More Cousin Time

Here are some photos from our Thanksgiving weekend. I love seeing Julie and Lilly (who just turned 9 months and is already walking everywhere!) interact together. They get along so well and although they are too young to really “play” together, they are fascinated by each other and love to do things side by side. Here are some of their adventures from this past weekend at Grandma and Grandpa Higgs’ house. Reading books with Grandpa

Julie taking movies off the shelf

Lilly taking movies off the shelf
Lilly pushing Julie (or trying to)
Climbing stairs together
Both girls made it to the top... Hurray!
Playing the piano with Grandma
Uncle Jared and his new puppy, Leigh... short for General Leigh (she's a girl)
Julie's still a bit shy, although she loves to LOOK at Leigh, just not touch
Helping to set up Christmas
The singing snowman tree... they were mezmerized by it

Thanksgiving

It's been a while since I last blogged. There are two main reasons: 1 - Julie makes staying at the library VERY diffcult now, so it is virtually impossible to do anything online that takes more than 5 or 10 minutes. 2 - We haven't taken very many pictures this month, so although we have done lots, there is not a lot of visual evidence. Anyway, moving on.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I LOVE this holiday. I love getting together with family and relaxing and eating lots of GOOD food. It also marks the beginning of the Christmas season, which is quite possibly my favorite time of the year. I cannot wait to set up our Christmas decorations next week. Here are just a few things that I am grateful for:

- My wonderful husband. He is so busy with school and work (he just got a second job working for one of his professors which is so amazing for him!) but he is so good about spending quality time with me and Julie when he's home. I can't imagine going into engineering and working two part time jobs and doing his scouting calling and everything. He really is amazing.

- My beautiful, BUSY little Julie. She keeps me busy but is so much fun. Here's some of what she's been doing the past few weeks since I last blogged:

She is a mouth-oriented girl. Has been since she was tiny. Whenever I look away, the next time I see her she has something (like this) in her mouth.

About once a week Julie has a play date with another little girl in the ward. And despite their lack of smiles in this picture, they tend to have a lot of fun together. Each time we get together there are less temper tantrums and they are getting better at sharing. And I confess that I enjoy being able to visit with another mom once a week.

Julie LOVES pb&j sandwiches. She has one pretty much every day. She finds so much joy in eating them, it always makes me smile to watch her.

- Both Arek's and my families. All their love and support and all the laughs we share with them. And especially my brother who is serving a mission in Russia. I am so proud of him! I try to show his picture to Julie at least a few times a week, so hopefully she'll kind of recognise him when he comes home in 18 months

- My church calling. I LOVE teaching music to the primary kids. It is sometimes daunting to come up with new ideas and ways to make singing enjoyable to them, but I love hearing their voices sing, and see the love that they have for the primary songs. I know most of the teachers get tired of singing it, but I love it when the kids get to pick a favorite song and a child says "I am a Child of God". Its message is so precious and important, I love that they love it.

Finally, here are a couple of family pictures that Jenny (Arek's sister) took of us last month. We just ordered some, and I cannot wait to put them up around our apartment. She really did a great job, we really appreciate her sharing her talent for photography with usHappy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Happy Halloween!

This was Julie's first real Halloween. Last year was technically her first, but since she was a month old and it was SUPER cold, we didn't dress her up. This year, though, she got to dress up and go to our neighborhood's trunk-or-treat, which she loved... once she realized that all the strangers were giving her candy! :) By the end she was getting super tired, though, and was ready to go to bed.

Pumpkin Walk, Part 1

Tuesday we went to a pumpkin walk in North Logan. It was so much fun! They had cardboard cutouts that we took pictures with and TONS of scenes made up of painted pumpkins. We were so impressed and had a blast, in spite of the cold afternoon. Here's some pictures of us with our cardboard cutouts and then below is another post with many of the scenes. There are a LOT of photos, so hope you enjoy!Julie as Ariel

Arek as Harry Potter

Me as Cinderella

Pumpkin Walk, Part 2

Here are some of our favorite of the scenes created with pumpkins. Yes, I know it's a ton of pictures. I couldn't narrow them down any further. There were just so many creative scenes

Rapunzel and Flynn Rider:Despicable Me:Angry Birds... Seeing this made us last so hard. They even had the catapultThe Sorcerer's ApprenticeA Christmas Story... "The soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window"They had a whole Candyland scene... with all the original-looking characters. I couldn't get a good view of the entire thing, thoughGilligan's Island:The hundred acres woods:And my personal favorite: The snowmen from Calvin and Hobbes

Leaves and Other Things

October is going by so quickly. I can't believe Halloween is in less than a week. We've been so busy lately that I don't quite know what to blog about. What's been keeping us busy? Well, for Arek it's definitely school. He takes his big 8-hour F.E. (Fundamentals of Engineering) test this Saturday. All of his normal school classes and work keep him busy enough but for the past month or so he's been going to extra study sessions for the f.e. so often times he will only see Julie for about 10-20 minutes total all day. I've been busy reading "The Woman in White" for book club. This month was my choice and I chose this one because it is the first real suspense novel and being October and Halloween... yep. However, it is a very long and wordy book (think Dickens, although it's written by Wilkie Collins, who actually was a friend of Dickens) so it took quite a while to get through. I did finally finish it last week. Verdict: Very interesting and elaborate story... it really keeps you wanting to know hat happens next, although I did think it got a little long at the end. Our meeting is this week, so hopefully some other women finished it and we can have some interesting discussion. Julie is as busy as ever. Last Friday we actually had a couple of hours just the 3 of us so we tried getting Julie to play in the crisp, fall leaves. She wasn't a huge fan. I know this next photo is a little blurry but I love it. It's a true depiction of Julie's personality We tried putting Julie INTO a pile of leaves to get her to play with them. Here are some photos of her reaction:

Fun at the Park

Here is one of Julie's and my favorite pastimes: playing at the park. It's only about 1/2 mile from our house, but on good days I will walk the long way there to get some exercise in for me, and then we play for about ten or fifteen minutes (that's about how long Julie stays interested) before walking home. It's lots of fun. And my favorite part: It actually has swings! Got to love a park that still has swings... they seem to be a rarity nowadays. Anyway, here's some of Julie's favorite things to do:

Loving the swingsHeading for the slide... I love her smile. She is always so pleased that she can get up to the slide by herself"I made it!" After sliding down she tries to go UP"Someday I'll figure out how this works"... It never fails that she walks up to the climbing wall and touches the hand grips. It makes me smile every time, too.This is how I know Julie is DONE and ready to go home... she starts pushing the stroller herself