A Full Month

One month has flown by and we have a lot to share. Each picture has its own story to tell:
As is with all years we started out St. Patrick's Day last night with the children setting up traps of all sorts they could imagine up to catch a lepurchan, I'm always quite amazed at the determination and zeal that they all have for doing this. Today we woke up and donned the green and while at school I whipped up more green creations to eat for a festive dinner with holiday style. All of our dinner was colored by "food" coloring: A green smoothie that gets the green from spinach and don't let the color fool you it really is yummy, despite looking like baby food peas. The Pryor tradition- green pistachio cake (okay this dessert has fake coloring but it comes from the pistachio pudding box, not much else I can do about that!) I put real pistachios in it this year, it was worth the shelling, Wyatt was in heaven. The last green item is pesto and obviously for you cooks the green in that comes from Basil. We put it over mashed potatoes that I was going to dye green with spinach but just ran out of time, there's always next year! We always have a fun St. Patty's Day :)
Abigail lost her first tooth! Finally, she has been waiting and waiting and waaaiiiitttiiinnnggg to lose one so she can get a sticker at school she is nearly the last one to lose one and many other of her classmates have already lost multiple. Can I hope that it's her excellent nutrition that keeps them in so long??? She's not even the youngest in the class. Can you see how happy she is?

Parker's birthday was really fun and hectic as we were getting ready to go to Denver the same time as celebrate. He chose a snake cake months ago and hasn't changed his mind so here is the slithering serpent. When asked what his cake was going to be he would say in his so very cute tiny voice, "I'm going to have a ssssnake cake!" (really emphasizing the 'k' sound on each end).
The last day of winter sports in school is the ski race so I went up and skied with Wyatt and the children. They are all doing so well, I am so proud of them. They have a lot of fun. I would love to get up there more. Brittany and Alex both placed third!This is Badger Creek where we will be going for next years family reunion. It has an old lodge and a tow rope (the best part) for the sledding hill. We went to check out how it all worked so we can let those of you in the Pryor family know details later. Parker and Savanna LOVED going down the hill.

Wyatt is on the United States Potato Board so this year he really wanted me to come to Denver CO with him (he did last year too but Savanna was due in 3 weeks) We had a great time. Thank you to Mom Penfold for supervising and chauffeuring the 3 older children and thank you to Melissa for babysitting the 2 babies. Wyatt was in meeting all day and so I would go during the day and walk around the city. This is the capitol building, it looks a lot like all the others I've been in (Idaho and Utah's) beautiful, I toured it and learned a little about the area. I also saw Margaret Brown's home (the unsinkable Molly Brown) it was amazing. I love Denver and wish we could go there next year but they are moving the meeting to Colorado Springs so I will get to discover a new city all over again! I also met a lot of very nice and interesting people at the meetings. We were taken out to dinner 2 of the 3 nights we were there to fancy places, I window shopped many really cool businesses and had my hair cut. This is just some of the things I did to fill my time. I couldn't justify sitting in the room watching satellite when an unexplored city awaited me!!!
I won "The Mystery of the Nile" DVD from Pasquale Scaturro and here we are with him. He was the guest speaker at one of the luncheons. With a name like that I guess you have to do amazing things, he was the guide for the first blind man (Brian something) to reach the summit of Mt. Everest and has done it multiple times, he has filmed several IMAX films and is an explorer. His stories were amazing and they let him go over the allotted time almost an hour because no one wanted to leave. It was lucky we got to be a part of this.

Pantry Door

Here is my long awaited pantry door, I think this style is beautiful, artistic and brings this part of the room 'into' the kitchen by having a decorative door on the wall! These are my Valentine flowers, I have a very thoughtful hubby! Thanks Wyatt, you're the BEST :)Here is the inside, Wyatt has taken over! I wonder if I'll ever get to put food in there? It is a great place to put all the tools instead of in the kitchen or on the floor of the back entry. Last week he actually said he thought this would make a great office for him, I laughed and told him he could have the bathroom right next to this instead and then we would just make a new bathroom in part of the laundry room. How fun it is to dream, remodel and make things reality!
Once the inside is filled with all the shelves and we finish the fronts, we will just be waiting to start the cabinets. That will take a long time so patience needs to hang around the place 'til then.

More remodel

The men put the first of two I-beams in (no it's not like a Sun-beam ;) hee hee) to span the dining area.
Here they are just after lifting it up onto the jacks and supports to be ready to set later.
Drilling holes into the metal, the picture doesn't show the difficulty of the actual task. In fact it all looks relatively simple but it was sweaty, red face inducing, muscle tiring work.
The beam is bolted in, anchored from underneath, the other men went home and now it's our job to get the rest of the existing wall out.
All cleaned up! That is temporary flooring in the wall space and we will finish the ceiling and take the last doorway out when we can do the other side.
Yeah! The last major hurdle finished before the cabinets can be started.

