Halloween!

Halloween has always been one of my very favorite Holidays. Getting together with family, eating food, and getting ready for the craziness that was soon to follow that evening. My family moved to Utah shortly after I graduated, and after one semester at ISU I transfered to Weber State to be with them. My first Halloween here was spent in North Salt Lake at my aunt and uncles house. They had just adopted Olivia, and she was just perfect. The cousins dressed up and the older boys took the younger ones out in the neighborhoods.
It was this Halloween that was so special to me and one that I will remember forever. Earlier that month my Grandpa had found out that he was going to need another operation on his heart, or else he would die within a few months. So, he was torn. He had already had two or three major operations on his heart and didn't know if he would have the strength to do it again. This day, spent with his newest grandbaby, I think he decided he would go through with it.
Once the older boys had scarfed their food and ran outside with the little ones, the house was quiet. My grandpa held Olivia and very quietly, while smiling at the baby, said, "It's good to be alive."
We knew that he didn't have much time, and I couldn't hold back the tears as the man that had taught me so much in my life said those words. He had so much pain, yet he was so happy. I was overcome with gratitude for being able to have this man as not just my Grandpa, but truly my dad.
He had the operation in February and it went smoothly. He recovered slowly, as heart surgeries require, and by June was ready to go out and Golf again. He laughed, and went to his grandkids events, basketball, baseball, choir, dance, you name it, he was there. He loved to live.
In August he had a stroke. It was very scary, but four days later he was out of the hospital and at church. He recovered so well from everything. Grandpa is invincible!
It wasn't until mid-September that we heard the news. He went into the hospital after ignoring the pain in his side for months, thinking it was just from the heart surgery. The doctors found pancreatic cancer that was at stage four. The doctors said there was nothing they could do, except to hurry up and wait. They said he had 6 months. He left the hospital a little over three weeks later, not coherent, in so much pain. Our hearts ached for our grandpa. He died a little over three weeks after he went into the hospital.
My grandpa was the strongest man I've ever known and also the happiest man I've ever known. I will never forget when he turned to me that Halloween and said those simple words, "It's good to be alive."
It is good to be alive. My life is beautiful, my family is wonderful, and there are so many adventures left in store. We'll sure miss him, but he taught us everything we needed to know.
Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving Date Night :)

Our first Halloween together. We wanted to have a date and carve pumpkins together. The problem was, I had already promised my sisters that we would have a pumpkin carving competition on Saturday, this was Wednesday, so we had our trial run on the mini pumpkin pie pumpkins.
We went all out. We bought the DELUXE pumpkin carving set which included like four carvers, little detailers and big detailers. It included a goop scoop and patterns.





Caleb didn't like the dirty pumpkins. He promptly took them to the kitchen to wash before any carving could commence.












Our camera is huge. The battery in the little camera died, unfortunately, so for these purposes we had to use the big one. It's hard to take a self portrait with a large camera.










hahahahaha. Uhmm... Weird!














My little baby pumpkin! It was so dang cute.














These were hard little boogers to cut and to clean out. They aren't the kind you are supposed to carve, so it made it that much trickier. Plus, we both didn't want it to get on our hands. So that made it a little more difficult.





































Anyway, this is the final product. We are going to be working on big ones tonight! Hopefully those are a little easier and a little more fun! Although we did have a blast. :)

Feeding the Ducks at Beus Pond

Fall is my very favorite time of year.. Besides Winter. :) I love seeing the leaves changing and get rid of the blasted heat. I don't love being hot. Anyway, over Conference Weekend, Caleb and I decided to go out after the last session of Sunday's conference and go feed the ducks at Beus Pond here in Ogden so we could see the leaves and mostly get our of our dungeon basement apartment.
I've fed the ducks in Idaho Falls at the Snake River, and they were never very aggressive.. just walked semi-near you, without getting too close. Well Beus pond is incredibly different.
We took pictures.. so the only way to describe these beasts is with a photo.

It started out relatively calm, with just a few ducks coming our way. You can see the few in the back just chilling..











The real reason for our generosity towards the ducks was us being unsure what to do with our leftover bread.. Hate to waste. (Side note: this was done the 4th of October. The bread we were using was from August 9-16.. we bought the bread on our honeymoon, and it hadn't gotten moldy.. What do you suppose they put in that bread? YUCK) So. Caleb was doing the tossing and I was taking pictures. Slowly a few more ducks got word that there was bread being shared and so lots more ducks started coming.


Then They started attacking each other when they got some bread. This is a photo of one duck running away with the bread while others were attacking his feet and body.








I started noticing some scary big ducks in the background with large bumps on their faces. They kept getting closer and closer and the numbers starting increasing.



This is a bumpy faced duck. You would not believe the sounds they make. It's incredibly frightening.










Caleb Started out pretty close to the waters edge when it was just the little guys he was feeding.. Then one by one the big guys started showing up and scaring the other ones away with their roars.. Caleb starting getting scared away too.. By the end he was completely on the other side of the path as far as he could get from the ducks, however, they followed him.


















Then they noticed me. Unfortunately, I did not have any bread, so they were just coming toward me for no reason.














I love his face.














This is what they did when they started making their scary noises. Think: car horn mixed with a raptor.







So, eventually we ran away from the sand where we were standing. The honking ducks were too much and too scary. We found a little dock that went out into the pond aways. We stood on there and started feeding the little ones again. This one slowly made it over to where we were standing. His face kills me. He got more and more curious about what we were doing. So we laid some bread on the edge of the dock and waited for him to see..































We got brave. :)













Anyway, We had fun and got some funny pictures. Wanted to share. Caleb has nightmares now about those ducks...