Thanksgiving in St. George

*Beware--this post has a lot of pictures.

This year, Covey and I were able to go down to St. George for Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family.  My dad and step-mom co-own a condo with some other people and it happened to be available over Thanksgiving weekend so we all decided to go down and take advantage of it!  It was a full house/condo for sure, with 10 people sharing the space.  (Good thing we all like each other!)

We drove down on Wednesday night after work and got there around 9:30 and went straight to bed.  Thanksgiving Day was so great!  We all went over to my Aunt Sue's house, who lives down in St. George, to help prepare the food for the feast. 

We ate around 2 and it was all so good!  Then we just chatted and relaxed and slept and ate more and watched football.  

 My niece, Sayler

My nephew, River, and Aunt Sue

 Me and Dani.  If we are together, you can bet we will take pictures of ourselves.

The boys were all zonked out after dinner

 My step-sister, Brooke

Me and Grandpa

Baby's first Thanksgiving dinner...sort of

Posing as a 'normal' family

Showing our true colors...

By the time we got back to the condo, I we were all so tired that we went to bed early and slept in.

On Friday, all the girls went to a craft expo and found some fun Christmas gifts!  That night, we went to Tuacahn for a little live nativity show.

This is possibly one of the ugliest pictures I have ever had taken of me and Dani

Covey was the official blanket holder for the night.

Saturday was absolutely beautiful and we took advantage of it!  We went up and hiked around Snow Canyon and enjoyed the sunshine.  (And when I say 'hiked' I really mean we walked on the paved path.  That's about all I could do and after 2 1/2 miles in the sun, I was tired.)  

Doing the manly thing of 'seeing who can throw their rock the furthest'

 A couple of 'Erkels'

With the way the shadows hit the rock, it looked like a man.

We ate lunch and then did some more relaxing and chatting with family.  I took a nap, which was fantastic and much needed.  (I still can't believe how easily I get tired!)

This morning, we got up and went to sacrament meeting, packed up and drove home.

We had such a great weekend and it was so nice to get away and relax and spend time with family.  That is what the holidays are all about.  I'm so grateful for my family and what a support they are to me.  I'm especially grateful for my husband, who is so thoughtful and caring and considerate of me and my needs.  I have truly been blessed!

Canning Fanatic

At the beginning of this year, I decided it would be a good idea to do some canning this summer since we were going to be in a new house and I was going to have a cold storage (hooray!).  I also thought it would be a good way to build up our food storage, save a little money and learn a new skill.  

I am proud to say that I actually did do a bunch of canning this summer and fall and for the most part, it was successful considering I've never canned anything by myself before.

First, I did raspberry jam.  And I did not use just any raspberries.  Oh, no.  I used Bear Lake Raspberries.  I am telling you, if you have never had these raspberries, your life is not complete.  I got them from the farmer's market and even though they were a little more expensive that what I could have bought in the store, it was well worth the extra dough I had to fork out.  I made the jam in July and we are already on our third pint out of the five that I made.  I hope we can make it last until next year!

Next, I bottled peaches in September.  A neighbor of Covey's parents sold us a huge box of peaches--probably 15-20 pounds--for $15.  Killer deal and the peaches were divine.  We were able to get 11 quarts of peaches out of all those peaches.

Then, we decided to try our hand at pear/apple fruit leather about a week later.  I know this isn't canning, but originally we were going to bottle some pears that we had got for free from the same neighbor that sold us the peaches, but by the time we were able to get to it, some of the pears had gone bad and there weren't really enough to justify bottling them.  So we thought that fruit leather would be a good idea.  As they say, it's the thought that counts right?  Everything went really well, until it was time to take the leather off of the pans after drying out in the oven.  We thought it would be fine to use wax paper because we didn't have any parchment paper.  Bad move.  We ended up taking my hair dryer, putting it on a low setting and slowly heating up the fruit leather and trying to peel it off of the wax paper.  It was a very tedious process and I've determined that if I ever decide to do fruit leather again, I will be using parchment paper for sure.  On the upside, the fruit leather we were able to pry off turned out decent and we actually still have some left over.

