Halloween

She adjusted to her costume pretty quickly, once I gave her some candy to ease the transition.  Doesn't she totally look like an ewok from behind?

Bean Museum and etc

We went to the Bean Museum (Kita calls it the dead animal zoo) with all the Harper cousins, as well.  I don't really have any good pictures of looking at the animals.  What I really wish is that I had gotten pictures of Mim petting the live animals they had out.  Mim visited the tortoise first, but wasn't very interested.  Then we saw the turtle crawling across the floor and I think it clicked for Mim that these weird little things were alive, and then she wanted everything to do with them.  She kept trying to grab the turtle- me and the BYU student looking after the turtle both had our hands full.  She even petted the snake they had out.  I kept my distance there, because snakes creep me out.  Then we went back to the tortoise and she thought it was awesome.  They had a lizard out as well that Mim also loved- every time it moved she would start laughing like crazy.  It appears as though I have successfully ingrained my love of animals into my daughter.  The vote at our house for getting a dog is now 2-1.
We went into the Bean play room for awhile, as well.  Mim is not great at sharing. 

Ki put them both on a big toy semi and pushed them around, but it didn't last long before they were both jumping off and fighting over something else.  Oh, little ones.
No more pictures of the Bean- this was my only half decent one.
I'm completely lacking in pictures of Wheeler Farm, which is a bummer.  Kaid and Jenny took everyone up with them to check out all those animals and go on a wagon ride.  Mim was great at the beginning and loved chasing all the free roaming ducks and geese around.  By the time we got to the bigger animals, it was her naptime and she didn't care about anything.  She was ok again by the time we got back to Kaid and Jenny's and had some pizza and cookies.  I'll have to round up some pictures- the farm was a really cool place and it was a very fun afternoon.

Pony ride!

Amidst all the activities with my family and Ki, we went to a fund raiser with Mike's family for one of their family friends.  It was at Young Living Lavender Farms, down in Mona.  It's a cool place, turns out.  Mim had her first (and second, and third, and fourth) pony ride and she loved it.  So much.  She was pretty excited to sit on the horse and pet it, and then they started moving she could hardly contain herself.  It was so cute.

{She was on a little pony for her first go round.}

For her subsequent rides, she was on a real horse.  Somewhere between this ride and the other stuff we took pictures of, Mim smudged the camera lens and I didn't realize it, so they're a little blurry.

They had a little mini zoo there as well.  We got charged by a buffalo (only a few running steps, but whatever- still a charge) and it made me jump pretty good.  It didn't phase Mim- I think she probably wanted to pet it.
Then we saw the zonkey!  (The sign said ze-donk, but I think zonkey sounds more awesome.)

I want one.
They had a whole miniature medieval village set up (I guess they used to have jousts and festivals and stuff there- like a Medieval Times sort of thing), so Mike and Matt stayed amused as well:

Looking at ducks

We went to Adventure Land park up in Highland to see the ducks.  Apparently I put my camera away for that part, because all I have are pictures of the kids playing on the big toy beforehand.  Grandpa got to catch all the kids coming down the slide; everybody loved it. 

{It looks like Mim is explaining something really important to Will, but really she's going in for the hug.}

{This is as close as she got to the aforementioned hug.}

After we were done with the big toy we went and fed the ducks.  They were aggressive.  I gave Mim some bread to give to them and I'm pretty sure if my dad hadn't been fending them off with his cane they would have eaten it right out of her hand.  Or just attacked her for it.  Mim totally wanted to hug the ducks. 

This one time my sister came to Utah...

Ki lives in Philadelphia.  If you ask me, it's not ideal, but whatever.  Anyway, Nate was out here, doing an internship for school, for two months, so Ki and the kids came to visit for a couple of weeks.  It was excellent to see them all, especially Ryker.  He and Mim are little buddies.  She's totally going to boss him around when they're older.
The first week Ki was here was at the beginning of October, when it was so unseasonably warm.  It was so warm, we had another baby pool party.

{That face means she's really enjoying herself.}

{The only picture I got of the three little ones hanging out.  The boys wouldn't sit in the pool, it was too cold.  Mim is tough.}

{The girls.  Ari and Mim fighting over the sprinkler, Kita waiting patiently.}

 

{Can you see why I wish this little guy was around more?}

{Debbie is a sweetheart and gave Mim a swimsuit to match Ari's.  It's so cute.}

 

{Her first otter pop.}

{Almost too cute to comprehend, am I right?}

I can't decide

Should I do one huge post or a bunch of little ones?
I'm thinking a bunch of little ones.  I think I'll start with the yard- we finally got it graded!  Many of you may know that we exhausted our house budget this summer by getting air conditioning (worth it!), so our yard was super gross this summer.  Kind of embarrassing (but still worth it to not have it be 85 degrees inside).
Here's what our lawn looked like most of the summer:

Early in the year we had the retainer curb around the lawn removed (before we got AC, which, as I may have mentioned, was totally worth the world's ugliest lawn for a summer).  We also removed the sod ourselves in preparation to have the lawn be graded. 
And now:

Nobody has ever been happier about flat dirt. 

Because this took us so long, we won't be able to get our sprinkler system in this fall, which is kind of a bummer.  We wanted to have that done so that next spring we would be able to get the grass seed in right away.  Ahwell.  To make things move along faster next year, we plan on assembling fence panels in our shed over the winter, so all we need to do when it warms up is dig post holes, place posts, and pop our fence up.
Ha.  I should know better.  Lawn stuff will always take at least twice as long and cost twice as much as planned.  And yet I continue to hope. 
So, next year:
*fence
*sprinkler system
*grass seed
*vegetable garden

Here's hoping, right?