Well not quite yet

She will be the big sister in about 6 months (like the end of March) though she keeps insisting that she won't be a big sister until she is 4 because Autumn is a big sister and she is 4 years old.

Prairie missing Autumn and enjoying the freedom

Prairie has so enjoyed just looking at books this week, when it is really quiet, I will often find her with a stack of books and just looking through all of them

Prairie and I flew back from NY on Saturday, and Autumn is coming back to Utah until this coming saturday, so it will be a whole week without Autumn. It has been so much fun to spend a lot more one-on-one time with Prairie. She has been amazing while I have had to do so much packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning, she just finds random little toys and amuses herself for a long time.

I think she has enjoyed the freedom of playing with whatever toys she wants and so has been able to keep her self so entertained. She has been able to exactly what she wants to do with the dishes of the kitchen, try on all of the dressup clothes and the jewerly without Autumn yelling at her.

Prairie enjyoing getting into the dress-ups without Autumn around to get after her

Though I know she misses Autumn too because when we were flying back to Utah with Autumn, Prairie would open the window cover and then yell "Auutmn I love you, I miss you, can you hear me?!" Then she would random yell this on the car ride home from the airport too.

This morning when we were talking to Autumn, Prairie said, "I wish I was 4". I asked her why, but at first she wouldn't tell me. She had a pretty pathetic looking face too when she said it. Finally we figured out because if she were 4 she would get to stay at Grandma's house too. But then she was fine later playing.

Prairie wearing Autumn's Dora clothes, the capris fit her more like pants going all the way to her feet

Today she decided to try on Aututmn's clothes. Yesterday she had wanted to wear a pair of Autumn's shorts but I told her they were too big. Well while I was finishing a sewing project, she marched in to the sewing room and announced "Mommy they aren't too big!" So she was pretty excited about that. Then later she put on this really cute Dora outfit that Jennie bought for Autumn. When Prairie was wearing it she kept saying, "I look like Auutmn, I'm 4!"

How great is my husband

Here is what my husband did while I sat out on the front lawn enjoying the wonderful early fall nights of Utah. I sat on the laptop and caught up on all the blogs I hadn't read in the last couple of days.

Our landlords decided to paint with oil based paints today, without letting us know. I was going to finish up getting the odds and ends out of the kitchen and clean it today, but that is kind of impossible while my landlord is here painting and I would have a 2year old with me the entire time, not to mention that I am really afraid of my landlady.

Anyway Ben didn't want me to have to breathe the fumes from the oil paint, so he spent 4 hours all by himself getting our kitchen sparkly, and I got to go to a relief society activity and putz around on the internet---he knew I needed that after how hard I have been working the past 3 days, so I really appreciated it, and he kept saying that he was so glad that he could something to help out with the move, what a great guy.

Here's What I did today

So I tried to pack up as much as I could because we are MOVING! I am really excited about this move, even though it is really sudden. On Saturday on a whim we noticed the house next door to us is empty and the landlords were there, so we thought we would look around. We really like the apartment and we were able to negotiate on the price if we do some yard work. So we filled out an application and then found out Monday afternoon that we had been accepted. Then Monday night Ben posted our current apartment on craigslist. The first person that called came and looked at it and she wanted it, and really wanted to move in by this weekend. That lady is going through the application process with the landlord but it looks promising, so probably today while I am flying to New York we will find out that she was accepted and that we need to have everything moved and cleaned by Saturday - CRAZY!!

Anyway since I am going to be in New York for 10 days I wantaed to try to get as much done as I possibly could for Ben. There is still TONS to do, but I got a really good start for him. The sewing room is empty except for the futon, which is pretty good, because I had the closet chock full. Anyway I am excited that when I come home from New York I will coming home to a new apartment.

Oh yeah details about the apartment, it is on ground floor, YAY! It tons for more windows and natural light (which is the main reason that I wanted to move out of our current apartment, it has felt like a cave because it is pretty dark down here). Our kitchen area opens up into the backyard with 4 fruit trees and a grapevine. We get to park our car in a carport and walk about 10 ft to the door, no more tramping through snow and grass all year to get to our front door. There is places to park our bike and scooter in covered areas. There is a bathtub, an awesome fireplace, a huge front room, a huge laundry room/storage room, and there is 4 bedrooms. We weren't really looking for a larger place, but it was the same price we were going to pay to live in the upstairs of our current place, but it is larger.

There is a two bedroom apartment attached to the 4 bedroom apartment and we are really hoping that Jennie and Janardan decide to take it because we would love them living right there. Before Autumn went to ben she told me "Mommy when I want to go to Jennie's house I will just say Mommy I am going to Jennie's house and I will run out our door to her front door and knock and have a big smile on my face." So Autumn really likes the idea of Jennie and Janardan living so close. So did my dad, then he won't complain about having to walk around the block.

Anyway so that is what is going on in the crazy whirlwind life of Emily and Ben. Ben is amazing because he isn't worried about moving in less than a week and not having his wife here to help him and the fact that he works full time. Ben is amazing because he can do a marathon moving session and then he will just crash all weekend. Anyway we are super excited, and if you are in the provo area I know Ben could really use help moving on Thursday and cleaning on Friday.

Erol the Cat

A few weeks ago it was a rainy saturday night, and Ben and Autumn heard a cat outside of our door. Autumn was worried that he was really hungry so Ben got out a bowl of milk for the cat. That night when Ben was putting the girls to bed, Autumn was almost crying because she was so worried that the cat was hungry and begged her dad to go buy some cat food that night. Ben really has a soft spot for animals, so that is all the encouraging he needed.

