Budding Artist

Autumn has been showing off her creative side lately. I find works of art all over the house, but not what you would expect, like crayon on the walls. Autumn is into contemporary sculpture. Feel free to suggest titles for her latest pieces. (I seriously did not help with or even plan these endevours. They just show up.)

Here is Autumn working on her latest work of art. As any true artist would, Autumn has aquired a foreign accent. This is from watching Teletubbies. She now says "alow" instead of hello.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Tonight for YWs we are driving down to SLC for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with David Archuleta Concert. I am excited about our trip. Thank you Jonathan for tending Autumn!

A day on the mountain

While driving up Logan Canyon today, we saw the aftermath of a truck loosing control on the road. It wasn't icy so we're not sure how the truck left the road. High speed maybe?

We went snowshoeing on the Stump Hollow Trail.



Jon found a good way to entertain us all. A wish I could post the video of all the trees that Jon de-flocked Today.


Did you hear Autumn say "Whoa!"?

Catching up

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday in Orem this year. Miraculously, the Provo area missed out on the blizzard that Logan and the rest of northern Utah received during Thanksgiving week. In Orem, it wasn't too cold and there was very little snow to speak of. Autumn got to see all of her cousins from both sides of her parents' families, except for new baby Molly who lives in Washington and cousin Julia who lives in Texas.

Autumn delighted in the ball pit. Each morning she would wake up and then race down the hall to go play in it. She watched Kloe climb in and out enough to figure it out for herself.

I don't have pictures of anyone eating, but we did a lot of that. Thanksgiving dinner was great. On Friday, we went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. It was a great way to start the Christmas season. Carl Bloch was a Danish artist who painted a lot of pictures of Christ's life. Here is the print of one of his paintings that hangs in my living room.

After the art exhibit, we met up with family to celebrate my sister Mandy getting her architecture license. We enjoyed lots of good food at Tucanos Brazilian Grill. Congratulations Mandy! In the same shopping area, we saw Santa and Autumn was a little shy but warmed up as Santa handed her a toy.

Jon and I got to have a date night so we went to theTimpanogos Temple. I wish we could go on more dates. We had a really nice time.

On the way home we passed a lot of Christmas lights. This particular home is about a block from Jon's parents' house.

We drove home on Saturday. Autumn really misses her cousins and the ball pit.

This week, Autumn has been searching for a nativity story costume. She discovered that she still fits in her blessing dress. So here is a sneak peek at the little angel.

Happy 2nd Anniversary!

Today is our 2nd Anniversary. It's pretty amazing how blessed we have been in this short time. We have a beautiful daughter who is only 3 1/2 months from nursery. We live in a wonderful valley. Jonathan enjoys his job and I enjoy learning to be a homemaker. Together we are learning to be good parents. We especially enjoy our family vacations and time together. If you visit us soon you can have some of our ice cream and cake.

This year we opted to celebrate with a carmel-chocolate covered chocolate cake rather than the traditional lemon-raspberry. Thanks for the green frosting Meli!

This morning I found 4 flickers in the back yard. Can you spot all 4?

This one isn't a flicker, but she enjoyed the snow. Or as Autumn says the "no". Autumn had a cute moment yesterday when we told her she was tip-toeing. She started tip-toeing around the living room saying tip-tip hahaha tip-tip-tip hahaha. Today she did the same thing but now she says "tip-toe, tip-toe, tip-toe" over and over and over. Today Autumn identified Jesus in a picture and also the number 4. Yesterday she said amen after the sacrament prayer without prompting, not that we've ever prompted her to do that in church. Today, when asked if she wanted to get out of the bathtub she said "Up. no!" She practiced that several times too. She puts a pause between up and no for dramatic effect.

Spies like us

I got food poisoning from a Relief Society Food Demo Night I went to last night and now I feel very sick. The unsuspecting culprit was probably the homemade shrimp cocktail, but it could have been the sausage-stuffed mushrooms. I am thankful that it didn't happened on a worse day, like YW activity day. Today I get to stay at home and do laundry. Yay for me! Autumn seems to be trying to have a sympathy sickness, which I profoundly appreciate. You would have enjoyed the humor of the two of us both laying on the carpet, watched a sappy WWII spy movie this morning.

