Museum of Ancient Life

On our way home from AZ we planned to spend the night in Orem and good thing because the snow was coming down by that point. There was even a semi that had tipped over and was blocking all but the left lane. We were thankful to get to stop!

The next morning we took Spencer to Thanksgiving Point's Museum of Ancient Life (the reason we had planned to stay in Orem in the first place). It was awesome and even more awesome, we got in for free thanks to our membership to the Discovery Center!

Spencer was in heaven seeing all the fossils and doing all of the activities, I wish we had had a little more time to spend at the museum because there was just so much to see and do and read! But we will certainly be going back next time we are down there!

December

December started with me getting to witness the birth of my sister's 4th boy (only 13 days late)! It was empowering and encouraging and here's hoping I have the strength to go all natural with this baby!!

the whole fam after baby Olly's blessing.

Spencer also had his 3 year check up. The doctor told us he has eczema on the backs of his knees and to stop bathing so much (not really, but he did say bathing every day could be making it worse, too bad this kid loves showers and baths and any time he hears them on he starts undressing). He also told us Spencer was a "very advanced talker" which was sort of funny. The conversation was something like this:
Doctor: Now normally I ask about their vocabulary and words and pronunciation but just sitting here listening to him, I'm not concerned at all. He's a very advanced talker.
Me: Great, now can you tell me how I'm supposed to get him to sleep in his own bed all night?!

looking grown up at the doctor!

meeting Santa at the ward Christmas dinner

My brother and his wife who have been living in South Carolina came for the week before Christmas so we spent a lot of time playing pickle ball, Ticket to Ride, sledding, and just hanging out with them. We also were enjoying all the snow we were getting as it was way more than usual!

on the hill behind Hillside.

brave enough to try it solo!

with uncle Brayd.

Nate and Spencer shoveling/playing in the snow...again

Christmas morning we had a mini celebration at home where Spencer was spoiled with dinosaurs, dinosaur puzzles, dinosaur shirts and everything else he had wanted. We then went to church at my sisters ward where they blessed their new baby. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at my parents eating and opening more presents!

checking out the ultimate light display up Quail Ridge

Spencer dressed as a T-rex chasing everybody

Heaton and Nate pickle ballin.

can't forget Nate's Christmas mustache ((shudder))

Matching Christmas eve Santa jammies!

Christmas morning with some serious bed head!

The day after Christmas we got up nice and early to start our looong drive to Tucson! We took Brayden and Madison with us to Salt Lake so they could catch a flight back to S.C. that night. Madison was even great when Spencer puked, she'll be a great mom ;) Brayden on the other hand needs some more practice...

not too happy, the morning we left for AZ

The most eventful part was in the middle of nowhere in southern Utah when Spencer announced he had to poop and it was coming now, there was no waiting for an exit and by the time we pulled over, it was too late. Thankfully, Nate and I just laughed as we cleaned up a ginormous mess. I will also never travel without wet wipes every again, even if we don't have kids in diapers!!

We finally made it to Tucson about 3am Tuesday, the 27 and we were never more glad to have a couch to sleep on! I took only like 5 pictures, I was too busy enjoying the sunshine. But here they are:

cousins watching cartoons in the morning.

learning to ride his scooter at night in warm Tucson.

the Moeller fam as of December 2016.

We had so much fun with family and sunshine! We visited the ostrich farm, while the men went hunting the girls took the kids to one of my favorite traditions - a Rubios lunch at the park while the kids play, played yard games and had a fire with smores, went to the Mesa temple to witness the Alldredge sealing, hiking in the rain at Catalina State Park, at more that I've already forgotten! We love getting together with this big crew and only wish it happened more often!!

November.

Every Veteran's Day for the last few years my dad has taken picture of the grandkids, and sometimes the kids.
Here are a few from this year.

That's about it for November. 

Oh, except Spencer turned 3!

He got a bunch of dinos because he'd been dying for one very specific spinosaurus that of course only came in a pack of 5! So now he's basically got any dinosaur a kid could ever want! We just had a little party with his cousins and my parents where we had pizza and cake. Hard to believe we have a 3 year old! 

For Thanksgiving we went to my parents with my sister's family and my brother and his girlfriend came over from school. They were great and even babysat Spencer for a day!

November quotes from Spence:

11/12

Spencer: Mom, who do you like more, me or dad?

Me: I like both of you!

