Georgia

 After the stress of uprooting and moving in with Bump's parents I got a surprise from my awesome husband.  He found a really great deal on a flight to Atlanta and booked it for me to go and have a visit with my sister, Tera.  I protested because I knew that Tera and her family were coming to Utah in December, but Bump insisted that I needed a break and to spend some one-on-one time with her.  Great!  So, I took off on November 18th and stayed until the 25th.

I promised Gabby that I would take pictures on my flight.  This was just after take-off when we were flying over Bountiful.

After a 3 hour layover in Denver I finally made it to Atlanta!  I was met at the airport by this beautiful woman and her sleeping 3 year old.  She had booked us a room close by the airport since they live a few hours from Atlanta.  We went back to the hotel and talked for a few hours until we finally crashed and slept very well.

We spent the next day exploring Atlanta.  You can't visit Atlanta without touring the Coca Cola museum.  We had a really fun time checking everything out!  Their old advertising collections and history was fun to look at.  I think our favorite thing was tasting sodas from all over the world in their tasting room.  Some of them were absolutely fabulous!  Others were just vile.  I would do well living in South America I think, as far as the soda is concerned anyway.

 Here is outside the museum.  That is it on the left of the picture and downtown Atlanta straight ahead.  I loved how everything was decorated for Christmas, but the trees were colorful and fall was in the air.

 Tera is a wonderful photographer and I got a few pictures of her doing what she does best.

We ate at Baja Fresh, I think.  I have never been there before, so I asked the girl at the register what she liked to eat.  She said something about nachos but with chicken and blah blah blah.  I can't remember.  I said that sounded good and I would take it exactly like she makes it.  It actually was really good, Tera took a picture and shared it with me.  Mine was better than what she ordered!  :)  We left there and headed for Ft. Benning to see Erick and the other kids.

Erick is in his captain's course at Ft. Benning, which is just like he is in school full time.  While I was there Erick's class was having some testing and he finished his test and was able to be home quite a bit of the time.  It was fun to have him go with us on our little day trips.

We went to Ft. Sumpter in Andersonville, GA.  Ft. Sumpter was a Civil War prison camp where thousands of soldiers died.  It was a pretty terrible place to be taken and you did not want to be captured by the south.  On the site is a prisoner of war museum dedicated to prisoners of war throughout all wars.  Behind the POW museum was this beautiful monument.  It was made of brick, but carved as well - amazing!

Some examples of shelters that soldiers would make while imprisoned.  They could only use what they had with them.

 Different states have built monuments to those who lost their lives while imprisoned at Ft. Sumpter.
Erick, Tera and David checking everything out.

There is also a national cemetery on the site.  I love these old cemeteries!  There was a peaceful feeling there and so many graves!  Tera got some great photos!

There is a mystery at the Andersonville cemetery.  This dove showed up on one of the grave markers one day.  Nobody knows who put it there or why it is on that particular marker.  But we had to find it and take a picture of it!

We bought some civil war hats for TJ and Corban at the museum  TJ is sporting his hat from the south.

David is modeling Corban's northern blue hat.  This picture makes me laugh!  He's such a funny kid.

We had some fun meals together and I introduced a new tortellini soup to Tera's family.  I had to take a picture while we were shopping.  There was a whole section of greens in the vegetable isle!  Mustard greens, collard greens, etc.  I was definitely in the south!

Tera and I spent an afternoon at the new Infantry Museum on post in Ft. Benning.  I could have spent hours there looking at all of the artifacts from all the wars in US history.  They had some amazing displays.

 I thought the kids would get a kick out of this gas mask for a horse made by the Japanese.

Time went by too fast, as usual when you are having fun.  The day I had to fly out Tera's kids were all out of school and Erick was in class.  So, we took off in the morning determined to go and see Alabama on the way to the airport.  I told Tera that since I was visiting the south I needed to see a plantation.

So we headed out to see Alabama.  The plantation that we went to was just outside of Auburn where Auburn University is.  What a beautiful city!

We found Noble Hall and snapped a picture of a real plantation house!

We stopped at a rest area afterward and I had to get a picture of this awesome spray cologne dispenser!  Tempting, right?  Too bad I don't wear any of these smells!  :)

When I got to the airport my flight ended up being delayed due to weather.  They told me that my flight going out of Denver would probably be delayed, but that they couldn't guarantee it.  I decided to chance it and see what would happen when I got to Denver.  I figured I would end up just sleeping at the airport and catching the first flight out to Salt Lake in the morning.

When we landed in Denver the flight attendant told everyone on the plane that the only people that had a chance to make their connecting flight were those going to Salt Lake City.  He had everyone going to Salt Lake City raise their hands and let us off the plane very first.  I walked off the flight and down two gates and got right on the next plane to get to Salt Lake.  I felt very blessed to make it home that night.  I had a wonderful vacation and was glad to be back home just in time for Thanksgiving.  I am very spoiled!