Autumn visits the track

I love living so close to a track! This track is special because I competed on it while I ran for NMSU. I even scored points in the 800 meters for our team. It's wonderful to get to share my love for running with Autumn, even if she is more interested in the bananas.

Hospitals, Miracles, and Other Events

I'm going to start with the most recent miracle and work back in time for the last month. Today we drove down to Salt Lake to see Jon's grandparents who are from Monticello. Last week Grandpa was life flighted to the UofU Hospital from Monticello with heart problems. Miraculously, he didn't need to have surgery and after observing him for several days, they released him. (See the photo, he looks pretty good!)

Miracle number 2- Just as we pulled into the hospital parking garage, Grandpa and Uncle Kim were driving out. They spotted us and stopped. This might not seem like a miracle that we met up, but if you don't have a cell phone it really was! We followed them down to Herriman where Uncle Kim's son and his family live and where Aunt Cindy and Grandma were staying. We visited with them and had a nice pizza lunch. (As a side note, I found out that Autumn's second cousin had a milk allergy too and so did Uncle Kim when he was a baby. It must be a Burtenshaw trait!)

Miracle number 3- Or my most appreciated miracle. Autumn is finally well after 18 days of diarrhea. Yuck! She had a stool sample taken and the lab results came back that she was suffering from a bacteria normally found in the topics. We probably went through 3 months of diapers in a month and washed several pairs of pants a day. We are still waiting for the final results of the stool test but three days of antibiotics really did the trick. Thanks Dr. Visick!

Miracle number 4- Autumn had to go to the Emergency Room after she fell off of a bed and hit her head on a hard wood floor about a week and a half ago. I took her in because she had seizured immediately after the fall and because she couldn't walk or grab things for about half an hour. Miraculously, she didn't have any brain damage and the bruise on her head has finally gone away.

I get to teach the lesson to the young women tomorrow. The lesson is on gratitude. I feel more prepared because I know that each of these events could have turned out in a much worse way. We all have miracles, sometimes we just need to weather the storms before we can learn what they are.

Happy Halloween!

"Are you kidding me mom? This pumpkin isn't scary at all!"

(Autumn had a scary week. So Halloween has been relatively uneventful. )

Happy USU Homecoming!

Last week we were invited to dinner at a Brazilian woman's home. We had wonderful Brazilian food. I made the dessert which needed to be sugar-free. Did you know that they even made sugar-free whipped topping? I couldn't tell the difference.

Welcome Molly!

Autumn's cousin Molly Kate was born October 17 at 6:30 am. Molly was 5 pounds 10 ounces and 18 ¼ inches long. She surprised everyone by coming two weeks early. Congratulations Amanda and Brendon!!!

Mommy Thinks I'm Crazy (by Autumn)

My mommy has this strange notion that I'm weird. Could a kid with a face as cute as mine ever do something weird? I think not. Here's my side of the story.

A week ago, Mommy noticed me admiring the potty. I was actually just curious about the miniature bathtub with the lid that I can hardly lift. What is that lid for anyway? By the way, we need more toilet paper!

One day when the light was off in the bathroom, Mommy found me crouched down behind the potty looking guilty. She was surprised that I could lift the lid and even more surprised when she found that I'd been cooking dinner.

(Notice the large candle, bag of noodles, and YWs' announcement.)

I'm practicing to be a dog for Halloween. Now I like to act like a dog whether I'm wearing my puppy costume or not. By the way Daddy, thanks for the new play table and chair. He made it all by himself.

I found a new pocket the other day. All of my onesies have them. I keep everything in them from blocks, to bottles of nail polish, to canning jar lids. You name it, the possibilities are endless!

I'm 13 months old. I have 14 teeth. My favorite word is airplane.

A fun assignment for EVERYONE! (Time Sensitive Content)

My young women have a chance to go see David Archuleta and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform in December. A very gracious person is donating 8 tickets to our cause. We need some more tickets for the other 3 girls and some leaders. Here is how you can help. There is a lottery for the rest of the tickets that closes on Monday the 18th. Each household is allowed to register for 4 tickets. I figure if everyone applies for tickets we are bound to get enough for all who want to go, but only if everyone applies. The tickets we already have are for Thursday, December 16.

Here is what you do.

