Been BUSY

Well, yay for harvest time! It's fall and I'm LOVING it! I love the color of the leaves, the crisp crunch of fall, the smells, and breaking out the sweaters! Each new season is SO much fun with kids. Yes, we've been through Halloween and fall with the boys before. But each consecutive year is MORE wonderful because they're understanding so much more and with that comes more excitement! I realize I need to ENJOY this feeling though because once they start hitting early tweens and teens it will be "leave me alone Mom" time so I'm trying to soak in the MAGIC of each season now when they're in this season of life and loving it :).

A new tradition starting this year for us is HARVESTING! Our new home we moved into in March of this year has 2 MASSIVE apple trees. We had an apricot tree at our old house but never really did anything with them when we should have. I cannot fully explain how many apples we have got from our two trees. I'll show you a picture (that amount times 5.5!) but it just doesn't do justice. We've been very blessed with lots of fruit. So, now our falls will consist of PICKING, PICKING, PICKING, SMELLING LIKE COOKING APPLES ALL THE TIME (YUMMMM!!!! What better fall scent?!), giving away lots of apples to friends, family and neighbors, canning, juicing, fruit leathering, fruit dehydrating and cooking!

First picture of one of our apple trees, second picture our first picking but litterally that amount times 5.5 is how many we've had!


It's been a LOT of work but very fulfilling! Here's what we've got SO FAR:
Juice: 22 Quarts
Applesauce: 40 pints, 8 quarts
Canned apple pie filling: 11 quarts, 2 pints
Apple Chips: 4 gallon ziplocs ful
Fruit Leather: 8 pans worth
Salsa (our AWESOME neighbor has given us a ton of tomatoes): 7 pints, 2 quarts

To come...PEARS (our wonderful in laws have generously given us a bunch of pears from their trees and I'm eager to can them)

Parker loves to help me out and Darrin has been a big help too:


We also had the opportunity to go to the circus with my Pops and 2 nephews. My parents were going to take the three cousins but my mom got sick (blah :(!) so I got to go in her place! It was INCREDIBLE and we loved it! THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM AND DAD FOR TAKING US TO THE CIRCUS! Had a great time and Parker was in AWE.


I also hosted a PINSPIRED night and had some friends over to do 2 crafts and we all made pinspired food which was oh so good! I feel like it's been forever since I got my craft on. Here's the twig wreath I was in charge of (pictures aren't great-sorry):


And my friend Liberty showed us a glitter craft with mod podge and I'm super lame and was too lazy to get a picture uploaded after I thought I had one taken :(. BUT it's super cool. You mix equal parts of mod podge and glitter and can glitter anything. I chose to do some glitter pumpkins, a nativity scene and a reindeer. You cut out of freezer paper a sillouette and iron onto material, then paint the mod podge glitter mix onto it and peel off the freezer paper stencil. Easy and super cute. Then I framed my glittered material for holiday decorations :).

BUT, I've been decorating for fall and also made this Halloween wreath with my sister in laws :)


So ya I've been busy but having fun in trying to make the most out of fall :). Can't wait to carve pumpkins, put together costumes, go to a pumpkin farm and hopefully a corn maze!

ON ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE Parker had a little surgery today. He was diagnosed with what's called Meatle Stetotis. In plain english it means he didn't pee straight. He peed waaay up and to the left in fact :). We didn't realize until we did potty training but it was really obvious when we went camping and saw him "go" in the great outdoors. When potty training we trained him to sit and I knew we had to point waaay down for it not to go everywhere but didn't really know what was normal.

The interesting thing is that he wasn't born with it. Apparently at some point he got a diaper rash as a baby and that caused the tip of his urethra to close up except for a pin prick hole. The doctor said there's nothing I could have done, but it just happens to some boys. Just like a hose covered by your thumb, this causes the pressure to make your pee kinda go skiwampous. Am I making sense?

ANYWAYS, he got what's called a Meatotomy today to fix this little problem so that someday he can stand when going. (My rule is that's not happening until he's tall enough to reach though :)).

Here's how today went. We woke up and all he could have until 9:30am was clear liquids, then after 9:30am nothing at all. I explained this to him the day before but the first thing he wanted when he woke up was milk and cereal. Of course! When he found out that wasn't happening because of his surgery he got these big ol' crocodile tears that broke my heart! He made it through though. Our check in time wasn't until 11:45am. My sweet mother in law watched Spencer and my sweet Mother went with me for emotional support since Darrin couldn't make it.

Not that the surgery/procedure was a big deal, it's supposed to be really fast and easy, but due to the nature of the surgery, they had to put him under general anathesiology. This was scary for me just because it was his first time under and you just never know how they'll react. All morning I kept thinking, "what if's..." you know... just because I couldn't help it! I just couldn't bear the thought of life without Parker. BUT everything went very smoothly and I'm so grateful! We were in WONDERFUL hands at PCMC (Primary Childrens)!

They took his vitals, gave him his special bracelet, showed him his mask and let him choose his "flavor" to smell with the special gas. He chose strawberry over root beer and cotton candy. Then they showed him pictures of what it would all look like. The bed he'd be one, the pillow he'd "sleep" on, etc. Such awesome nurses there!

When the time came, with monkey in arm, my little boy fearlessly laid on the table and I held his arm. They put the mask on and he just started to giggle and laugh. HAHA! Then he got pretty sleepy and his breathing got really strange and he was twitching (this was SCARY to watch but they all assured me it's completely normal). I was then asked to leave the room. It only took about 8 minutes and then I was able to come back in and get instructions on how to take care of it. Then I had to leave again until he was awake and vitals were taken.

They said he woke right up but I wasn't able to see him for about 15 minutes after. The first thing he said was, "I stayed so still!" WHAT A CHAMP! Seriously, he was so brave, so friendly to everyone and just perked right back up. AND HE WAS SO EXCITED TO FINALLY EAT! They gave him root beer slushy and chips right away :). Then we went to Wendy's for a kids meal after. They told me he'd be really tired and need to rest the rest of the day. It was quite the opposite though. He was super high energy ever since just bouncing off the walls :). I guess it was a bit of the opposite effect on him.

He's doing great still. It really hurts him to urinate but other than that he shows no signs of it bothering him. I need to put vasaline on it all through the day, but other than that he's good :).

I'm so sad it doesn't look like the video is working :( Who knows how to properly upload a video?? I don't see the video icon so I just tried uploading with the image icon and this is how it turned out!