Ellie Girl has Hippo Teeth

We've found RJ's little Radio Flyer bike works a lot better as a walker than the bulky one in the background.  The bike has 4 wheels so it's pretty stable and the perfect height for her to walk around.  She has had a tumble trying to get off herself, but walks around really well otherwise.

Here's our cute girl, she's 10 months old now. 

She's a light sleeper and hates to take naps. 

Shirt hat.

Here's the latest development.

Hippo snaggle teeth and piggy spikes.

Her hair was getting in her eyes and by the end of the day the tips of her bangs were crusted with food she'd rubbed in trying to get it out of her eyes.  I don't want to deal with bangs, so we're growing the hair out and so she now has cute little pig tail spikes.

RJ loves her new hair style and has told me at least 4 times today: "Mom Ellie's hair is so cute!"

Here's a better shot of her huge gap between her front teeth like her mom had and RJ

Thanksgiving

Rhett had to work again on Thanksgiving this year so I took the kids down to my mom's house in Highland where we had our family.  We broke off from going to my Grandma's a while ago, so it's nice to just have my parents and siblings and to have a really nice dinner on china and not sitting on a card table.

The huge paper plate Thanksgivings are fun too, but it was nice to have  fancy meal.

It was fun to see my parents since we don't see much of them now they live in St. George.  RJ especially loves my dad and had fun raking leaves all morning with him.

Lynette crocheted this hat and scarf for Ellie, and made her this little wool coat, and the lace fancy pants.

After dinner my dad, my brothers, and Lynette and Drew and myself went west of Utah lake to shoot guns.

I'd never really shot guns and it was really quite fun.  The weather was so unusually warm and nice.

 We took the left over pumpkins from my mom's porch to shoot.

  

Not all of us had ear protection.

This rifle was my dad's favorite.

I think my favorite was the .22

Herschel knows a butt-load about guns.

Here's my dad trying to get his ear plug out of his ear canal with Herschel's machete he got for his birthday that day.

The rest of the night was pretty lazy, except for Drew who threw RJ high in the air over and over. 

All in all a really great Thanksgiving.

RJ Menace

Trying to catch up on the last few months.

RJ cut his own hair with scissors...to the scalp.

In his defense, it was kind of my fault.  I put the clipper case in front of him and told him when he was done eating his breakfast I needed to cut his hair.  I went up to change out a load of laundry and came back to his new look.

Here's his technique.

Another occasion he gave him self a dry-erase marker beard and uni-brow.

He laughed and laughed when he saw what he looked like in the mirror.

{Notice his shaved head from the previous exploits.}

Sweet Ellie Girl

There's something extra sweet about a baby daughter.

Kids

The kids still look really similar, but we feel like Ellie is growing into her own look a little.

We love visiting Lynette!

Boys In the Kitchen

 Rhett doesn't cook much.  Both our families growing up didn't depend on our dad's cooking (although my dad does make his own chocolate cake).  

But there are a few things Rhett makes that are really great.

Mainly fresh pasta.

He served his mission in Italy and loves pasta.  We have it a lot.  A few years ago my mom got him a pasta roller for Christmas.  We've been perfecting his methods for some time now.

Rhett has had an easier rotation this month and we've been loving having him around more.  He's only working 40 hours a week and it feels like he's on vacation.

So he and RJ made dinner tonight.

RJ was actually a really great help and is on his way to being the family's next pasta expert. 

Rhett really let him do a lot of the pasta making.  He cranked the handle for everything, and helped a lot preparing the sheets.  Rhett would help him obviously, but I was really impressed how much RJ did on his own.  Six months ago when he was helping with pasta it was kind of more work to have him involved, but tonight he was a good little sous chef to his dad.

Rhett is a really patient guy, which helps RJ as he's learning and all the repetition gave him time to get pretty good at doing a lot on his own.  I was surprised when RJ would load his dough himself and run it through.

To make fresh pasta, you first make the dough from eggs, flour, and a titch of olive oil.  In this batch Rhett added spinach which is why it's slightly green. 

Then you roll it into thin sheets.

You can see how excited RJ was when a sheet was all done. 

Then you add a cutting attachment to slice the sheets into fettuccine!

It was so fun as a family to watch the boys cook, and I have to say I enjoy having a night off from making dinner...especially when it tastes better than anything I ever make.