We’ve been busy little bees working on t-shirts and vinyl, getting ready for the holidays and prepping for baby #3. (That’s still surreal sounding to me… 3 kids is a legitimate family. It seems so much more official and BIG than 2. Am I right?) All this “nesting” I’ve been doing has me itching for Christmas to be here! Jake keeps giving me a hard time, he says I’m giving Thanksgiving the shaft. Mostly I just don’t see the harm in having pretty Christmas decorations out for an extra week. Or blaring Christmas music throughout the house. Or reading Christmas stories to the kids. Or watching Christmas movies. You get the point…

Anyway, we went to Arkansas to visit Jake’s sis Hillary and her family and to have the first (of three…no joke) of our  Thanksgiving festivities for this year. It’s so beautiful where she lives and we had such a great time. She planned an awesome Relief Society Super Saturday that was going on while we were there, too! It was SO great to get out with the girls and be crafty. Jake and I did the vinyl for the projects so it was fun to see all our hard work pay off. I made a FHE board, only I have this weird issue with having the same thing as everyone else, so I didn’t put the vinyl on it…. I designed my own version yesterday and I’ll post a picture once I finally get around to sticking it on. I also made a bunch of magnets and tiles necklaces, ate the most amazing caramel apples of my life, and learned how to make cake pops… which is a skill I may never actually use. It was great fun! Anyways, back to Thanksgiving… Hillary’s turkey is amazing. It goes something along the lines of honey brined, butter injected poultry perfection. Some day when I grow up and make a turkey of my own… I want her recipe! Natalie and I got Hill to give in and let us “make” the rolls (Thank you Rhodes!) and pumpkin pie (again…Wal-Mart bakery) and somehow the world didn’t come to an end. We had such a great time, thanks for having us Sperry clan!

What else?
-I cut Ashelyn’s hair. Almost two inches!
-Jake has already started perfecting his Christmas candies… which is equally awesome and AWFUL. This “baby weight” is gonna take ages to get off…
-After the Christmas party we’ll no longer have callings since Activities Committee is being phased out. I think it makes sense for the calling to go since there are plenty of people in ward council to make activities happen, but it’s still sad. Or scary might be more accurate…. Primary terrifies me. Is that bad?
-For those of you who ask often, still no name for little guy, but we did get some GREAT suggestions. Here are a few of my faves…

• Slayer
• “He Who Must Not Be Named”
• Ignacio
• Waldo

Maren, you’re loads of help! Keep ‘em coming pal! In all seriousness, we do in fact have a list of names that we like, unfortunately none of them are jumping out as the right one yet. Probably this little guy will be like Ashelyn and just let us know his name as soon as he arrives. Hopefully.

Now, on to pictures…. Some of these are phone pics, so they’re not great.
Hillary’s Chocolate-Pecan Pie.

Bustlin’ in the Kitchen.

Gideon chowing down.

Sunday walk with Gramma and Grampa.

Nat putting the vinyl on her FHE board.

Ashelyn smooching Jake. She’s got Daddy right where she wants him….

Ashelyn’s new haircut. She looks so big!

Oh, I love my boys. Jake’s facial hair antics never get old. Haha, although this year he’s agreed to put off the lumberjack beard until after we take a family picture for the Christmas cards. Thank HEAVENS!

See… I really did put the tree up already. It makes me happy, and the kids had a blast.

Jade… these two blurry ones that Jake took while we were decorating are the only belly shots I’ve got, so they’ll have to do. But see, it’s there… the bump is real. AND, only 6 weeks left until little man arrives.

Playing in the rain!
Gideon is the happiest little kid. He is seriously a joy. He makes everyday things fun.
He loves hanging out with Jake and is recently obsessed with technology. He wants to play with the laptop or ps3 all. the. time. Such a boy :)
   Big helmet to protect that big noggin.
He loves hanging out with the boys, sometimes I worry about just how much he picks up from his Uncles and cousins, but boy does he love them!
It’s a good thing we have kids because I’m just not nearly as much fun as they are. I’m glad Jake has Gid to wrestle and be silly with. Gideon isn’t always so sure about Jake’s ideas, but he usually plays along.
And he LOVES going to the skate park with Dad. He never wants to leave and always just cruises around on his bike doing his own thing. I can’t wait to see Gideon with a brother, he’s going to love it! 

