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.