1. Click on this link to the LDS events page.

2. Click on the Register for Tickets icon in the upper right-hand corner.

3. Accept the terms and conditions. (It doesn't say anything about not giving your tickets to other people.)

4. Click on Register Now.

5. Fill out your real personal information.

6. Where it says Performances Preference, select Thursday Dec. 16 and for # of seats put 4.

7. Save your confirmation number.

Finally, leave a comment here letting me know that you have signed up for seats for us.

Thanks so much for your help!!!

Vacation Day 8

On Thursday, we said goodbye to our condo.


And the bears.

We said goodbye to the Tetons, which required going on the Moose-Wilson road one last time. We saw a real bear that was already being looked at.
We stopped in Montpelier, Idaho for lunch. Autumn liked hanging out at the park with her dad and eating corn dogs from Artic Circle.

Yeah! We made it home from our grand adventure. I can't wait to plan next year's vacation!

Vacation Day 7

On Wednesday we headed back up to Yellowstone to see Old Faithful and that segment of the park. There were three lovely hot air balloons flying over the Tetons. I got these shots from the car as we drove passed them from very far away.

Once we got to Yellowstone, we headed straight for Old Faithful Geyser. We watched it go off as soon as we arrived. I got video of the eruption, but I can't use it because someone is swearing in it. From there we hiked ALL the way to Morning Glory Pool. It's kind of shaped like a Morning Glory blossom. It's the furthest away from Old Faithful so we got to see the rest of the geysers on the back half of the loop.

We watched the Grotto geyser go off. It's really close to the Morning Glory Pool.

This is Chromatic Pool.

There was a raven who thought he was a golden eagle.

Saphire Pool.

We watched Old Faithful go off again when we got back from our hike. I was very, very tired.

We ate lunch at Old Faithful and then did Biscuit Basin and Black Sand Basin which are very close to Old Faithful. Here Autumn is showing off her hat at Black Sand Basin. This hat never actually stayed on very long because the wind wanted to blow it into the geyser.

We had planned to go on a 5 mile hike to Lone Star Geyser, but we were too tired after our Morning Glory Pool hike. Jonathan took this picture of Kelper Cascades while the rest of us tried to sleep in the car.

On the way back to Jackson Hole we stopped at the bend in the river to take a picture of Mount Moran.

Vacation Days 6

Did we see an Os-pray or Os-pree? The debate continues. This one kind of looks like an Os-pree. We saw him on Tuesday afternoon. We spent the day at the condo because we were totally worn out by our Yellowstone adventure. In the late afternoon we drove on the Moose-Wilson road in Grand Teton National Park. There were several bears, but other people were already looking at them. So we didn't.

After looking at the gravel on the Moose-Wilson trail, Autumn decided that the Teton Valley was carved out by glaciers.

The fire on the Driggs side of the Tetons made the sunset sureal. (Photo credit Jonathan.)

We walked along Jenny Lake to see the sunset. This was the last picture before the camera battery died. Autumn liked throwing rocks into the lake and we sat on a boulder and watched her and the sunset.

Vacation Day 5

On Monday we said goodbye to the Cummins family and headed north toward Yellowstone Park. The fall colors along the way were great. We stopped at West Thumb and saw more exciting geysers than I ever remember seeing. The view of Yellowstone Lake was nice too. Starting here and continuing throughout all of Yellowstone, the foreign tourists we encountered loved Autumn and wanted her picture. She was kind enough to oblige.

We had lunch at West Thumb.

Next we checked out Fishing Bridge because I didn't remember it. We found a nice hike to a natural bridge between Fishing Bridge and Canyon. It took us about two hours round trip. Autumn fell asleep during the hike and so I propped up her head on a roll of tissue paper.

We saw a really big bison along the way. Luckily we were already passed him when he got on the actual trail.

There were cool stairs to climb to see the top of the natural bridge, and there was a creek flowing down through it.

We saw plenty of camp robbers. This one was on the trail. Sorry no trail mix left!

We stopped to see the major geyser on the way to Canyon. It was the Mud Volcano loop (hike). We were intreged by the diaper reference at one of the mudpots.

We saw upper and lower falls at Canyon.

We had dinner at Canyon and headed back to Jackson Hole. Along the way we stopped at Lewis Falls and took some engagement photos for a couple there.

This was the view looking out from Lewis Falls.