Happy Halloween!

So back in early September, JoAnn's happened to be having a pattern sale and I had the brilliant idea to make Grace the princess dress that she wanted to be for Halloween. I had almost two months, easy peasy, right? Nevermind that I had never sewn with a pattern before or was pregnant and tired or had about a million other sewing projects to complete before the baby came. Oh, and did I mention that the princess dress pattern that I really wanted wasn't on sale, so I was just going to alter the pattern that was to have the cuter skirt of the other dress.

Well, this has been a learning experience and if it weren't for my good friend Chelsea, this would not have happened. A few nights in a row I had everything laid out on my sewing desk and I just sat and stared it all down for a while. That did no good, so I made Chelsea come over and teach me how to work the pattern and pretty much how to construct the whole darn thing. But, now I can (probably) use a pattern again. Maybe.

So, without further ado, here is the princess dress that took me forever to complete, but would probably do again. I guess I'm a sucker for a good project!

Working on her beauty queen wave.

Daddy was helping her to pose behind the scenes. It's almost as fun to imagine what he looked like doing the same thing.

The dress ended up being a satin dress with a removable tulle overskirt. That simplified things and it will allow for more ways to play with it.

Our ward at church did a Halloween Carnival. Here we all are. I could only handle getting Grace's dress done in time (in the nick of time!), so Rob and I opted to dress up as the most amazing parents ever. (Haha! Kidding!)

Showing Dad the loot.

Trick or treating around the church building.

Grace dancing with a DumDum in her hand. What you can't see is the DumDum in the other hand and the 5 (no kidding!) other ones she ate throughout the night. I think this might be her favorite candy, right up there with anything chocolate.

For a minute Rob thought this was a good idea:

But after the millionth time of it, I think he changed his mind, but a princess gets what a princess wants, right? At least for one night of the year!

We had a great time and hope everyone else has a Happy Halloween too!

I Love To See The Temple

Can you spot Grace? She sort of blends in...

Grace prays every night that we can go see the temple soon, so today we stopped by the Nashville Temple while we were down there running errands. We're having beautiful Fall weather and had a nice time walking around the temple.

Grace always stops to smell the flowers we pass.

We touched the temple walls. They were cold. It feels so good and peaceful to be on the temple grounds. We love to see the temple and Grace is excited to go inside someday!

Countdown!

We're 2 weeks away from baby girl's due date! Whoo hoo! This might have been the longest 9 months of my life (well, in actuality, with a miscarriage right before this pregnancy, I've been pregnant since last December with only about a week's break! No wonder it's felt really, really long - I've been pregnant for almost a whole year!) Back to the point, we're in the home stretch and since I could use some entertainment that doesn't require me to move from the couch, it's time to submit your guesses on the stats for baby.

Some info to help you guess her birthday, birth time, weight and length:

• She's officially "due" November 14th
• Because of some insurance issues, we're hoping she won't come until after the 12th (not that that matters really to her)
• Grace was induced at 10 days overdue (this time no inducement!)
• Grace was 8 lbs 5 oz and 21 inches long
• Grace was born around 7 am the morning after I was induced
  
• I have not been (nor will be) "checked" so I have no idea if I'm "progressing"

I think that's all the useful info I have for you. Leave a comment with your guess of her birthday and time, weight and length and if you win you can have a big pat on the back or maybe something really special if you come to Nashville to visit us!

Thanks for playing! :)

p.s. In case you're wondering, we still don't have a name for sure, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave it along with your guess!

Saying Prayers

(It was difficult to get her to look at the camera tonight, but I got a smile!)

Grace is so sweet and loves to pray all by herself. Tonight's prayer went something like this:

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you scriptures. Thank you Target. Thank you grapes. Please go church soon. Please Braxton soon (her favorite little playmate friend). {Some high pitched mumbling we couldn't understand.} Name of Jesus, AMEN!

She always says Amen! with such gusto bordering on irreverence. It's almost hard not to laugh.

I love her prayers because they are always unique. I love the little insight into what she is thinking about and enjoying. We are so grateful for her sweet spirit in our home and that she is learning and loving the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gracie, The Witch and Cheekwood

This morning a friend from our church took us along with her to Cheekwood for some fun and to see it in the daylight. I wish I had my camera because Grace and her little friend Eli had a blast running around with each other. He taught her to roll down grassy hills and she called him back with her hand cupped around her mouth whenever he got too far away. They each loved the attention from the other. At Cheekwood, they have a kid craft time on Tuesday mornings that we got to do. It was a very exciting time to help Grace out with her very first craft - making creatures from dried gourds.

