Halloween and Such

Happy Halloween (late)! As you can tell, Landon was a lion. Doesn't he look like such a cute little girl?? He loved going trick-or-treating with our friends' daughter. He figured out that they were putting good stuff in his bag and would get candy out of it and hand it to me to unwrap it for him. Next year, maybe he'll actually be able to say trick-or-treat!!!
As the seasons start, it gets busy around here. John's birthday is on the 2nd and mine was on the 7th so on top of Halloween, we had birthdays to celebrate! Also, my new calling has been keeping me pretty busy. I'm the music chair coordinator. This means I conduct the music, set up any special musical numbers in sacrament, and oh yes ... choir. I'm in charge of the Christmas Program which is LOVELY! Since I'm due the 1st, I started on Christmas music 4 weeks ago!! Christmas, here we come!

Pumpkin Patch

So although I've lived here all my life, I didn't know that there was a big pumpkin patch on the other side of the mountain!!!! So that is what we did this Saturday. It's actually quite a drive but I felt it was pretty worth it. Landon really enjoyed it. He had a ton of fun. He even tried to get a closer look at the goats! He also LOVED all the balls around! Yeah, that's what he was calling all the pumpkins. And of course he wanted to play with them. He couldn't pick them up but that didn't mean he didn't try!

Here's Landon and John on the hayride to get our pumpkin and Landon trying to pick up a "ball".

John ropin' a cow and Landon trying to get in with the goats.

I needed a picture with me in it and I know John is talking in the picture but I'm smiling in it so too bad!

Here are just some funny pictures of Landon. He loves getting in the laundry basket now (those are clean clothes). He also loves his sunglasses. He feels so cool with them on and keeps them on in the car sometimes!!!

The Balloon Fiesta

This was John's first Balloon Fiesta. We went the very first day, Saturday. Good thing too since Sunday was a wash out and the next weekend wasn't very good for ballooning either! Saturday was the perfect day to go. We ended up taking off our jackets it got that warm! It was a great morning. We saw the Darth Vader balloon get inflated and take off. We should have figured out that that was the balloon we were going to see since they had storm troopers and Darth Vader there!!! We were early enough to see the dawn patrol which was really pretty. Thursday morning, we went to John's work where we sat in the parking lot (since it's right across from the balloon fiesta field) and had breakfast burritos. You have to eat breakfast burritos when you go to the balloon fiesta. Thursday was the special shapes day. We have TONS of pictures but I'm not going to post them because it would be an even longer post then this already is.

Us getting out picture taken with Darth Vader and a storm trooper. It was crazy! You had to hurry to get your picture taken because there were lots of people wanting pictures.

John having his important breakfast burrito (a must have).

Here's the Darth Vader balloon we saw getting inflated. I wanted John to at least see how they did it.

Balloons galore. John told me that the ones I took last year for him while he was in Germany, just didn't do it justice, and it doesn't. It's amazing to see so many balloons in the air. The count this year was around 620 balloonists. A little low they said.

The dawn patrol lighting up.

Honeywell Party

John's company had their yearly Honeywell party. It was down at the State Fair Grounds. They had hot dogs and hamburgers along with snow cones and cotton candy. Landon refused to try the cotton candy! I really wanted to see what he'd think of it. John really enjoyed the blow up play centers they had! He just when on each one once just to see how it was. :)

Good Ol' Pete

Continuing with tennis, we went to an exhibition match with Pete Sampras and Sam Querrey. It was amazing seeing Pete Sampras play! We were so excited to see him. We were both a little star struck. He was still so good and he had a great sense of humor. Sam Querry is an up and comer and actually played and lost to Nadal in the US Open. Tickets weren't too bad priced but it ended up that one person was giving away a ticket so we took that and then someone else sold us one of their tickets so we ended up with not bad seats for real cheap! Sorry about the pictures. They didn't turn out too great but here they are.

Pete's in the gray, Sam in the yellow.

Here we are enjoying the game.

There he is waving to us! Not too clearly but that's what that is.

For those of you who are fans, here's Pete doing what he does best. The serve and volley. He made it look so easy.

The US Open

That's right. For the one day that we were in NY, we were able to see the US Open Semi-finals!!! For any of you who know tennis, this is a big deal and tickets are hard to come by. Our friend, Austyn, got us the tickets. Her boss was out of town and had courtside tickets to the semi-finals. Had it not been for Hurricane Hannah coming up the coast, we would have seen Federer and Nadal play at the Authur Ashe Stadium. However, by the time we got the tickets, they had moved up Nadal's match to another court with limited seating. We were deciding between sitting in our courtside seats for the last couple of points in the Federer match, or for sure get a seat and watch Nadal (now the #1 player in the WORLD) play. We decided Nadal. It was incredible to see him play up close and personal.

On our way to the stadium.

Landon did really well at the match. He liked clapping when everyone else did. (You like the big belly?)

Nadal Serving! Me, John, Dustin and Austyn at the match!.

We had to leave in the 3rd set because of the storm. It started out as a small sprinkle but by the time we got to the subway, it was coming down hard! The rest of the day we just hung out. Dustin and John watched the BYU game and me and Austyn worked our pregnant selves out! It was really fun just to hang out. So we didn't see any of the city but the tennis and just getting to hang out with Austyn and Dustin was a blast. The city will always be there!

The Boston Trip

Time to update and I will try and make this as short and concise as possible which is really hard to do when you have a whole week where you actually did stuff every day! We planned the Boston trip with our good friends Kindt and Alyssa. Kindt and John were mission companions. We had been talking about this trip for a couple years and it finally became a reality. It all started out Monday morning when we met up with Kindt, Alyssa, their twin boys, and Kindt's Dad, stepmom, and sister. We went to Lowell to visit their old turf. It was fun seeing where they stayed for a while. We got ice cream that evening but Landon enjoyed the dirt much more.

The next day we spent some time in Quincy. Kindt had taught there. It was a really nice and cute town! This was where John Adams and John Quincy Adams lived and where they were buried. We actually saw their crypts! We went to their houses and then looked around at the nice neighborhoods.

I just love lighthouses and this was so picturesque to me so I had to take a picture of this lighthouse in Quincy. We also went to the beach but didn't get in since it was a little more on the chilly side. Landon was a little afraid of the waves coming at him.

The 3rd day, we finally made it into Boston. We went along the Freedom Trail. We saw where Paul Revere grew up and the church that he rode to to hang the lanterns. I felt like we were in National Treasurerer!!!

We then continued the red brick line to The Battle of Bunker Hill. Did you know that the battle actually occured on Breed's Hill? Bunker Hill is the next hill over.

And here's Ol' Iron Sides! Only like 10-15% of the boat is actually original. Crazy, huh? It was 33-0 in battles!

We then stopped by Quincy Market. I was so excited to see it since I'd seen it on a show on the Food Network Chanel. It's basically a big long building with restaurants on each side. it was fun just going in and looking around. This is Landon having fun outside. Oh by the way, he FINALLY prefers walking over crawling. It's about time!

On the 4th day, we sorta just hung out and went to the temple. As you can see, Landon and one of Alyssa's kids found it to be very peaceful!

We did go back to New York on Friday night to hang out with some other friends. I'll have to post what we did on Saturday once I get those pictures. Yeah, we forgot our camera so everyone else had to take pics for us!! We'll post those EXCITING pictures though once we get them and they are exciting!