Ashelyn loves the water. She would happily spend hours in the bath splashing away. I love this picture from this summer, playing with Grandma.

Same thing goes for swinging. She LOVES it. Recently she’s been so brave. She just wants to swing higher and higher. If she slows down for even a second, it’s “Push me, Mom! Push me!”

She loves the skate park too. And suckers. Mostly the suckers :)

Horrible phone pic, but this is SO my girl. Sleeping in her shades that she put on upside down because when I tried to help her put them on right, she insisted they were “back-erds.”

She’s a bit of a ham… And she thinks she’s pretty cute, probably because we tell her ALL. THE. TIME.  

She can’t keep her hands off anything that’s “Mommy’s” or “big girls.” Such a stinker.
Can you tell she really keeps us on our toes??
Her hair is finally long enough for more than a top knot! I love doing hair and luckily she likes having hers done. This is one of my favorite parts of every day.
She’s getting so big. So independent and SMART. She sort of thinks she’s the boss and we’re really having to work on sharing and not yelling. She really believes in the whole “my way or the highway” philosophy.
  Love this girl. She’s momma’s buddy!

Jake has been hounding me lately to start blogging again. I never really intended to stop, it just sort of happened. Life gets crazy and all the sudden blogging seems like a chore and I mixed it in with all the things that I HAVE to do instead of something I WANT to do. Because really, I do want to. I started blogging because I have this great family and adorable kids and I never want to forget all the silly/crazy/wonderful/messy/emotional adventures. So here’s hoping I can keep that perspective for awhile. So now, to play catch up! Welcome to the longest post in history :)

In no particular order, this is what we’ve been up to the past SEVEN months. Enjoy.

Ashe turned 2 on June 19th.

We had Spenser & Andy stay with us for something like 6 weeks. It was all sorts of ridiculous. We went to a Royals game at some point…

  And then as if our little house wasn’t crowded at that point. We had Jade and Tim (plus their little TJ and my awesome cousin Dee) come visit too!
We went to Care’s wedding. I might have been a bridesmaid, er… matron? Jake made really cool shirts that the wedding party all changed in to after the ceremony. Did I mention Jake is now a full time designer/ screen printer extraordinaire? Oh ya… that happened too. :)
We went to Nauvoo… Can you even believe that Jake took this picture and it hasn’t been edited at all?! That’s happiness right there…
And since Jade’s hubby had never been we did all the fun touristy stuff. And for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to camp and the girls ended up with the worst bug bites in the history of the world… I’ll spare you THAT picture though.
  We went to Carthage too. Andy had been giving me a hard time the whole time they were staying with us that when I married Jake, I knew I was getting him at the same time. So I was “their” wife… some sort of weird reverse polygamy. They’re definite weirdos. Anyways, so Jake thought it would be SO FUNNY to get a family picture with Andy…. not awkward at all.
 Luckily, I have a picture with my REAL husband…you know, the one I actually willingly married for eternity :)
  We went down to visit my Grandpa and Phyllis and went canoeing. We stopped at this really cool old foot bridge on the way down and took a picture… with our phone, so not great.
Jake mastered the art of grilling… No, seriously.

We spent A LOT of time at the skate park. Only this summer Jake decided to take up BMX-ing. And learned the importance of wearing a helmet. Hello concussion…  Hellloooooo helmet!! We went to the circus.
Oh, I guess I should also mention that we’re having another baby! You know, the end of December. Little Boy #2 will be here so soon, it’s crazy! Now if we could just get our house in order and decide on a name… suggestions anyone?

I think that covers the most important things. There might be a few more random things I come across that I feel the need to post and then things should be back to normal around here.