My Two Minutes of Fame

So tonight I had the opportunity to have my 2 minutes of fame.  Big Country News came to my house and filmed my friend Natalee and I sewing.  We both made costumes for our families this year and Natalee was my amazing and patient mentor.  The reporter did a great job and made us look pretty good :)  You can check out my TV depute below.

Big Country!  Does It Work?  Halloween Costumes

My Friend's Family in their complete Costumes.  She is amazing!

A Pirate Halloween at the Manning's

Happy Halloween from the Manning's

We hope this Fall has been as fun and memorable as ours has been.

The Papa Pirate

The Mama Pirate

The Granny Pirate

The Little Boo Pirate

And the Parrot!

A Few Houses, Mormon Helping Hands, and Brownwood,TX

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to participate in a Stake wide service project in Brownwood, TX.  It is a smaller community about 1 1/2 hours from Abilene.  The community was hosting a project to paint 8 houses that neighbored community schools.  The city picked the homes, Home Depot provided $1000 worth of paint and supplies, and Mormon Helping Hands provided the man power.  We estimate that around 217 people from our stake came from as far as 120 miles to serve and all 8 houses were completed by noon.  It was an amazing project and a great opportunity.  Caleb was super excited to have the chance to paint a REAL house.  As soon as we arrived at our assigned house, Caleb immediately got right to work.  Unfortunately the home we painted only needed trim and the porch painted so it was hard to find places for all the kids to paint.  We kind of splattered a lot of paint on the house's porch, but I think they were still grateful for our help.  The kids sure had fun and it was fun to work together as a ward family.  We had a great Stake BBQ afterwards.  This was such a great event that we were featured in the local new.  You can check out the articles linked below.

My Awesome Painter!!  Getting right to work and lovin it!

The whole crew and the home owners!!!  This house was fully attacked by Mormons but I think it at least looked a little better in the end!

Brownwood Texas News

KTXS News Article

Our Primary Program

Today was our annual Primary Program. This is a big day for the Primary Presidency and is a great culminating celebration for the year.  Each year one entire church service is dedicated to all the children in the ward from the ages of 3-11.  The children sing the songs they have learned and share their thoughts and testimonies about the topics we have discussed throughout the year.  It is one of my favorite church services and was my first to organize as Primary President.   Our children did amazing!  Each child had either prepared a talk, bore their own testimony, or shared a their own simple thought about Jesus Christ, the Restoration of the Gospel, Temples, and Scriptures.  This is what Caleb said enthusiastically into the mike, "I am me.  I'm a son of God.  I am born to be a King.  I came to earth from Heaven to live on Earth.  I want to learn about Heavenly Father and share the gospel.  I really love earth and my family and my dog Cooper.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."  They have the sweetest testimonies and I am always amazed at their knowledge.  We had some great enthusiastic singers and some of our older children sang beautiful solos.  My heart was full of joy.  I have come to love these children so much.  It is such a blessing to be a part of Primary and spend 2 hours every Sunday with these sweet spirits.  It is truly an experience that makes my week and teaches me so much. 

I love primary and what it teaches our children.  A few weeks ago, Caleb had the opportunity to give a talk during our Primary time.  He was asked to talk about missionary work.  We had so much fun teaching him about missionary work and pulling out all of Daddy's missionary photos.  He is so excited to be a missionary someday!  On the day of his talk, he dressed in his suit just like a missionary and borrowed Dad's missionary tag.  He gave a great talk and continues to wear Dad's tag whenever he can.  I am so grateful for the opportunities Primary gives us to teach our children about Jesus Christ and to live the principles of the Gospel.  I am so grateful to be a part of Primary!

A Pretty Cute Future Elder Manning

I know the time will fly before I know it.  Wonder where he will go?

Nothing Quite Like...

There is nothing quite like

making homemade

Carmel Apples and then

getting to share them with your friends while

CARVING a Pumpkin!!