We took a little break from canning for about a month or so until the grapes on Covey's parents vine were ripe so we could try making grape juice.  I had to follow Covey's lead on this one because I had never done grape juice before and he used to help his mom do it when he was younger.  It seriously took us all day long to do the juice, but we ended up with about 8 quarts or so.  We had some last week and it was actually pretty darn good if I say so myself.

Lastly, we bottled some apple pie filling this weekend.  I found a recipe on Our Best Bites and we went with that since it seemed pretty basic and easy to follow.  We got 11 pints of apple pie filling.  I tasted a little bit of the leftover sauce and piece of apple and it was good.  (This is coming from someone who isn't necessarily a huge fan of baked apples.)

All in all, I am pretty pleased with myself and my canning this year.  (Not to mention that I learned some good skills and some even better do's and don'ts.)  Covey actually helped me out with everything except for the jam, which I did at a neighbor's house.  He is such a good husband.  All this canning makes me feel oh-so-domestic.  Here's to next year! :)

28 Weeks

Wow, 28 weeks!  I am officially in the last week of my second trimester!

Being such, the baby girl decided to make her presence known to everyone on the outside world by pushing my tummy a little further out.  There is pretty much no doubt that I am pregnant and not just gaining a little extra weight around the midsection. But I think this is part of what makes pregnancy fun!  True, most of my tops don't really fit very well and my pant options are decreasing rapidly, but it's all for a wonderful reason.  :)

I had kind of a mini-freak out moment yesterday when I realized that Christmas is next month and that means that baby girl is coming the month after that!  Time is just flying by!  I am really excited for the upcoming holidays and the time spent with family, although the change from nice weather to crappy weather is not very appealing.  I'm feeling like there is so much that needs to be done in such a short period of time--both with the holidays and with getting ready for this little one to come.  But I'll just try to take it one day at a time and try not to get stressed out.  We'll see how that goes...

One thing that I think I've settled on are the colors that I'd like to use to decorate the baby's room.  Since we've only got 2 bedrooms upstairs and an unfinished basement, we are turning the spare room into a combination baby room/craft room.  This also means that I'm not going to be doing any major decorating in the room, such as painting the walls, but I still want the room to feel like a baby room for the most part.  The colors I've chosen to use are pink, turquoise, green, brown and yellow.  Bright and happy colors.  :)  I have yet to make anything specific for the room, but I've been gathering ideas from my new friend Pinterest, so hopefully I can start something up soon. ;)

What's in a Name?

I have had a name picked out for a girl since I was about 16.  I read it in a book and just fell in love with it.  There are about 10 different spellings that I've come up with so far that could work (besides the original), but I've got some problem or other with all of them.  Growing up with a name like 'Shani', it was always getting mispronounced.  (Don't even get me started on my maiden name...)  People had (and still have) this thing where they don't really look at my whole name before deciding how to say it.  So I got things like 'Shay-nee', 'Shaw-nee', 'Shanti', 'Sheri', and so on.  As I got older, I got used to it and it doesn't really bother me so much anymore.  

But in trying to come up with the spelling of the name Covey and I have for our baby, I am running into a bit of a problem because I want to spell her name in a way that most people will get it right on the first try.  Granted, not everyone is going to get it right the first time, because the name is likely not one they have heard before, but I can hope right?

And now I've got you all wondering what the name is, huh? ;)

Here's how it's pronounced: Ma-kay-dee (not Mc).

And here are the spellings I've come up with that I like the most:

-MaCadie, or Macadie

-MaCady, or Macady

-MaKadie, or Makadie

-MaKady, or Makady

Originally, I was stuck on the spelling of  'Macadie', without the capital 'C' in the middle.  But then I started thinking I liked the capital 'C'.  Covey, on the other hand, likes how a 'k' looks instead of a 'c' and he thinks that capitalizing in the middle of a name is weird.

Yeah.  You see my problem (literally)?  I want there to be a syllable break right after the 'Ma', so that's why I was thinking about doing a capital letter for the second half of her name.  But if I hadn't put the pronunciation before the different spellings, would you have pronounced it right?  Without the capital letter, are people going to pronounce it 'Mack-a-dee' (which is really ugly)?  I'm probably being ridiculous about this, but a name is an important thing!

Anyway, we've still got 3 months to figure this out.  Hopefully we can!  But who knows?  Maybe I still won't know how to spell it when it comes time to put it on the birth certificate...Wish us luck! :)