These days Grace is loving Scooby Doo cartoons and all the Halloween decorations in people's front yards and the local pumpkin patch as we drive around. She loves to go anywhere in the car because we usually see ghosts and witches. So she wanted to make a witch. Obviously she is a very talented child prodigy artist for creating such a beauty at age 2! (haha. Oops, okay, so maybe Mom couldn't help herself but help out a little teensy tiny bit!) She did however color the face to give her an unearthly glow, which I think really adds to the reality of our little gourd friend.

Corn Maze

A couple weekends ago we visited Shuckle's Corn Maze for a fun Fall family outing on Rob's Fall Break from school.

We got to go on the dusty, allergyful hayride of death. I'm pretty sure none of us will ever get that much dust stuck in our ears, eyes and noses ever again. But it was fun to get to go for a little ride and Grace loved throwing the hay around.

For more dusty adventure we did the corn maze.

This was my view the entire time. Grace and Rob pretty much ran through the maze and I tried to speed-waddle to keep up.

See why I had to waddle? Getting big...

Grace had a great time getting to make the choice of which way to turn until we got tired (and one of us might have had a full bladder) and started trying to make the best decision to get us out of the maze.

She also ran until she tripped on a nasty root and got a little mouthful of dirt.

Here's Rob making Grace look at the camera. Our little girl thinks it's so funny to hide from pictures...grrr!

After a while, even Grace got tired and did her "I'm done" schlunk.

My dusty boots and Grace's dusty mary janes. Looks like we could use a little rain 'round these parts!

On the ride home. Grace did her own hair and styling with the glasses...quite the little fashionista!

Chihuly at Cheekwood

Last Friday night, our friends, Josh and Sarah Holley, invited us to visit Cheekwood, a local plantation and botanical gardens with us to see the Chihuly exhibit.

We started off with dinner at Jimmy John's where Grace had her very own sandwich. Yum!

This sculpture is called "the Sun" with the huge, amazingly beautiful house in the background. Cheekwood was built by the family behind the Maxwell House Coffee fortune. Chihuly is an amazing glass artist whose work is on display at Cheekwood.

This is the only sculpture that was lit internally, all the rest just had lights shined on them. This was the incredible piece you see when you enter the gardens with our little Gracers' silhouette.







This was a really neat piece...it's a boat filled with the blown glass. It's cool that it's in the water, so the reflection on the water adds a neat dimension.

Rob, Grace, Josh and Sarah

Doesn't this remind you of Willy Wonka? They're meant to look a little like gigantic onions floating in the pond.

We had such a fun time! Thanks Holleys!

The Hermitage

September 25th Smithsonian Magazine hosted it's nationwide free museum day. We took advantage of a free fun day and went to the Hermitage, which is Andrew Jackson's plantation. I think it's interesting that this General and US President liked to be a hermit of sorts and named his plantation so.

Grace would run down the path ahead of us and stop at every sign and "read" it to us in gibberish until we finally got to it ourselves, when she would run on to the next one and do it again.

A little view of the house. It has been so well-kept over the past 100+ years. There were cute docents inside that were dressed in period dress who told us about the house. Sorry, but no pictures inside were allowed. The most interesting thing was the paint in the rooms - the ones that were painted, not wallpapered were all really bright colors. My favorite was the bright turquoise dining room.

Cute girl eating her favorite fruit snacks...the only way to keep her in the stroller.

The monument to Andrew Jackson in his beautiful garden.

This is a headstone...isn't it neat?

By the end Grace was starting to lose it, and can you see all those tiny rocks on the garden path? How could a little girl resist playing with those rocks? This was the only way to keep moving along.

When she is tired or doesn't want to do something, she shlunks over like this and won't move. She does it all the time. It's really funny.

Then she really got tired and gave up and decided to take a little rest on the bench not 50 feet from the exit we were trying to get to. (The best part of all this is that she didn't even take a nap that day after all this obvious exhaustion...stinker!)

Thankfully Dad came to the rescue with a comfy shoulder to lie on while we walked to the car.

Rob made me include a picture of myself. I really do attend all these outings, even if there's no pictoral proof...I promise. You can also see why there's little pictoral proof these days...getting big!