October

October is behind us and Dan and I are both another year older! We both had birthdays in October and we spent a lot of time with family. That what life is about! Uncle Joseph came home from his mission in Bulgaria and got to meet 4 new babies! Owen has never been very shy or upset if strangers hold him and when Joe held him, Owen just stared at him with big eyes. After a few minutes, he burst into tears. It was pretty sad but pretty hilarious. He didn’t like Joe for a while there, but he has since warmed up to him! This picture pretty much explains how Owen felt. He was very nervous about Joe.

Ben and Becky (Dan’s sister) and their cute girls also came home! They have been in Mongolia for Ben’s work for the past two years and so the entire family is back together! There are 33 of us total (17 grandchildren ages 0-12 with one coming in a few weeks!). It is insane and lots of fun. Addy and Sarah love playing with the babies. Sarah is tiny so wrangling Owen is a bit difficult for her. Addy told me she wishes she were me because “Owen is SOOOO cute!”. Seriously adorable.

Owen and Benson are only 3 months apart and they are pretty cute to watch together. Owen was jabbering to Benson and they just play together. I have a feeling they are going to cause some trouble as they get older.

This boy really loves the swing in our backyard! We try to swing as much as possible. He gets mad if we go outside and don’t swing!

Dan’s birthday was on the 5th and he got some pretty sweet presents. Owen loved playing in all the wrapping paper!

I also made my first cake ever! I love baking and cooking but I have never liked cake so I never make it! I decided to be a nice wife and make one for his birthday. It looks terrible but it tasted really good! Luckily my neighbor had all the cake supplies that I could borrow!

We took a drive up the canyon a few weeks ago to check out the beautiful colors and weather. Owen and I both got a little queasy and he ended up throwing up. I think he has inherited my terrible motion sickness. Sweet.

Cuddles after a bath! He thinks it’s so funny when we wrap him up in the towel after the bath.

We went to Black Island Farms which is only a few minutes from our house. They have a huge corn maze, pumpkins, and all sorts of fun fall activities. We picked out some pumpkins and checked out a bunch of the animals they had.

Update on Owen: he is really cute. He is still not really interested in crawling and he just rolls, scoots, and army crawls everywhere. He can get anywhere he wants so I imagine he might not ever really crawl. He jabbers a ton and can be really loud. He can say Mama, Dada and All done. He copies me and will click his tongue, growl, squint his eyes, etc if I do it. He likes to share his food with us. He is still happy 99% of the time and always smiles and laughs. He is a little clingy with me but not too bad especially if I keep out of his sight. He has very little hair still but it’s growing and it’s really light. He has no teeth and no sign of teeth! He is thinning out a lot and is still chubby but he doesn’t have as many rolls as he used to! He sleeps great (as long as we’re at home) and will take two naps about 1.5-2 hours each and he will sleep from about 7/8pm-7am. Sometimes he wakes up early and will jabber and talk to himself then go back to sleep. He is nursing 4 times a day but he is not interested in the 4:00 feeding and doesn’t eat much, so I imagine that will be gone soon. He loves to look at books and turn the pages and he loves going on walks in the stroller. He plays by himself really well while I do some work but we still get lots of time to play together. He is really starting to get a funny personality and he does a lot of things to make us laugh. He is the best!

We got family pictures a few weeks ago at Memory Grove and the colors were amazing. Owen wasn’t too impressed with the photographer or any of us trying to get him to smile so he didn’t smile much, but he didn’t cry either, so I call that a success.

I think he wanted me to pick him up here!

After pictures we met up with my aunt/uncle/cousin and his wife and little girl. My aunt and uncle are from California but we see them quite a bit since their son lives in Utah. They are great and we met at Maddox for dinner. Me and Ash were twinners with our yellow cardigans, white shirts, jeans and brown boots! So funny!

On the 24th, it marked one year since my sweet Dad left us. It was a really hard couple of days and it still is really hard to think about him not being here with our family. I feel like so much has happened since he left and I still can’t believe that he hasn’t been here while we have had Owen, but I feel like it all just happened and that he was here just last week. Grief is a weird thing and for me, it comes and goes. Sometimes I am completely fine and other times (usually at night when I’m in bed), I let myself think about him and I am overcome with sadness. We really miss him a lot.

We decided to paint our pumpkins this year and it was fun! I had ideas of letting Owen smear paint around on his, but quickly changed my mind. He was happy to roll around on the floor while we painted! I did the chevron pumpkin and Dan’s was the haunted house. I did polka dots for Owen!

We went to the zoo last week and it was really fun! We have talked about it for ages and finally did it! It seems that we do a lot more things now that we have Owen and I’m glad. We did a lot of fun stuff before him, but now we make a lot more effort to do smaller fun things.

I think his favorite thing was sitting on Dan’s shoulders. He loves that so much and I just about die when he holds on to Dan’s ears! Cutest ever. We saw a lot of animals and enjoyed the gorgeous weather at the zoo.

The boys waiting for the polar bear to dive in! We ended up seeing him up close against the glass a little later.

Halloween was really fun. I was a ghostbuster and Owen was the green slimer! It turned out pretty cute and Dan helped me make the gun and stuff. My mother in law made Owen’s green costume and I found the perfect hat and gloves at Target!

I took him to work with me for a party and we won the costume contest! He was a big hit and as cute as ever. We went trick or treating with all the cousins at my brother in law’s house (they give out good candy in their neighborhood!). It was a great day and a great birthday for me!

October was a success!