Fall in Kansas

I seem to always be a month or so behind. I can't believe that Thanksgiving is next week. That is just crazy!

Adam's parents and two younger brothers came to visit us in the middle of October. It was so nice of them to come and visit us. Two days of driving each way and two days with us. We felt loved. For part of my birthday presents they brought me produce from their garden and orchard. It was so nice to have all the fresh produce. We were able to do a lot while they were here. We showed them around K-State campus and Adam's stomping grounds. We went to the zoo, hiked trails in Konza prarie, threw rocks down by the river, and of course played games and ate good food. It was so much fun. Alina and Anna soaked up every bit of the attention and it was so good for them to be around family.

My Birthday was a low key due to Stake Conference that we had that weekend. We drove an hour for our adult session. We have never done that before. It has not phased me too much that I am now 26, until the other day when I was filling out a survey and it classified me into the age group of 26-35. That made me feel a lot older when I had to mark that box. I love having my birthday on the weekend, because it turns into a birthday weekend.

Because of Stake Conference we were done with church earlier than we usually are and so we decided to drive to Clyde Kansas where my Grandpa and Great Grandma were born. It was really fun to drive out there and find the cemetery and start working on finding the information that I need.

I am taking advantage of Adam having school off next week and I am going to drive to the County Museum to do some digging. I am very excited!

Halloween was really fun. It is a tradition of my family to go bowling on Halloween and Adam and I have started that in our family. This was Alina's first year of trick or treating besides at the Ward Party and I have to say it was really fun. We went with some friends and we had a blast. Alina was Cinderalla as a bride. When I first found her costume she was really excited and kept telling me that Daddy was the prince and I was the grandma(the fairy godmother:). She said this so much that I thought it would be fun to dress up just as she said. I borrowed a prince costume for Adam and I found some fairy wings and a wand. When it was time to get dressed for the Ward party, Adam got all dressed up and Alina did not like it at all. Thus proceeded 10 min. of trying to persuade her to get dressed and many tears. Finally after realizing that it was not worth the battle, Alina agreed to be Tinkerbell, and Adam and I went as our usual western hill billies. Adam has these awful teeth that he loves to wear. As soon as he puts them in his hill billy accent comes out and he does not break character until the teeth come out as well. It is so funny to walk around with him and watch people's faces.

We had our 3rd Annual Spudnut making morning. We made 95 doughnuts! We invited some friends to come help us eat them; thank goodness because they were good and we would have gotten sick eating them all.


Anna is walking 99% of the time. She is basically running around the house with Alina. She loves socks and all kinds of paper, and usually has one or the other or both in her mouth as she walks around. She almost 14 lbs and looks tiny so to watch her walk is almost alarming. I often stop what I am doing to watch her walk around.

Alina turned 3 on the 12th. It was such a fun day! Early on her birthday morning she crawled into bed and asked me if it was almost her birthday. When I replied that it was her birthday, her grin was so big that I could see it clearly through the dark. I think I had as much fun as her that day as I watched her enjoy her "princess birthday".

(My attempt at princess pancakes)

It was fun to think back on the last three years of her life; I never could have imagined the joy that being a parent can bring. I have so much love for this little girl my heart sometimes feels like it can't love anymore than it does, but then it continues to grow more and more with each passing day.

Alina loves to read. She honestly spends at least an hour everyday looking at books. From a very young age she would sit quietly as I read books to her. I have been amazed at the length of books I can read to her.

Alina loves music. She loves to sit at the piano and turn the pages of the primary songbook and the disney music book that we have. She knows the pages to the primary songbook so well that she knows what primary song goes with the pages whether they have a picture on them or not. She loves to listen to the disney pandora station that I have made and will sing and dance along.

Alina loves to talk and she is my buddy as we run errands and go places together.

Alina is a great cook! She loves to be in kitchen on her step stool, with her apron and her plastic knife and cuts and measures the food with me. When she was younger and I had the cookbooks where she could reach them she would pull them out and look at them like they were picture books (most of mine don't have pictures). She loves to play kitchen and often pulls out all our pans and pots and uses my cookie cooling stack able racks as stoves and cooks up her dolls and me some food.

Alina is truly a delight to be around and I am so grateful that she is my daughter!