Halloween

Halloween was pretty low-key this year.  I spent the morning at the temple with my sister, Tracy.  What better way to spend an "evil" holiday then at the temple?  :)  It was fun to hang out with her.  Afterwards we met her husband, Steve for lunch and then checked out what DI had to offer.

When the kids got out of school they quickly got their costumes on and we headed out to Bump's work to go trick-or-treating around his office.  It's always fun to see where Dad works.  We barely made it in time to quickly run through the treat stations before people headed home.

Then we had to go and see how Lee and Tricia had transformed their house for Halloween.  They did a pretty great job!  That's a lot of work for just one day!  The very next morning they had to have it all cleaned up and then took off for Las Vegas for the weekend.

We decided to take pictures in front of the undertaker.

Corban is a bow hunter, Quincy is Monster High's Abbey Bominable, and Gabby is Harry Potter (it's totally her thing lately.  I won't let her read past book 3 until she's older)

A wizard and a witch (Gabby and Parlee)

After hanging out with cousins for a bit it was time to go trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  The kids couldn't wait!  Bump took them around the neighborhood and they had a blast.  I agreed to hand out candy for Grandma and Grandpa, so I stayed home.  We had such a good Halloween!  And the kids had the next day off of school - smart teachers to end the term on Halloween, huh?

We got this cutie for the weekend.  Bokkie and Fin get along great.  See, even Fin has a new friend to hang out with.

What have we been doing?

 I am so beyond behind in my posting that it's embarrassing!  So, what have we been doing?

Well, soccer finished up.  Corban finally decided to try playing goalie.  He did a really great job, but after a few saves he decided that it wasn't for him.  He came back onto the field and scored the winning goal for his team.  

 He had a great season with a great coach and team.

Quincy's last game was freezing cold!  It had snowed earlier in the week and was almost dark (hence the fuzzy picture) when the game was finally over.  The team had a lot of fun.

Mostly the last month has been dealing with this. . .

We sold our house and moved from Grantsville into Bump's parents basement apartment.  Why, you ask?  I am asking myself that same question almost daily.  We felt like it is what we were supposed to do and when everything kept pointing us in that direction we realized that if we didn't follow those promptings we would regret it.  So, here we are.

The problem with moving from a large house into a 2 bedroom apartment that is already full of STUFF is. . . well there are a lot of problems with that.  We really downsized our stuff.  We sold most of our furniture and got rid of most of our stuff.  In a lot of ways it was cleansing and if the apartment would have been empty things would have been a piece of cake, relatively speaking.  But, as you can see from the above picture of the kitchen (none of the things showing are ours.  this is really what it looked like when we moved in) it was not easy.  Our things stayed in boxes for a long time while we cleaned out and got rid of lots of things.  I took 3 loads to the dump, 2 of those loads were 50 year old food storage that had mostly spoiled.  The other load was product samples that Bump's dad used to formulate his recipes.

After quite a bit of moving, trying to talk Bump's parents into getting rid of a few things, then getting them another storage unit instead and almost going crazy, we finally found a place for everything and have moved in.

After moving out all of the food storage from under the stairs, I actually have a decent pantry!

I should have cleaned it up before I took the picture of the kitchen, but it's way better than it was when we first got here!

And the family room and office area all cleaned up.  No more boxes!

The kids are all sharing a room and love it!  They hated being separated at night, so sharing a room has been a real treat for them.  We still have some things to organize better in their room, but things are good.  The kids love the neighborhood.  They have already made great friends and are really liking their new school (which is the same school that I went to growing up - kind of fun).  The class sizes are nice and small and they get a lot of neat perks with it being a Title 1 school.  I like that they can walk to and from school safely.

The cat is feeling comfortable and likes her new home, but Grandma and Grandpa aren't too thrilled to have her here and she's been mostly outside.  She loves to hang out on Bump's shoulder whenever she can get up there.

About a week before we moved Bump's cousin Jeff and his family bought the house right across the street from our new house.  They have 2 little girls that our kids love to play with.   "New Cousins"

My brother Jared gave Bump and I his BYU football tickets for one Saturday.  It was a nice break for both of us to get away and have some time alone after the chaos of moving.  They are great seats and BYU won, which is always good!

Bump lost his voice yelling so loud!

In October I got to go with Gabby on a field trip.  We went to the landfill and garbage incinerator in Layton and then to the Weber Basin water district.  It was fun to hang out with Gabby and I thought it was pretty interesting too.

Another bonus with moving is that we are much closer to cousins!  The kids have been able to play every week with their cousins and we have been able to help family with yard projects.  That's always fun!  Corb and Peter had some awesome tunnels and roads in the sand box for their cars.

Ed with is big cheesy smile.  Digging holes in Lee's driveway that are just big enough for Ed to fit in.  That's always fun!

Tracy sent me a picture of our (old) house with something missing. . . can you see what's missing?

No garage!!  They are definitely getting some things done on the place.  I really do miss it and love that house!  :(