Christmas

I feel like I can't let Christmas go without some sort of mention!

We had the best Christmas season ever.  Ivy is in a prime phase for childhood enjoyment, which made every last thing so much fun.

Some highlights:

• Christmas day seriously took ALL DAY to open presents.  Ivy wanted to play with each present to maximum capacity the moment we opened it, and we let her.  It was awesome to just stay home and go at our own pace.  
• She asked Santa for a car (with a door and steering wheel) and a lawn mower that blows bubbles.  I think she kind of had an electric car in mind, but she has enjoyed playing with the one Santa decided to give her instead.
• We went to see lights, probably 20 times.  It is the perfect winter night-time activity for our little family.  There was a house just north of us that had their lights set to music, which was our favorite.  The windows had some talking reindeer and Christmas light bulbs (which Ivy called avocados? haha) and one of the synchronized songs was "Santa Shark" so that definitely made Ivy's year.
• We checked off a lot of things on our typical Christmas bucket list--gingerbread houses, sledding, etc.  One new thing we added this year was we went to the Utah Symphony Christmas Concert for families up at Abravanel Hall.  It was mostly for my sake, but I think the rest of the family liked it a little as well.
• The rest of the season was filled with lots of treat making (and eating), children's book reading, parties, Christmas songs, and programs.  It really was a year filled with the best of the season.

Fall Fun

We made a bucket list of a ton of fun Fall family activities this year, and we had the best time.  Fall is such a fun season in Utah.

We went to the Witch Festival at Gardner Village, which was a complete madhouse, but it was really fun.  Ivy enjoyed chasing some chickens and we were so impressed that she would actually do some of the kid activities!  Preschool has worked wonders for our shy girl.

Ivy and I also visited Petersen Family Farms again, pretty much just to get pumpkin photos. Haha.

For Halloween night, we had a festive unhealthy dinner complete with mummy hot dogs (am I officially a mother for making these? haha) and a Frankenstein guacamole plate.

We also decorated haunted houses and painted our pumpkins. It was nice to not be so sick for this portion of the year so we could go all out.

Halloween

I decided since this is likely the only pregnant Halloween I'll ever have, I should capitalize on it and use the pregnancy toward our theme.

Luckily Ivy was ok being a cat.  Haha.

I did a mix of DIY and purchases for these costumes, and I love how they turned out.  Ivy had a great Halloween although it gets overwhelming for her and she did burst into tears at one point.  It is kind of weird to see people all dressed differently at random when you're 3 years old, I guess.  She maybe trick-or-treated at 5 houses and we called it a night!

Fall Leaves

This year to see the Fall leaves, we headed up to Jordan Pines campground to revisit the site of our family pictures from 2017.  It was a beautiful day.

Celebrating the Start of Fall

We started a family tradition of having "camp day" to celebrate the start of the Fall season.

It might've been the best day of Ivy's life.  She was really excited about the tent, even though we only played Zingo in there and hung out for a few minutes.

We also broke out the fire pit for its' yearly use.

You will never find me voluntarily camping, but the backyard variety is pretty fun.

Later this weekend we also started "Boo-ing" our neighbors with some treats.  I'm sure they all knew it was us, but it was so much fun watching Ivy run and hide after we rang the doorbell.  Haha.  Welcome, Fall.

Ivy Potpourri