Well we have seen that cat at our house every single day since then, and we have already gone through one bag of food and had to purchase another one. Ben is starting to worry about what we are going to do once it is cold.

Autumn named the cat Erol, now we all call him Erol. I am allergic to cats and we aren't allowed to have pets, so he definitely stays outside. The thing is he is the sweetest cat I have ever seen. He let's Prairie manhandled him, he lets Autumn carry him around like a baby. He seems to really like our family, and I know our family loves him. We keep saying we are going to try to find him a good home where he can go inside, because he really wants to come in our house, but as of yet we haven't really made any attempts besides asking some neighbors and stuff.

Anyways here are some pictures of the girls and Ben with Erol the first night they fed him.

Ben, Autumn and Prairie watching Erol drink milk (yes Prairie is wearing a swimsuit, and Autumn is wearing winter clothes)

Erol drinking milk, he was so hungry that first night

Ben and Autumn watching the cat

the girls totally interested in the cat

Two Dollar Tuesdays

In August Thanksgiving Point had Two Dollar Tuesdays, where it only costed $2 per person to get into each of their venues (the dinosaur museum, the gardens, and the farm). The only place we hadn't been to at Thanksgiving Point was the dinosaur museum, which is the most expensive to get into, and I decided that I should take the girls. Well I decided that when you pay $2 to get in that is about what it is worth, it was sooooo CROWDED, I was a little stressed by time the whole ordeal was over.




My favorite thing that we did was go to the IMAX show about dinosaurs. It wasn't cheaper so I splurged, Autumn loved it, I think that was her favorite thing too, and Prairie hated it. Autumn thought the 3-D glasses were pretty cool, and she thought it was neat when the dinosaurs would run at us. Different times through the movie I saw her reaching her hand out to see if she could actually touch stuff, it was really cute.

Prairie on the other hand, was terrified. She thought the dinosaurs were really going to get us. She jumped into my lap like 30 seconds after the movie started, and stayed in my lap in the entire time. We finally had to have her take off her glasses. She was cowering into my chest and hiding her face the whole time. She started whimpering half way through "get out of her mommy, get out of here right now!" I was able to calm her enough that Autumn and I were able to watch the entire movie, but Prairie was very relieved when the movie was over.

Autumn going through the tunnel

Prairie playing in the sand and water room (it was so crowded) and Autumn didn't want to get her hands messy

Prairie really liked this dinosaur puppet and kept having it eat things, she was pretty cute with it

the girls doing crazy faces for a posed picture for me

Hiking to Mt. Timp Cave

Ben's childhood best friend was moving from LA to Tucson, Arizona. They asked if they could stay with us on their way there. So Jason and Megan stayed with us for two nights. Ben was able to arrange his schedule so that he had the day off.

We had such a good time hanging out with them, Ben and I were already tentatively planning on meeting them around the Grand Canyon sometime.

We took them to Mt. Timpanogus and hiked up to the cave and went through the cave. Ben and I had both done it when we were younger, but it had been many years, and we hadn't taken either of our girls to the cave since we moved here 3 years ago.


We had to wait a little while to start hiking because you buy tickets for scheduled tours, and wouldn't take us that long to hike to the cave. Megan got the girls into throwing rocks and sticks into the river. Prairie and Autumn both loved it.



Autumn hiked the whole way, not without a little complaining, but she did a great job. Prairie got to ride in the backpack most of the way. The last switchback you have to leave kidpacks behind, because you aren't allowed to take them in the cave, and you don't come out the same door you go in. So even Prairie got to hike a little. Here we are waiting for our tour to start and eating our lunches.

Autumn became best friends with Megan. Autumn is not the most touchy feely kid, like she didn't want to hold hands with me while we were hiking, but when we hiked down the mountain she wanted to hold hands with Megan almost the whole time. Then when we went out to dinner that night she insisted sitting by Megan. She was sad that they only got to stay for 2 nights.

Jason and Megan in front of American Fork canyon

Prairie, Autumn, Emily and Ben in front of American Fork Canyon

Prairie fell asleep about three-quarters the way down, she was worn out.

Relaxing in Rexburg

I was looking through my pictures and we have done a ton of activities that I intended to blog about, but we have been too busy having fun to post everything, so maybe I will catch and you will get to see our trip to Mount Timpanogos Cave, the stray cat we have been feeding, our trip to the Dinosaur Museum. Until I feel like updating all of that stuff I will just give you a weekend update.

We had the best weekend in Rexburg. My aunt was gracious enough to let us stay at her home, and we really really love staying there. Ben and I both feel so relaxed when we stay there. Both times that we have stayed we secretly wish we could stay a couple of more days. Their house is just a couple of miles outside of Rexburg, and it has a more rural feeling and we love it.

Anyway we had such a relaxing weekend hanging out with Ben's sister Lindsey, and her husband Dustin that I didn't even pull my camera out. We played games, went out to lunch, played a marathon Risk game, played the Wii, ate food, lots of nacho cheese sauce, you know all the usuals.

Autumn and Prairie got to feed the horses and they really liked that. We were going to ride the horses, but it was too cold and muddy, maybe another time.

Prairie giving the horses some corn stalks, which they really like

Autumn and Prairie with the horses

Autumn getting brave and petting the nose of the horse

Ben really likes animals and loves doing stuff with animals with the girls

We are trying to figure out when we can make it back to Rexburg, this trip was a much needed mini vacation.