Petersons Never Give Up: life is great!

Life has been very busy lately! I have been sewing, taking care of kids, volunteering in classrooms, planning Halloween Parties for both older kids, taking care of a puppy, and clearing out all the stuff that has accumulated over the last year for a Deseret Industries run.

We got the rest of our fence put up and it looks really nice. I like the extra privacy and the ability to let Oreo hang out in the yard without worrying as much.

A boy in our neighborhood's Dad passed away and I was asked to make a t-shirt quilt for him. It was fun to put together. I hope it keeps him warm and give him good memories.

Lizzie got a pretty yucky case of croup last week and was out of commission for about 5 days with a fever, no voice, and then a cough. She was a sweetie though and remained positive. I loved all the extra snuggles!

We got a dog door for Oreo and he seems to really like it. He doesn't like going out in the rain so he still thinks the carpet is a better option for the bathroom when its wet outside. He is doing really good though and we haven't had too many accidents lately.

We watched the live action Lion King and Alana drew Simba:

We got a care package in the mail from Sam. It had all kinds of fun things including this beautiful baby blanket she made for Lizzie.

We went to a birthday party for Papa at their house.

Oreo likes his baths

We refinanced our home loan and decreased our interest rate. Its going to save us about $200 a month and tens of thousands over the life of the loan. Lizzie was a good helper when we went to close on the new loan.

Alana the artist:

Brett the ninja:

Lizzie the dog walker:

I snuck away for a temple session a few weeks ago and it was so beautiful!

This candy dish sat on my piano as a kid at Halloween time, always filled with candy corn. It's now on our piano with candy corn. Brett likes that I told him he could have a piece after every song he plays.

I wore some pearl earrings one day and Alana was asking me how they were made. We had a mini lesson on pearls and I showed her the one Sean bought me for our first anniversary. Then I showed her this pretty one from my Grandma that she got in Hawaii. It is a tiny ring and is just a little big for Alana now. I told her she could have it as soon as it fits. Grandma Ruth's ring for my Alana Ruth.

Hand me downs from cousins are the best!

Kinetic sand fun:

Getting ready for family pictures. The kids know how important it is to me and they did such a good job and were such great sports.

We decided last minute to take Oreo with us to our pictures.

More from Papa's birthday:

General Conference was wonderful. We did our General Conference Store again and the kids did so good listening and taking notes. Brett was obsessed with taking notes and earning bucks for the whole conference. At the end when President Nelson gave his final talk though, Brett just sad down next to me and stopped with all the notes and pictures. He got really quiet and when we asked if he was ok, he just said that he loved the talk and he had felt the spirit so strong. It was great to discuss his recently receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost and how that affected the way he felt during conference. We all felt the Spirit and came away with lots of things we want to improve on. Sean and I are specifically trying to work on our scripture study. Neil reccomended a version of the bible called The Message which we got on Kindle and have been reading alongside the King James version. It has been really helpful. Preparing for the Conference store is a lot of work, but it is so worth it to get the kids excited about this amazing event.

Mom and Dad Z went to Oregon to spend some time with Sam and Jared and Kaity over conference weekend so we got to tend Elroy for a week. It was interesting to have an old dog and a puppy at the same time. It was a lot of work to protect poor elroy and make sure both dogs got what they needed.

Here is a sampling of our family pictures, I really love them so so much!

We moved Alana's mattress on the floor because she wanted Elroy to sleep with her.

He is a booger butt and keeps grabbing all kinds of things he shouldn't

More fun hand me downs.

Our neighbors invited us over for a pizza movie night and Alana had matching jammies with Ever and Eiley.

Oreo loved Elroy's food and would do anything to sneak and get it.

The kids love me waking them up in the morning with Oreo.

Sean brought me some beautiful flowers the other day. Red rosed and white gerber daisies were supposed to be my wedding flowers, but they got mixed up and did red gerber daisies instead.

Lizzie and I took a 3 hour nap before church last week =)

The girls love playing with the ghost projector on our garage

This past week was red ribbon week and the kids loved doing crazy hair day:

Alana had her first field-trip on Wednesday and we had a great time riding the bus together.

Oreo fits in this little shelf under our coffee table but its getting harder and harder as he grows each day.

The girls and I went to the Reflections art contest award ceremony while Sean and Brett went to Karate one night and Alana's art is moving up to the next level. She was so excited to get her medal.