mcbride's berry patch (the best berries in town!)

remember how much i love mcbride's berry patch???

  (see last years post here)

well, i love it and i hope to go at least once a year for the rest of my life. our summer was slightly crazy, but we were able to go once with some of our good friends from nephi. sadly, i didn't get a picture of our whole group but i think it's safe to say we all enjoyed ourselves (though it did get extremely hot!!) 

ave's bucket stayed consistently empty, while her shirt got messier...and max filled up a bucket and then spent the rest of his time chasing brek around. :)

pipes galore!

this may not be a big deal to you, but to us...well, it has been pretty huge :)

the plumbing in our house is awesome (overstatement of the century!!) and though we've (thankfully) never had any major problems, the pipes are old and we've needed to switch them for a long, long time. 

a few months ago, danny decided that today was the day, and shut off the water to our house.

we learned that you can never be too prepared (what was supposed to take a few hours...ended up taking a couple of DAYS!!!) but we now have brand new pipes, that are all IN the rafters (instead of hanging below the ceiling!)

before:

the kids were happy to help dad (they usually are!) and somehow we survived a few days without water!

after:

our basement is coming together one sssslllloooowwww step at a time :)

boondocks

near the end of july (i told you i was catching up!) we got to spend some quality time with danny's parents. sprinklers on the slide & arcades, bowling, and bumper boats at boondocks?! it doesn't get much better than that!

 

getaway in manti

i told you yesterday that i had a "whole slew of posts coming your way." i wasn't kidding.

this is the beginning of many, many more to come. (oh, and don't mind how far back these posts go!! i'm trying to catch up... also, try not to let the graininess/blurriness distract you. i realize that our ipod takes horrible pictures! one day, we will have smart phones :)

back in august we had our couples convention in manti, utah with all of the other seminary teachers & their wives in our area. it was a blast! we were able to attend some awesome meetings and spend time with amazing people. thursday night we had some free time so danny and i went to the manti temple with a group from our area. it was wonderful!!!

 

afterwards, we were craving something sweet, so naturally we stopped at polly's brainfreeze...where our relationship began :)

yay for little getaways & delicious banana splits! 

green thumbs.

it has been well over a month since i've last blogged! whew. it was a good break, but i'm ready to be back and i have a whole slew of posts coming your way.

since summer has officially come to a close, i'm feeling a little nostalgic...and want to go back already! fall is great, but my goodness it has gotten cold fast!!! our house has zero insulation and it is freezing. all. the. time.

anyways, we love growing a garden and this year did not disappoint!! we feel blessed to have so much space to plant in and installing a watering system in the back made things 100x easier. we planted tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, carrots, peas, green beans (which did not survive...), pumpkins (they died too!), zucchini (which we have vowed to NOT plant next year!!!), butternut squash, watermelon, cantaloupe...and i think that covers it!

so long sweet summer. and all of the delicious foods that go along with it!

// cutting our first watermelon off the vine!! it weighed over 20 pounds!! //

// our tomatoes got slightly out of control... //

// our watermelon patch //

// cantaloupe & additional tomato patch //

// our first butternut squash!! so beautiful. it went from this... //

// ...to this, after leaving it in the oven while running errands :( //

// the fruits of our labors! so many tomatoes!! //

since my mom is awesome, she agreed to help me make tomato juice. i have such fond memories growing up & canning with my mom and grandma. so happy to pass on the tradition to my little duo!

max got a little crazy from all that canning...but he found a way to put the canning tools to good use :)

we also made 60 pints of salsa (yumm!!!) with the help of so many wonderful neighbors & their gardens as well as danny's parents! i didn't take any pictures that two day process (salsa takes a very, very long time!!), but i think it's safe to say that we had a successful season.

good things to come, part two!

I just finished our fifth blog book (yay!!) and it's always such a relief to get it done. One thing I love about doing our books though (besides getting them backed up) is reviewing the past year and reminiscing. 

We've had a big year and in so many ways, I'm happy that it's in the past. However, as hard as miscarriage was, and dealing with an auto-immune disease is, I have learned an incredible amount and feel stronger because of these experiences.

One of the posts I read over again while working on my book was this one: good things to come. Oh, I remember those days! It's humbling to read over my thoughts and live through them again.

But one year (and lots of hard days) later, I can honestly say that good things HAVE come!! 

(just as Elder Holland promised!) 

Baby #3 is due March 13, 2014 and we could not be more excited!!! 

(Crazy how the Lord's timing works. This baby is due almost exactly one year later!)

...

This is how we announced the wonderful news to Danny's parents via Skype. Danny's dad just finished up his second round of chemo (cancer is the worst!!!) and we thought this might lift his spirits :) I think it did the trick. (That, and Danny's little brother & his wife are expecting just a few weeks after us!! They announced their news just minutes after ours!)

Because I'm due just days apart from my due date last year, it has been incredibly stressful & I've been quite a wreck. We saw the baby, and heard the heartbeat (such a beautiful sound!!!) at almost 9 weeks, but I was still worried. Last week, I had my 13 week check-up and all is well. 

Overall, I have felt incredibly good health-wise. I've only thrown up twice and as long as I eat constantly throughout the day (which is harder than it seems!) I don't get too tired. I'm definitely counting my blessings :)

I'm 13.5 weeks along now and it's finally starting to sink in. 

We are having a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

// Danny had to document my first time throwing up!! We had been praying for this day :) //