hauling the tree was pretty slick too!  It was fun to be part of history and see this huge Christmas tree.  I can't wait to see what it will look like when it actually gets to the Capitol.  To make it stand, the tree will be planted in a 5-foot deep hole in the White House lawn.  It should be amazing.

Playing Hooky

November 10th was stake conference so we played hooky and went fishing instead of going to church.  Little did we know it was a broadcast from Salt Lake and a couple of the apostles spoke.  Bummer... Well we had a good time anyway being with our family.  Family time is important too.   We went fishing at Kolob Reservoir.  We also took our "China-man" and cooked hot dogs for lunch.  The kids had a blast casting and reeling in their poles and Russell had a "good" time getting all of the snags out of the lines.

  After fishing for a while and getting skunked, we decided there were no fish in the lake or they were all hibernating at the bottom.  We put the poles away and went on a treasure hunt.  Because the lake was kind of low, we walked along the shore looking for lost lures or any other treasures we could find.  Russell came back with a few lures, Colby found a pocket knife, and Emily found an old ring.  It was a good treasure hunt.  What did I find you are asking... well I found snow:

There was even enough to make a little snowman!  You can barely see it in the last picture above.  Emily and Colby loved stomping in the snow and throwing snowballs... that is until their hands and feet got cold.  Even Logan liked sitting by the snow and feeling it.  We had fun building our little snowman and singing "Once There was a Snowman."  We had even more fun smashing the snowman when we sang "in the sun he melted small, small, small."

We had a lot of fun this day.  I wish we had more laid back easy days like this.

9 Months

Logan is now nine months old.  He is the cutest baby ever.  

See, I told you!  Logan weighs 19 lbs 13 oz (53 percentile) and is 29 inches tall (66 percentile).  The doctor says he is just right for his age.  We think he is exceptional!  Logan is a very happy baby.  I love his two-toothed grin:

Logan is especially happy when he is being held.  He has started to like being on the ground more often now so he has started to scoot around a lot faster.

He still doesn't crawl but he can army crawl pretty quickly.  He gets around to wherever he wants that way.  He has started to get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth so he will be crawling soon enough.  He has also discovered the cupboards.  He especially loves playing in the drawer under the stove.  He opens that and takes out all of the cake pans and pan lids then laughs at me with I tell him "No!"  

Logan loves his brother and Colby loves Logan.  Even though Colby is a little rough with Logan, they are still friends.  Logan likes to laugh at Emily and Colby.

Logan still refuses to sleep unless he is being held, which sometimes leads to long days and even longer nights.  We are holding out hope that this will change though.  Sometimes Russell and I wonder why we even set up the crib because he doesn't sleep in it anyway.

Logan is starting to be quite chatty too.  He can say mama, dada, diddy (piggies), and uh-oh as well as some other sounds we haven't translated yet.  His favorite thing to do is drop his toys and say uh-oh  then he laughs when you pick it up for him. He is a funny boy.

Logan loves eating treats too.  He will sit in his highchair all day and eat snacks if I let him.  We have started giving him table food lately.  We usually just mush up the food we have for dinner and give it to him.  He has done pretty good with everything so far except milk products.  I am afraid he will be allergic to milk like Colby is.  Hopefully he will grow out of that.  Colby is starting to do better with milk now so there may be hope for Logan.

We cleaned up our garden for the winter and took all of the tomatoes off on the vines before throwing them out.  Logan got hold of the tomatoes and went to town eating them even the green ones!  Yummy!

Also, speaking of our garden, this is our one and only watermelon that grew this year.  We didn't even plant a watermelon this year but one grew anyway!  Probably from a leftover seed from last year.  This watermelon was the best tasting, most juicy watermelon Russell and I had ever tasted!!! It was so good.  Home grown food is definitely better than store bought.

Well we love having Logan in our family and we definitely would not be complete without him.  Happy 3/4 birthday, Logan!