A Second Ozark Honeymoon and Big News!

Clayton has been doing lots of job interviews all over the midwest, and he invited me along on one to Little Rock, Arkansas.  The job sounded really, really good, but he wanted me to scope out the city and see if it would be a good fit for our family.  We joked that this was our second honeymoon, as our first was not far from there near the Missouri/Arkansas border also at Christmas-time.  My mom was extremely nice to come and stay with our kids for several days, especially since she had just been to visit us for Thanksgiving.  Clayton and I had a really nice time, and the hospital put us up in the Peabody Hotel downtown.  Every morning and evening they have the walking of the ducks out to the atrium fountain and then back up the elevator to their room at night.  I had actually seen this on t.v. once, and so I was happily surprised to see it in person.  We visited several wards on Sunday, Clayton interviewed, I went around with a realtor for an entire day, and we had a very fun dinner with some of the physicians and their wives.  Overall, things went very well, and we were expecting to live there the following summer.  

At the airport on Tuesday morning, we got a phone call from a hospital in Springfield, Missouri (where I'm from), that they had a position available and wanted to interview Clayton right away.  After rescuing my sweet mom from the kiddos, we went home, and Clayton ended up doing two interviews that next weekend - one in St. Louis and one in Springfield.  He called to tell me that he had accepted the job in Springfield, and we are super excited!  We had pretty much given up hope that it was even an option, so it was quite a wonderful surprise.  The job promises to be wonderful, and we can hardly believe this journey to a "real" job is almost over!

Giving Thanks

We were so excited to have my parents and brother, Alex, come to our house for Thanksgiving weekend!  They came into town Wednesday night, and the festivities started bright and early Thursday morning with the men going to play football.  Clayton got called into work right away, which was a bummer, but my dad and Alex must have had at least a little bit of fun judging from the muddiness of their clothes.  Then, we met some friends at a park for our own little 5K run, and it was lots of fun.  We even had t-shirts and medals.  Luke and Audrey rode their bikes, but everyone finished!  Alex, of course, was the winner.  After hot chocolate, muffins, and the distribution of medals, we went back home to cook up a feast.  I, of course, could not pass up this great opportunity to try out lots of new recipes, and luckily almost all of them were awesome.  I wish I had taken some pictures of the spread, but I guess we were having too much fun to worry about pictures.  And best of all, Clayton got home just in time to eat with us.  The rest of the weekend, we played games, ate more food, dragged my fam to work out with us at the gym, and visited the Henry Ford Museum.  We saw a really neat lego display of a city, which was pretty amazing, and the kids had lots of fun at the interactive Wizard of Oz area.  We also worked together on an assembly line to put together Model T's and designed and tested our own airplane models.   

We are so thankful for family, friends, our faith, and all the bounteous blessings we have been given this year.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fall Leaves

Nothing Like Halloween to Get the Creative Juices Flowing

Brownie Haunted Houses from Grandma Allphin

Painted Pumpkins

Paper Plate Skeleton

Window Puffy Paint Spiders

 

Carved Pumpkins

Witch's Brew Punch

And, of course, costumes. 

 I made Audrey's and Luke's this year.  It was a little bit dicey at times, but my sewing machine and I are a lot better acquainted!  Luckily, both kids were happy with their costumes and didn't mind the amateur quality.  They both wore their costumes to school parades and parties, as well as trick-or-treating with friends.  

Luke's teacher was Fancy Nancy.  I thought it was really cute!

 Max was a dragon (store-bought).  Two costumes was all I could handle this year.  He was still cute, though, and didn't mind a hand-me-down.

Luke Skywalker fit in well with two Darth Vaders.  He handled the double trouble with ease, and I heard a at least one of the Darths say that he was Darth Vader when he was actually good.  Best friends couldn't fight each other!

Happy Halloween!

Apple Orchard!

We usually go to Blake's Orchard in the fall, but this year we mixed it up a little bit.  We opted for a less commercial orchard, Stony Creek, where the focus was on the apples.  Raspberries were on as well, so we got lots of both fruits.  It was lots of fun, and the kids didn't even miss the bounce houses and other stuff.  Just us and nature.  Ahhhh.