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 :) //

family history conference

my sweet mom and i were able to attend the family history conference at byu this year and though it completely wore us out, and overwhelmed us, i learned an incredible amount and am so, so glad that i was able to miraculously go. (i wrote about getting some unexpected financial aid here to help pay the $180 admission.)

the conference went from tuesday-friday, 8 am to 5 pm. we never made it at 8 for the keynote speaker, but besides that, had a jam-packed week!! 

i have no idea how to summarize a weeks worth of classes into one blog post (i took pages of notes!) but in case anyone is reading this who may be interested in family history, here are a few gems of knowledge:

+ start with indexing! i went to a panel discussion with a bunch of youth who are family history consultants in their wards (how awesome is that?!) and this is what a lot of the youth are focusing on. it's fairly easy (deciphering old handwriting is the hardest part) and super quick! do it!

+ family history work can help with: understanding & emotional healing, realizing potential (love this one!), spiritual power, wisdom & perspective, and gratitude. 

+ one of the presenters i went to does the majority of her research on google earth! she was a little extreme, but i've never thought about looking up locations of ancestors on google earth and checking out the area that they used to live. kinda cool.

+ "nobody ever lived in the past." --david mccullough (to our ancestors, it was the present.) when putting together your family's story, ask yourself as many questions as possible (what was ____ like?, how did that affect ____?, what is significant about___?) and you'll slowly find their story coming together.

+ if you think "everything has been done on my family line!" (i hear that a lot!) think again. dig deep and do "descendancy research" where you locate all of the siblings in your relatives family. i just found a lot of information on the mckinley line by searching for our direct relative's brother, laughlin. i found WWI and WWII draft cards for almost all of the brothers in the family! jackpot!!

+ one of the days, my mom and i were feeling a little burnt out so we took a field trip to the byu family history center to check out their new photo scanner. it is AMAZING!! we took in over 300 pictures and had them all scanned, and saved to a cd in one hour!! that is unheard of people. they also are getting a new slide scanner (which they probably have by now), so if you are in the area, and have lots of pictures/slides that you want digitized, go to the family history library at byu!! plus, it's free!

+ and lastly, this tip has helped me a ton: when searching for people on either familysearch or ancestry, i haven't had the best of luck. i learned you can use "wildcards" in place of specific letters in a name. for example: normally, i would search, "david mckinley" but there can be a lot of discrepancies in the recording of names. SO, try searching for "david mck*" and it will search all last names with the beginning of "mck". this could bring up an entirely new set of results! or, if you think only one letter may be in question, you can use a question mark, like this: "david mc?inley" (someone may have mistook the "k" for a "g" or something else). 

this may not make sense to anyone (it's much easier to explain in person!) but let's just say i learned a lot. and i loved it all. thanks to my mom for being my conference buddy. i love you mom!!

and i love family history work with a passion!!

along with all that, my mom and i got started on project life! we didn't get as much accomplished as we wanted (when we got home at night, we ate, and lounged around! we were beat.) but i am so excited about it. i'm going to do K-12 in one binder and it's gonna be awesome. prepare yourself for lots of #tbt's on instagram :)

by the end of the week, i was ready to be home with my own family and i think my kids were ready too! saturday, i gave them each a "gift" from my conference and it was a huge hit! max especially loved it and drew in every single member of our family. he still has it hanging above his bed and is so very proud of it (as he should be).

so that's that. 

to top it all off, i just barely got a new calling in my ward:

family history consultant! 

and i couldn't be more excited!!

paintchip art. it's tradition.

this is the third year that we have made a paintchip mural for danny's classroom. though it's so much work (and we always put it off until the very last minute!) i'm so happy that we have done this. we have a blast and i think (hope) that the students enjoy it too.

here is last year's creation for new testament:

(we can't leave dad's work without playing some ping-pong!)

(they were such good helpers taking all of the fish off!)

and this year, for book of mormon, we made the tree of life. we finished it the night before class started, but made the most of it by having a movie night for the kids! they had a blast.

maebell's first haircut.

danny occasionally calls avery "maebell" and it's pretty darn cute.

(what is not cute, is our basement!! ahh. beware...)

avery/maeball got her first haircut a few weeks ago. i was terrified! (i have never cut a little girl's hair before) but surprisingly, it turned out pretty well. i wasn't super happy with how her bangs turned out, but hey! hair grows, right?!

she was very excited to be able to come down to the basement, sit on the stool, and watch a show on the iPod just like max always does.

my baby girl is growing up!!!

before:

during:

after:

love you avers.