November--Thankful, Grateful, and Blessed

We have had a full and busy month in November.  Time just passes so quickly it's hard to keep up...or keep track. Here's a quick overview of our activities this month:

We started our month off right with fun date in Louisville. After a trip to the Louisville Temple we drove 30 minutes further to the Mega Caverns. They have underground zip lines and ropes courses. We chose to do a ropes course that included a few small zip lines as well. It was a lot of fun and I definitely felt sore muscles the next day.

Here's a couple of pics from a mini-photo shoot I did with Ethan and Lydia one morning. I got a few other cute ones but couldn't include them all here. I just love how Ethan has his arm around Lydia. :)

Ethan built a tall Lego pyramid with almost all the Legos we have and then built a special train track that goes around it. He had so much fun building it and I love to see his creativity!

We love our local library and they have lots of cool events throughout the year. They have an engineering exhibit set up right now in the lobby that is fun for the kids to play with. They have about 6 different tracks set up for the kids to experiment with and they love it!

 

 

And this is what my kids and living room look like after we come home from the library!

 

 

 

 

The picture below shows another common scene at my house--E & L watching a show from my bed. 

Ethan and I participated in the Primary Children's Sacrament Program at our church. I was one of the main people in charge this year which included writing the parts for over 50 children. It was a lot of work but turned out well. I'm grateful for everyone else's help and for the children that made it worth watching. Ethan did really well with his part. He memorized it and spoke loudly and slowly enough for people to understand. Lots of people comment to us that they love to watch Ethan because he knows the songs and sings them out. :)

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. We had 8 adults and 8 children together from Nevada, Illinois, and Florida. We were a little cramped, but it worked out fine and it was nice to be together. We ate a yummy turkey dinner with all the traditional dishes including homemade stuffing and rolls. I also included some personal family favorites of candied yams and cranberry salad. We also had 5 yummy pies to eat for dessert, all my favorites. The cousins loved getting together and they got lots of time to play. The weather was mild enough that they got to play outside and we even took a walk to the school park after our feast. The food was delicious, but I think the thing I was most grateful for was that no one was sick during our 3 days together! Yay!

Grandma and Grandpa had recently visited Jerusalem and Grandma enjoyed sharing their experiences with the grandkids.

Lydia and Maisy hit it off and were totally cute together. Here they are taking turns doing each other's hair.

 The day after Thanksgiving we drove an hour and a half to Dayton, Ohio to visit the National Air Force Museum. It was really cool and I think everyone enjoyed it. We got to see lots of cool planes from every war and era. We especially liked walking through some of the old presidential planes that transported President Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy. The kids ran around happily. The museum was huge and we ended up being there about 5 hours.

We also all got together to see a 3D movie after Fighter Pilot training that was really interesting as well. Ethan said that was his favorite part of the trip.

Saturday was rainy so we played games at our church building in the morning like soccer, the cup game, tag, etc., then we came home for lunch, and played more games in the living room for a few more hours before the Florida and Illinois Burninghams started their long car rides back home. Later that evening we drove around to see some Christmas lights with Grandma and Grandpa too. I just love to see Christmas lights!

The three cousins born within 3 days of each other.

Our Thanksgiving Burningham crew

Sunday we attended church and enjoyed talking and playing games with Grandma and Grandpa. We're grateful for family and thankful for the wonderful time we had together! 

We ended the month with Ethan losing his first tooth! He was pretty excited for the tooth fairy to visit. I was there when it happened. He got this confused look on his face while he was eating his lunch when he bit on something hard. I guessed what had happened and had him get it out before he swallowed it! :) 

We're grateful for all the fun experiences we're having here in Kentucky and consider ourselves very thankful, grateful, and blessed!

Family Reunion Time

I could/should really make a book with all that we did for our two weeks in Utah and Idaho, but I really will try to just take the highlights for the purposes of this post. :) (And things are kind of out of order and crazy, but I decided 4 months later that I just needed to finish it. :) )

We had a direct flight to Utah. The kids did pretty well on the plane and my sister picked us up from the airport. We stayed there for lunch and let our children play. We're grateful Kristilyn helped us with transportation and my parents were kind enough to let us borrow their car while we stayed in Utah.

