Wow, I guess it's November now...

I swear once upon a time I thought that once I was a full-time stay-at-home mom I'd have lots of time to keep up with blogging. Turns out, I was wrong. I don't even have time to keep up with dishes! Go figure. I guess Sam takes up more time and attention than I had counted on. But I love every minute of it, even if you don't get to see much of those minutes...

Anyways, I figured it was time for a quick update on October... ready Go!

At the beginning of last month my family came up to Utah for General Conference and to celebrate my dad's 50th birthday! We had a lot of fun with them just hanging out and going up to my grandparents house. I wish we lived closer to them because I truly love spending time with my family, but of course, our future plans are more geared towards moving to the other side of the planet. Oh well, it just makes me all the more grateful for Skype! Here's a fun picture of my dad reading a story to Sam and my cousin Nicolas -

He's reading them my favorite story from when I was little The Piggy in the Puddle

You may have heard that Adobe purchased Omniture and a lot of people have wondered what that has meant for Eric. Basically it doesn't change a whole lot as far as the day to day goes. Eric was presented with an offer from Adobe that pretty well matched what he had at Omniture so nothing real different there. Unfortunately we're still waiting for the new girl to finish training so we can get him on normal hours. If my estimations are right that should be before the beginning of the new year, but no guarantees on that. We are still looking at moving to China but things have been put on hold with the acquisition, so we're still here in Utah for the forseeable future :)

Halloween was pretty uneventful for us this year. Eric was stuck at work from 6pm - 8am on Thursday night (yes, I am counting down minutes until he's off this stupid schedule) so, needless to say we didn't make it to the morning portion of the Omniture Halloween extravaganza (they go ALL out every year, it's a blast). We did make it for some of the afternoon, but Sam was pretty tired so we didn't stay long.

On actual Halloween we were still recovering a little bit from Thursday/Friday's late night. However, Eric and I were able to leave Sam with Taylor and Ryan (thanks again guys!!) while we went to the temple. What better way to celebrate the day of the dead than by serving them? It was a really nice way to spend that evening together. Sam's been having separation anxiety lately which has made it more difficult to spend time with just the two of us, but it definitely makes it all the more special when we can.

Of course, we did dress up for Halloween. I was feeling rather uncreative so I bought a witch's hat and paired it with some black clothes and called it good. Eric decided to go as a Mac that had crashed, although we didn't really have time to expand on that costume either so we just made him a shirt with this on it:

However, we did have some fun dressing up Sam. We had wanted to dress him up as a puppy because he does a lot of puppy-ish things. He likes panting, and making little whimpering sounds that really sound like a puppy. And the way he crawls after us just reminds us of a little puppy. However, I had a hard time finding a puppy costume in his size (seriously, I kept finding them in sizes 3-6months... and 12-18months... and he wasn't going to fit in either :( ). So finally the week of Halloween I found a monkey costume at Walmart that was really cheap and decided that it would be good enough. Then that week Woot had a woot off. At the end of the woot off they sold woot off monkeys... and we knew that we had to modify Sam's costume a little...



Thanks to Taylor for her help finishing off the cape so that he could have a woot cape to go with his costume :) If you want to see more pictures of Sam in his Halloween costume we have a whole album of them on his facebook fan page.

My birthday was the day after Halloween and since it was a Sunday it was a pretty quiet event this year. Sam and I went to church in the morning (Eric was sick from so little sleep during the week so he didn't make it), and then we had some friends over for dinner in the evening. It was really fun though! Taylor and I made Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo that was absolutely amazing. Seriously, if you are looking for a good recipe, I can't recommend that one highly enough. It was our first attempt at fettuccine and the only thing I was sad about was that my tummy wasn't big enough to hold more. Taylor also made me a raspberry cake with chocolate filling. I'd been excited for it since she made it for her birthday back in August... if that gives you an idea of how good it was :)

Eric gave me a sewing machine for my birthday - so that I could make the aforementioned woot cape :) I've had a couple of mending projects but I'm now looking for some simple holiday type projects to work on. Simple being the operative word since I really don't have much sewing experience, but I really want to make use of my new machine! If anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

As far as Sam goes (and we all know that he is really the reason most people read our blog :) ) he's growing up fast! He's 8 months now. He crawls like a maniac and is starting to stand on his own! I would guess that he'll be walking by the end of the month at this rate, but I may just be an overly proud first time parent :) He is very talkative - especially in Relief Society when I'm trying to keep him quiet. Does anyone have any good recommendations for how to teach an 8 month old to be quiet in church? He's not crying or mad so I don't feel like taking him out of the meeting is necessarily the right option, but he jabbers loudly (and sometimes makes happy yells) that are a bit disruptive.  If I take him out of the meeting it seems like that just teaches the wrong lesson that if you make noise you get to leave the meeting. The only thing I could come up with is covering his mouth or saying "shh" but that doesn't seem to do much. Am I being over-ambitious to try and teach this to an 8 month old? Anyways, he's super cute and we're so grateful to have him in our family!

For the most part things have been pretty quiet. Sam and I are getting a little stir crazy so if anyone is looking for a friend let me know! We're still working on not mauling other children but Sam seems to get a big kick out of being around other kids, and I'm getting pretty good at keeping him from pushing them over or poking their eyes out :)