Catch up!

Last week was little Owen's (not so little anymore) birthday. He's 4, woo hoo!! Here's some pics of the lovely event:

Cutest part of the day was Owen rolling out of bed, his hair all tousled and crazy, eyes barely able to stay open and I shout HAPPY BIRTHDAY! and he goes, "It's my birthday?!?!" I told him, "Yes! You are 4 years old and a big boy now!" to which Owen responds, "....Nooo, I will be 4 years old later!" :) It took some convincing to help him realize that he really was 4 years old.

We had an eventful day eating mickey mouse pancakes, playing with Will and Ben, and setting up his Lightning McQueen tent (that he never got out of once the entire time we were at home).

Owen also had a Lightning McQueen party with his preschool friends, complete with a Cars Bounce House and Cars Ice Cream cake. Nice work to Hillary and Jesse for pulling off such an awesome party!

Tyler's mission reunion was this weekend. I was really looking forward to seeing all of his mission companions again and was not disappointed. It was great to spend some time with these amazing guys who were such an impact in Tyler's life during those two years. The spirit was very strong in that meeting and the unity amongst all the Sacramento, California missionaries was strong.

 Then we made it out to the pumpkin patch, which is my FAVORITE part of Halloween celebrations. This year I decided I was going to go all out and we came home with about 15 pumpkins :)

 That night, while the men went to the priesthood session of conference, us women got together and painted our pumpkins.

 Mom and I had a competition of who was the most "Martha" that night (an on-going dilemma we have). Even though her pumpkins turned out slightly cuter ;) I came up with the color scheme and design of the pumpkins so.... I guess we tied just this once!

 We were going for metallic fall colors, I love it!

This was my finished product, outside our door.

 I also finished making this cute little scarecrow from the Wood Connection. I love him!

 And finally, I got to take the kiddos to Gardner Village the other day to take a look at all the witches. Mom and Cayleen were able to join us and it was a blast! Owen was a little tentative of the witches but Elle thought they were hilarious. She laughed at all the ones that moved.

 We also happened upon this lovely creature while we were feeding the ducks. We were almost standing on top of it!! Isn't it GINORMOUS?!?! Us adults were more amazed by it than the kids.

I'm so excited for the fall season, it is my favorite time of year! I'm also grateful that I was able to listen to General Conference this weekend. We don't have any t.v. channels at our house so we got to listen to it on the radio. So many inspiring talks were given and many things were said that I definitely needed to hear at this time in my life. Most importantly were the things I learned about being patient and trusting in my Heavenly Father. This is one of my biggest struggles and conference has inspired me to try harder. Luckily, I have Tyler AND the Spirit to help me along the way.