Grandpa Rogers and Lydia

Having fun building with Grandma's little Legos

 I found my old harmonica from when I was in 3rd grade and learned to play it with Mrs. Smith. After more than 20 years, I could still play Old Suzanna like it was yesterday. It's funny how we never forget certain things.

Keith carefully teaching Ethan how to play Uno. He is a great teacher!

Playing at a playground with Melody and Victoria

We visited Silver Lake with Melody's family and my parents. We all loved it! I love to be in the mountains and it was just gorgeous up there!

Jason and I were able to get out on a couple dates. One night we went to dinner at Cupbop in West Jordan and then to the play Newsies. It was really well done. They had some technical difficulties right at the beginning in their new Sandy building with the new stage. It wasn't going up and down properly so after the first 5 minutes they had to stop the show for about 20 minutes until they could call someone to help them fix the problem. Fortunately they were able to continue and didn't have to cancel the show!

Another night we went out to dinner with some of our Orem friends and saw the Tabernacle Choir Pioneer Concert in Salt Lake. The concert was good, but definitley not the best I've seen there. It was still fun to be there though and to catch up with friends.

Sunday afternoon walk around the neighborhood

I took the kids with Keith's family to hike Donut Falls one morning. We were surprised to run into the Eliasons as we headed to Donut Falls one morning. They had camped in the Spruces that weekend and we just happened to pass each other at the right time on the trail. So random and so fun!

Playing "Gotcha" with Grandpa

Lydia at Silver Lake

Ethan at Silver Lake

I love this picture of these cute cousins enjoying popsicles outside.

Grandpa gave everyone something to open for Ethan's birthday. :)

We visited a Lego exhibit at some beautiful gardens in the foothills of Salt Lake

Hanging out with Kira after we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Keith's home

My high-school friend Marilee treated us to a visit at the Dinosaur museum complete with ice cream afterwards. We had a fun time catching up.

An awesome get-together with the Burningham sister-in-laws

A fun afternoon with the younger Burningham cousins at Sally's house. They have an amazing view from their pool!

One of Lydia's funny faces as she picks out the marshmellows from her Lucky Charms

We got together in Draper at a water playground with my friend Erica and her kids, too bad this is the only picture I took.

A picture of Jason and I in my parents backyard

July in Kentucky

We spent the first half of July in Kentucky. We haven't been here for the 4th of July for a couple of years so it was fun to go back to Coney Island with our friends, listen to the Cincinati Orchestra perform some of my favorite music and see a fantastic fireworks show. This was Ethan's first big fireworks show since he can remember and he LOVED it. He was dancing all over the place to the music and never took his eyes off the sky. On our way home he said, "Mom, can we do this again next year?" I hope so!! Unfortunately Lydia picked up a stomach bug on the plane home from Utah and was too sick to go with us. Jason stayed home with her while Ethan and I celebrated. It was so, so, so hot at Coney Island, but it felt a lot better after the sun went down. It's a good thing Lydia didn't know what she was missing out on!

Ethan and Gavin on the bumper cars

Ethan, Gavin, and Calvin on the swinging ship

Watching the concert and fireworks with the Huxels

 We also found time for biking, birthday parties, swimming, and hair cuts before we got back on another plane headed to Utah.

Getting ready to ride on the sidewalks in front of our house

Ethan sporting his BYU hat

Olivia's dinosaur birthday. They poured salt on frozen eggs that contained little plastic dinosaurs. They tried to "hatch" their eggs. They also found dinosaur bones in the sandbox, played a bean bag toss, ate hot dogs and cake, and broke a pinata.

Obviously they didn't know Ethan's strength and ability. He was third in line and just broke that pinata right open with his mighty swings before a lot of the kids had a chance to try. Fortunately the other kids saw the candy on the ground and didn't care anymore. :)

Doing a little sun bathing

Lydia did great for her hair cut. Her hair is growing so fast! We just trimmed it up for pictures.  Before picture

After picture