Thankful 2016

Taylor and I have been having so much fun playing the French horn together again!

We've tried to practice together every day and have had such a fun time playing the "Hallelujah" song by Handel again like we did back in High School.

Taylor's had to re-teach me a lot of the note fingerings again, but he's been such a good teacher!

This was our first practice together.

This was the second practice together.

We also had a great time going to the Carol King Musical "Beautiful" with Mike and Michelle and some Drake family.

And we had our first snowfall in November:

And because there was snowfall, I was in the mood for Christmas! Unfortunately, our first tree is way too wide for a tiny space, so Taylor was kind enough to let me get a pencil tree.

He even got this Cactus Christmas tree for our first decoration on it!

We also had a great time learning how to make gourmet caramel apples with the Drake family and their long time friend who has made them for Rocky Mountain Chocolate and Orson Gigi. 

We made three, however, I only got the picture of the one because we totally just ate the other ones too quickly...

My parents drove up from California and arrived Monday night while I was still at work.  We had seen this desk at Savers for $30 and had wanted to get a new desk that had more storage and could store things upward. So Taylor recruited my Dad to help him move it into place so everything would be set up by the time I came home from work!

We had fun playing some of our French horn parts for my parents since they wouldn't be in town for the concert and enjoyed watching us play together like back in HS.

And since Taylor taught himself to crochet, he started making me headbands! 

(Let's just say our baby girl is going to have so many cute things made by daddy.)

For Christmas gifts, Taylor is making each of the ladies in our families a headband of their choice.

My mom chose a brown one which she wore with a scarf I had crocheted for her a few Christmases ago.

Bumpdate 22 weeks. 11/22/16

On Tuesday I had so much fun in the afternoon (after a struggling morning of working on figuring out how to train the RNs in a super tight infusion schedule). Anyways, the rest of the day made up for the not so great morning!

I made pumpkin pies with my Mom!

Every single Thanksgiving I've always made pumpkin pies with my Mom and it was such a fun tradition to continue! I'm excited for next year when I can do it with my Mom and little Belle!

It's always fun to make homemade crust with my Mom!

Even my Dad helped me out by pouring the heavy pumpkin mix into the pie pans for me!

I also put my parents to work my helping me decorate the Christmas tree and put up some lights in our living room!

On Wednesday night, my parents came over for dinner that Taylor made for us since I was still at work for a while. I drove home in some sleet-rain, but we apparently, as we ate and talked for a few hours, it started to snow! 3 inches!

On Thursday, the Drake parents hosted us all for Thanksgiving dinner.

Picture of all of us after we ate.

 The food that Michelle and taylor prepared:

 Our little family November 24th 2016:

Carlie's Baby Shower; Drake Baby Gender Reveal

Taylor and I had fun making baby face cupcakes for Carlie's baby shower with Michelle!

First we dyed the fondant. You have to roll that dye into the fondant and then knead the fondant like dough.

The cupcakes were frosted with normal frosting, and then the fondant "face" was placed over top:

And we decided to add little baby hats to make them looks like little boys!

Here it is with the eyes and ears glued on:

Putting on the nose and making the mouth:

Dusting the cheeks with food powder:

We made each of the little faces different.  Taylor liked putting a tongue on the babies.

All the many baby faces:

The baby shower set up:

Taylor helped me make the games for the baby shower!

This is the safari banner I made for the boys!

We did a quick Justice family pic before the shower started.

First pic of our family of 9!

Making Carlie and Seth try some baby food and guess what it is!

 Taylor learned to crochet and made these two blankets for the boys!

After the shower, Taylor and I let our moms cut our gender reveal cake that we had put together a couple days previously.

Michelle made the cake and cut out the middle:

Taylor and I went into another room and filled the cake with the M&Ms that corresponded to baby Drake!

Michelle found these cute yellow ducks that we mixed in with our pink M&Ms!

 Then we put the cake top on:

 Then we frosted the top and Michelle put fondant on top of it all.

The end result:

Cutest little fondant converse shoes on top!

 We tried to trick everyone in the family because they all were guessing it was a girl, so to throw Taylor's parents off we acted like we had dropped a M&M and it had rolled under the table.

This picture is my favorite of their faces!

Baby Girl Drake sucking her thumb!

Tannin doesn't understand why her "little" sister's clothes are too big for her!

On Sunday we did a family picture in our backyard.

Then we went on a walk around Silver Lake.

We even saw a moose on the way home!

With antlers!

Taylor flipped out when he saw it. He was driving. I expected it, but I wonder what my dad thought in the back seat. Haha!

On Monday, my parents and Seth and Carlie stopped by to see the new infusion clinic.

For scouts, Taylor and I had fun making cookies with our 1 Webelos kid, and then doorbell ditching the cookies to neighbors.  Taylor and I would hide in the playground area or behind a tree while the boy ran and rang the doorbell.

And after work and scouts I decided to take a picture of Baby Girl at 20 weeks and 1 day: