Hyde Happinesses

 Hello hello family. November was quite possibly the worst month of the year 😂 not to worry, we still had loads of fun and good times, but we were sick for the entire month. It was a blast. I also had an allergic reaction to who knows what, and am still trying to recover from that. 

We enjoyed a fun Halloween with our little pumpkin patch and also did family pictures. The bakery has been doing really well and I’ve quite enjoyed it. Cam is still working 10 hour days but he still seems to like it a bunch. Stetson is ever my parent but he’s adorable so it’s okay. Beckham is crawling all over the place and is now discovering he can get into things. His favorite right now is the bookshelf.  We enjoyed a good Thanksgiving with Cams family and are now gearing up for the Christmas season. I’ve been crafting lately which has been so fun, and have made a few advent calendars for Stetson to do this season. 

We had some absolutely massive leaves fall from our trees this year 

we decorated for Christmas early because we were all home bound and miserable. It’s been awesome 

A big buck in our backyard makes Cam awfully jealous 

Christmas tree sourdough! 

Flake Fun

 The weather is starting to turn cold but the days, for the most part have been in the 70s. The forecast says that those days are over though.

The house progress ground to a halt due to some flooding that made our culvert crossing...un-crossable.  So we are working through those details.

In the absence of house projects, we have moved on to property projects and got the fence done around the last pasture.  We hauled away nearly a ton of scrap metal, got a truck load of wood chips and a couple of van loads of leaves. 

We have had some nasty coughing and congestion the last couple of weeks but everyone seems on the mend now which is nice. 

Most of you know that we had a little skunk take up residence in our chicken coop for a couple of days.  It has since relocated... to our wood pile.  More adventures on that front will be coming I'm sure!

Hope that you all have a great week and beginning to your holiday season!!

Hyde Happinesses

 Hello all! Life has been good. I cannot believe that October is almost over! That should be illegal. Luckily we’re still hanging out in some pretty good weather. Definitely need a jacket or sweatshirt, but not cold enough for several layers. Both of my boys run warm, so they don’t need much to stay toasty. 

We got back from Destin Florida this week. It was so fun and mostly relaxing. The fun thing about having the only kids in the family is that you have almost unlimited babysitters (that will actually fight for a shot at babysitting), and all everyone loves to do is spoil them and talk about how wonderful they are. As everyone knows, it’s really fun to brag about your kiddos and be proud of them, but I literally have to race the in-laws to say good things about my kids! 😂 wherever we go we get comments about how sweet and cute the boys are and my sisters in law and mother in law (honestly the males in law too) all jump in and have to brag about them before I can 😂 I’m not complaining. It’s nice to have your kids adored. 

Florida beaches were lovely. The sand is pearly white and so soft it squeaks! The water was a little chilly this year because we went later in the season, but our vrbo had a nice warm pool and hot tub. Stetson probably spent 3 of the 6 days we were there submerged in water. He is a fish. He didn’t love the beach, and neither did Beckham, but they were good sports and made the best of it. Beck slept absolutely horribly but when we got home, he began pulling himself up on everything, so I think he was working through that while we were there and didn’t get much downtime to do it. 

We had our ward trunk or treat yesterday. Stetson has been saying he wants to be a pumpkin for the longest time. Apparently a Little Einsteins episode had one of the characters dressed as a pumpkin and that’s exactly what he wanted. Well I can’t sew by any means, but my mother in law can. I had tried to get a costume, but they were all jackolanterns and not what Stetson had in mind. So my sweet mother in law made him a costume in about 2 hours! I was so impressed! We also had a chili cook off yesterday, but a white chicken chili won 🙄 we should petition to disqualify those I think. 

Anyway, sure love you all. While the boys plan their boys trip, I think we girls should do our Prince Edward Island trip. That would be a dream. How about in the spring?…

Always watching airplanes

Excited to fly 

Superhero dad

The boys went on a deep sea fishing trip… let’s just say they’ll never do it ever again. Ever. Never. 

Nilsson News

 It has been kind of a minute since we have been on the blog so I'm going to illustrate with photos and bounce from one thing to the next.

We did some remodeling this summer and one those projects was the tiny bathroom in the boys bedroom.  It was in dire need of an update!

The other big project we tackled was the removal of some big trees in the front.  I had no idea that doing this would create such a stir in the neighborhood but it has been the talk of the town!  The big spruce is gone, along with a massive, rotting poplar, and two maples.  We ended up with a ginormous pile of wood chips which led us to the next phase of the project...

We brought in four dump truck loads of topsoil and Dane thought he had died and gone to heaven.  Forget about any toys, a kid just needs some dirt in order to have is day full of happiness!  We formed a berm with the dirt (what's a berm you ask? A mound of dirt.) and then covered it with the wood chips and leftover logs.  In the spring we will start planting it up with trees and shrubs.

We did do some other actual "fun" things this summer, though projects and work are fun according to Ruth.

Fishing and crawdad catching is one of the obsessions right now.  Henry will talk your ear off about all things fish.  He got a 55 gallon fish tank last week and he has some fish related to the dinosaurs and he just discovered that one of his fish laid eggs so now we have that new adventure to look forward to.

Addy and I were able to go see Ian perform in Footloose and it was amazing.  It might have barely been a step up from when Ruth accompanied her high school performance of it.

We hiked to Mesa Falls for Emerson's birthday and it was so nice!

We have been going on field trips with the Harts as part of our science studies.  We went to Yellowstone and saw some elk, right on the road, a bison, and a even a big bear!  You couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day!

I've made it a practice to cut a new flower arrangement every week and it has been so fulfilling.  I highly recommend!  Addy put together a lovely and tasty charceuterie board for general conference.

This was another field trip we took to Craters of the Moon.  It is such a fun place and the kids had a blast looking at all the cool rocks everywhere.  Because of the government shut down, the caves were all closed off but we were able to enjoy some other hikes.

Happy fall y'all!  We didn't grow any watermelons this year but boy, did we have an abundant pumpkin harvest!