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Bread

2 eggs                                                                ½ tsp. baking powder

½ c. salad oil                                                       1 tsp. soda

1 cup canned pumpkin                                          1  2/3 c. sifted flour

1 ½ c. sugar                                                        ½ tsp. nutmeg

½ tsp. cinnamon                                                  ¾ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cloves

Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl except sugar.  Mix together wet ingredients and sugar.  Then add dry ingredients.  Place in greased bread pans.  Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.  Makes 1 large loaf.

I got this recipe from my mother-in-law.  Here is a cute picture of my best helper!  He loves using the mixer and then of course the best part is licking the beaters.

BIG Ambitions

The past couple weeks have been super crazy in our house!  Our Primary Program is in just one more week, I decided to take on sewing (with my very beginner sewing skills) rather complicated costumes for our entire family (dog included), and we have been training for this!

Our First Half Marathon!!

I am getting really excited about this race and my training has been going really well.  This week was a bit tough to fit in my long run but I have ran 12 miles without stopping and actually survived!  For a while we really contemplated running the full marathon, but then life's realities set in.  Finding time for TWO parents to train that much was really difficult and the fact is that Brydon had intense year surgery the beginning of the year and I had surgery in the middle so our bodies just weren't ready for something that intense.  And we really didn't want to hurt ourselves, so we are shooting for the Half and are excited to check off a goal on our list.  I must admit I think I could kind of get addicted to these.  We are a little worried Brydon won't be able to run as well as we hoped.  He recently hurt a tendon on his leg and so is having to take it easy right now.  We are crossing our fingers he can at least run at my SLOW pace!  The race is in two weeks and so the countdown begins.  I am super excited my Mom will be able to be here for the Primary Program, Halloween, and the big Race.  It will be so nice to have her support and help.  I might possibly be able to have my Grandpa and his wife come to yell for us as well.  We will see if he can keep that promise or not.  It would be pretty great to have such an amazing cheering squad.  It is going to be a very ambitious few weeks as we continue to train, I attempt to sew, and we complete the Primary program.  So I am crossing my fingers we can pull it all off and have a fun time doing it all!!

We Love Pumpkin Patches

We have a Halloween family tradition to find the best local pumpkin patch and each pick out a pumpkin to carve. The tradition started in Utah where you actually get to go out into a real pumpkin patch and choose your pumpkin. There are usually fun displays and corn mazes to visit there as well. In Philadelphia we were able to find Linvilla Orchards, which quickly became a family favorite throughout the year.  For Fall they have huge bins of pumpkins you can choose from and really great hay rides.  Abilene does not have real pumpkin patches or orchards, but they do have the Disability Resources Inc. that does a pumpkin patch (of sorts) to raise money for the residents of their center.  The workers have disabilities and it was a fun experience.  I even got a very long hug from an older woman working there.  They do a free little hay ride and have cute displays.  It was more simple than some of the places we have been, but we still loved choosing our perfect pumpkins and got some great pictures! 

These pictures are from last year at Linvilla.  We were able to go right before daddy left for OTS.  It was so fun!  We took Caleb on a hay ride to a Witch's house in the evening.  The witches told silly jokes and give everyone a large sugar cookie.  Then we got to roast marshmallows in fire pits and drink Linvilla's wonderful homemade cider.  Fun memories!

Disability Resources Inc. Pumpkin Patch

Had to make sure we got the best ones!

Caleb is becoming quite the photographer and poser.  He actually posed Brydon and I with his pumpkin in the swing and then had a very specific way he wanted his picture take with this interesting fellow.

The Family Hay Ride!  They do these for free and were kind enough to allow us to ride.  I think they were done for the day but when Caleb asked about it they let us have a quick ride.  Super nice people!

Caleb was really sad that we didn't immediately carve our pumpkins.  But we did let him choose a small pumpkin to paint when we got home.  It turned out pretty cool!

I had to include our favorite Pumpkin Patch memory.  This was Caleb's first Halloween in Utah and we stuck this little pumpkin everywhere in that pumpkin patch.  This is my favorite shot though.  We call it "It's the Great Pumpkin, Caleb!"