Sunday, November 15, 2015

Lars the Salamander

My adventure of the week was finding Lars, our salamander friend! This happened during my 3-day project -- raking and bagging 44 bags of leaves from our yard! Lucky Tanner got to come home from school and haul all those bags to the front of our yard for the debris truck to pick up. (I'm really good at creating workout programs for him! ;)) I found a couple of salamanders over the course of the week, and when I found the first salamander, I thought it was a huge worm. Then I thought it was a cut-off lizard tail, but after looking at it closer I could see a head with little eyes looking back at me. I concluded that first day that it must be a snake and tried to kill it (red snakes in the yard didn't seem to bode well for me, no matter how small it was). Lucky for the supposed snake, it got away. That night Tanner and I looked up all kinds of snakes and other snake-like creatures to try to figure out what it was, and we finally concluded that it must have been a salamander and I just didn't see the legs.

The blurry picture of the first "snake"
Lucky for me, I found another one a few days later! I looked close and saw it did in fact have legs, so I took a picture and sent it to Tanner. He wanted to see it in person, so he told me I should catch it in a jar. Being the loving wife I am, I went and found a jar, put leaves and walnut shells inside and convinced that little salamander that it should make a temporary home inside. Once again, my pictures aren't great, but here you can see our cute little salamander that Tanner named Lars. (Don't worry PETA, we set it free that night).

Lars at the bottom of the leaf on the right

You can see its head peering out at me
The other great thing from this week was that we got a Thanksgiving package from my family! My mom sent a super cute maternity shirt for me and an adorable baby girl outfit. Everyone wrote little Thanksgiving cards, complete with turkey stories from Jace and original artwork from Kai and Kaylee. We also got a bag of homemade English toffee!! So good! We loved the package, and it made our whole week! Thanks family!


We're really loving Alabama. We have great neighbors, an awesome ward, and really fun friends. We're loving the fall, and it's finally cooling down (though not any where near Utah weather) so we had to break down and turn our heat on! This month is the perfect time to think about everything we're grateful for, and we definitely have a lot! 



Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Fall Camping and Halloween

A couple weeks ago Tanner and I traveled a couple hours to the beautiful Little River Canyon with some friends. We camped and enjoyed some great food including peach cobbler for dessert then fresh cinnamon rolls straight from the dutch oven for breakfast the next morning! The leaves at Little River Canyon were vibrant and gorgeous! We enjoyed hiking around a bit with our friends and exploring by the waterfalls and the river. It was perfect weather, and we really enjoyed being outside!

Little River Falls -- Tanner took so many good pictures, it was hard to decide which one to post!
Can't ask for a better family picture!
Down by the water -- more gorgeous colors!
The whole crew! Don't worry - that's not a real snake the little girl is holding. :)
Tanner and I also enjoyed the various Halloween festivities. We of course carved our Jack-o'-Lanterns and went to our ward's chili cook-off and Trunk-or-Treat. Then Halloween night we made donuts and apple fritters! 

The back of Tanner's Jack-o'-Lantern was a dragon shape!
He always has to show me up. :)
Our festive front door!

Anakin and Padme at the ward Trunk-or-Treat.
Tanner's light saber was quite the hit!
Donuts!! Yummy! Thanks mom and dad for the recipe!
I thoroughly enjoyed them!
 And another great thing about the week was that our sweet neighbor decided we need to be Alabama fans, so she made me an Alabama purse and bought Tanner an Alabama thermos. She also made us super cute little chocolate mice for Halloween. We really love our neighbors!

Our new Alabama gear!
The cute mouse -- a chocolate dipped cherry, a Hershey's kiss, and two almond slivers!
We're having a great Fall! Although it's time to rake our leaves again! We hope you are all enjoying your Fall as well, wherever you are!