EQ Sledding

Saturday the Elders Quorum had a sledding party and Janet watched Savanna so I could go, I just love sledding and we all had so much fun, it was so warm too. The sun was shining and it was 30 degrees, I had my coat unzipped because it was so nice. Here are the children waiting to be pulled up the hill by the snow machines. We were on the side of the mountain so the hill is quite long, not too steep though.

Remodel

Here is a picture of the framed and sheetrocked new pantry. I will be priming and painting it in the next day or so so Wyatt can build shelves after he returns from Boise (meetings again) on Wednesday. The block step things are the space that used to be in the stairway going down to the fruit room, now thanks to Wyatt's vision it will be useful space for more shelves in the pantry. I can't wait to post a picture of the cool pantry door that should be here this week! Here is Wyatt and his biggest little helper Parker framing in the pantry and broom closet.
This is the day we started tearing the wall between our kitchen and hall/back entry out. There is 3 layers of wall on EACH side of these studs: modern sheetrock/plaster/old sheet"rock." See the original doorway that was uncovered? The space where the new pantry is is in the background. The old sink, cupboards and childrens coat rack are now a thing of the past! Hello useful space :)

I have some catching up to do. My last post before our trip was in October so I have several months to briefly highlight. I am going the most recent and then back in time.

Savanna's 1st Christmas! She wasn't into opening her presents but she loved the boxes. Here she had just woken up.
Brittany and Alex got new bikes this year. Alex's is a stunt bike-do you think he could pump all of them?
Toilet Trained!!! On December 4 Parker was put in big boy underpants and has been in them since. He has done really well. He's the typical boy not wanting to go until it's urgent but it's better than diapers anyday :)

Thanksgiving was at Penfold's, a beautiful display full of a wide variety of colorful, delicious food. We are sure grateful for our harvest this year-to be done and to have gotten all the potatoes in safely. Truly a THANKSgiving.
Alex had his first friend birthday party this year. We had a lot of fun, this was a good group.
Alex turned nine on November 19th and he LOVES lego's. This is the biggest one I've seen.
We canned Grandma Ward's soup. A family affair that was a lot of fun. We of course grew the potatoes, the carrots came from Randy's and our garden. The onions from our garden and from Mom. Practically free food! Did I mention yummy too?
Peel, peel, peel and then peel some more! Great compost for the garden ;)
Wyatt's 35th birthday. German Chocolate Cake, my first attempt. It was really good.
My man is really spoiled, two cakes? You bet! A coconut delight for all the help during harvest since that's when his real birthday always falls unless it is Sunday. He gets sung to in Spanish and lots of happy birthday well wishes. I don't know if we'll ever stop this tradition.
Halloween in Utah is the best. Brittany wanted to be a vampiress; Alex, a ghost Jedi; Abigail, a horse and Parker is a puppy. It is warm and all the neighbors I grew up around get to see my children, all my siblings come and all the cousins go trick-or-treating. It is so much fun, this is our second year going down there-it might become an annual tradition!
Savanna is the pumpkin. It's tradition for all the children to wear this their first Halloween. She was having a nap when we went trick-or-treating and when she woke up, she handed out candy with Grandma.
We went down to Orem to see Grandpa and Grandma Pryor. I've made it a tradition each time a new member joins our family to take a picture with each of the great grandparents still around so they will always have that. We are so blessed to still have 3 great grandmothers, and 2 great grandfathers around!

Abigail's 7th Birthday

Abigail wanted pink legos, she is really good with building things with them.
Here she is at school with her teacher Mrs. Mason. We made gingersnaps last night to pass out to her class, what a good little cook she is going to be :)
Abigail really wanted a pinata for her birthday and I didn't think I could get it done since we just got back so recently from our trip (see next post) but I did it, I made my first pinata, she was so happy with it and so was I!
Wow, after everyone had many whacks at the pinata, Alex finally broke it apart! Fun picture huh?
Tinkerbell. The light pink flowers are really hard to see. I have always wanted to make a doll cake and I had never made roses before or been shown how to either so I was so excited that finally one of the children picked a cake I could do both!
What a joy Abigail is in our family, she is so meek and happy. She teaches us to be kind and to listen, since she is so soft spoken. She also teaches us about passion. We love you Abigail, thanks for being part of our family! ;)