Sewing Project

Our friends had a baby a month ago. I made a carseat canopy for them. It was so easy and fun that I'm definitely going to have to make them more in the future! Their nursery is decorated in owls and figure it would be fun to have their carseat canopy in owls too. And it was also awesome that Hancock Fabrics had their fleece 50% off! I love sales! It's so cold here that I figured having fleece on one side would maybe help keep her warm too.

Happy Birthday Kevin!!

Today is our friend Kevin's birthday. He and Collin go to school together and have been best friends ever since they started school. It's almost like love at first sight, except friend version. He and Collin study together all the time and really help each other out A LOT!! Kevin is also married, to Ashley and have a cute new baby. They are awesome so we decided to make a blog post just about them for Kevin's birthday. We get together all the time and have a lot of fun together. Probably our favorite thing to do is go to Whitey's and get delicious ice cream. We used to go like once a week but now they have a new baby and for some reason Kevin is on a diet and thinks that ice cream is not healthy. Weird... it has milk in it, totally healthy! Anyway, Happy Birthday Kevin!!!!!!!!!  This is the only picture we have of him, sorry Kevin!!! This is really all Collin and Kevin do in school, take pictures of each other sleeping. And he has awesome red hair like Collin!

Beautiful Fall

Oh my goodness! Probably my favorite part about living in Iowa so far is the beautiful fall colors! Holy cow! Never in my life have I seen such bright red leaves in fall! We seriously love it! And we are so lucky because just around the corner from us is one of the most beautiful streets here! We get to drive down it almost everyday which I love! Unfortunately all the leaves have fallen now and we just got snow today, but luckily we got some pictures before they all fell! I am definitely going to miss all the fall colors!
These are all pictures from the street around the corner from us!

Pumpkin Carving Family Night

For our Family Night yesterday we carved our pumpkins. It took me a long time to decide what to carve. I thought about carving Mario, but everyone does that. So instead I did something else from Mario/Mario Party! Collin decided in like 2 min really. We had a lot of fun! I never carved pumpkins when I was little so now that I'm big I always want to. We were really happy with how they turned out, especially since some of the pieces we had to cut out were small and difficult. Our ward Trunk or Treat is Friday so we're hoping they won't dry out and wilt before then!

Temple Weekend Getaway

Our ward was asked to help clean the Nauvoo Temple. Collin signed us up. There was another couple from the ward that signed up so we decided to all go down together and share a hotel room to save money. So we went down last Friday. We stayed in Keokuk, IA which is about half an hour from Nauvoo. When we got there we checked into the hotel and then decided to get dinner before cleaning. We went to a pizza place called Angelini's. It was so good! Collin was super excited cause they had a Bacon Chicken Ranch Pizza like The Pie in Ogden. The crust wasn't as good as The Pie, but it was still really good pizza. After dinner we went and cleaned the temple. Collin and I got to vacuum the top 3 floors. It was great! We just love how peaceful the temple is. When all the cleaning was done they let us go up to the Bell Tower. It was another 97 stairs, 5 flights, above the fifth floor of the temple. It was really cool! When we got back to the hotel room we played a game of Phase 10 before going to bed.
Saturday morning we took our time getting ready for the temple. It was nice to not feel rushed. The hotel had pretty good biscuits and gravy for breakfast too. It was a beautiful drive to the temple that morning with the beautiful fall colors! We then got to the temple about 11:30 and did a couple of ordinances there and got done at the temple about 3:30. For lunch we brought homemade bread and PB and J to make sandwiches. We then hung around for a little while. Nauvoo was having a pumpkin walk. There's only one Main Street there and it was lined with carved pumpkins. It was pretty cool. Something you'd only see in a small town. We were there when it first started so it was still a little light outside so it wasn't as cool as it would have been when it was dark. It's a two hour drive home and since Collin and I were the one's driving, we didn't want to drive home super late. They also had a "parade". It was just anyone dressed in a costume walked down the street with a kazoo singing Addam's Family. The strangest parade I'd ever seen.

Look at all the variety of colors

LOVE fall here!!!

Nauvoo Temple

Thankfully we were able to go to the temple yesterday. We miss being so close to the temple and going weekly. We have gone every month so far though so that is good! It's a two hour drive to the Nauvoo temple, which really isn't that bad. The drive right now is SO pretty! The trees here are way different than Utah's. Most of the trees here turn red. I think it's way prettier than Utah, Collin says you can't compare since they are too different. I tried to get some cool pictures on our drive, but they are still in the process of changing so they aren't completely beautiful yet. We are going again this weekend and I'm sure it will be even better this next time. There's also a funny house on the way there that looks like it's on stilts, we don't really get it. Anyway, we love the temple and are so glad to be able to go!

House on stilts... Weird!!

Hot Air Balloons

Well our lives have been pretty boring the last month. We've done a few things, but they've just been things like games nights that we haven't taken pictures. This last weekend on the other side of the Mississippi River there was a Hot Air Balloon Festival. They were supposed to have about 20ish balloons that were going to fly up from the same field. Our neighbors Dawn and Bryan invited/let us follow them to go see them. I was getting so excited. We had never seen a hot air balloon close at all.  The balloons were going to get ready and leave at about 7 AM so we left about 6:30 to go over. We got there around 7 and none of the balloons were even out and ready. We waited awhile and talked with one of the balloon guys. The visibility was only a quarter of a mile and they needed I think 2 miles in order to fly. They were not able to fly but they did get two balloons out and blew them up for everyone to see. They were really cool. And it was so much fun being there with our awesome neighbors and their two kids. They are the best neighbors ever and are going to be so sad when they leave!! Their kids are hilarious too.

We were SO tired!!!

There was even a Captain America balloon with the shields on the sides of the basket.