Spencer: No, just pick one, me or dad??

Nate: Yeah, pick one! Who do you like more?!

October

October was busy! So. Much. Halloween!

We went to the Discovery Center Halloween party which was a madhouse, but still fun. We ran into a guy I used to work for who let us in on a little secret, that our pass to DCI got us in free to other science museums around the country, including some great dinosaur ones in Utah. We started planning our Christmas drive to Tucson right then!

a cute little dino riding in the chair at the DC

One Saturday when Nate was most likely hunting, I took Spencer to the World Center for Birds of Prey because my dad was taking his scouts. I don't think I had ever been and I was super impressed. Spencer really loved the "bald seagulls" and watching the birds fly right over the crowd during the show was pretty cool. One of the falcons even went rogue and wouldn't come back for like 20 minutes. They said she'd never done that before. I even ran into a friends from high school with his wife and kids which was fun.

We got invited to Nate's Halloween work luncheon, it was lots of fun and his coworkers LOVED Spencer. We ate lots of good food and hung out for a while.

I also threw a "Pumpkin Party" (thanks to Madison for the idea) with my good friend Jourdan, well she did most of the work, but it was so fun and we had such a good turnout! We made soup and had guests bring their favorite pumpkin treat!

We did lots of other fun Halloween things closer to the actual day. I think the weekend before we hit up 3 different events. Spencer went to a Halloween fair at the local St. Als clinic where we ran into lots of friends from our ward and Spencer would only eat the frosting off cupcakes from the cake walk. Then we went to the City of Meridian's halloween block party, it was crazy and there were soooo many people!! Spencer made out like a bandit. We also went to Nampa's downtown trick or treating at local businesses which was really fun and not as crazy, and we met up with Mike, Jourdan, and Markley later on which was perfect! Again, we got lots of candy but Spencer's favorite part was the bounce houses, even with a million kids on them! Lastly, and this was probably my favorite thing we did this year, was we got tickets to go trick or treating at a nursing home, there was only 100 tickets so I was lucky to get us one! It was very low key and they just gave residents a bag of candy to give out, it was warm, quiet, and the residents were so cute and sweet! But, they also had Krispy Kreme donuts there for the parents and that was the real treat!

Also in October, Nate and I celebrated out 4th wedding anniversary! That seems so crazy to me, like it's been that long and also it's only been that long?! at the same time :) For our anniversary this year we got the best surprise that we'd been waiting MONTHS for! This is what I sent Nate that morning

Quote of the month from Spencer 10/02/16
"I don't like ice cream, it's making me cold...and gassy!"

September

At the beginning of September, Nate's parents stopped by for a fun (but too short!) visit on their way to see Nate's sister's family and meet their new baby! Luckily, they were here when there was nice weather and some fun things happening in Boise!

We took them to the balloon festival early one morning, though I don't know why I don't have any good pictures of it, I used to be a picture taking fool! We also ran into my cousin and her son, he is so good to Spencer and even wanted this picture taken of them!

We also went on a little hike, drove by the new Meridian temple, had breakfast at the Egg Factory and ate dinner at our favorite, Corona Village!

proof they were really there! 

Later on in September, one of the many Saturday's Nate was out hunting I spent all day with some other "hunting widows" in our ward. We spent the afternoon at the park and then took our rowdy group (I think there were 8 kids and only 1 girl...) to Denny's for dinner because kids got free or cheap pancakes!

And just some funny Spencer highlights from September:
September 15: Spencer and I were talking about birthdays and I told him Nate's was in March to which he replied, "do you mean marching band?"

September 27 Conversation between Spencer and a the babysitters daughter:
Spencer: "Nita, I have a dog!"
Nita: "Is it your dog or your mom and dads?"
Spencer: "It's my dads. I have a puppy but my dad killed it."

August

August was another busy month. Nate started his second to last semester of grad school and we packed in as much fun as we could with playdates at the park, swimming at the pool, and going on evening walks while we still had the nice weather!

We had a quick visit from Allison and Dallin and Lizzy, we ate our hearts out with all you can eat sushi and topped it off with a milkshake from sonic. I think we all gained a few lbs that night. Between the 4 of us we thought had ordered something like 11 sushi rolls but after we were done and counted we'd downed more like 14. When the waitress brought us our check she commented that she'd accidentally brought us an extra plate...we obviously weren't complaining as it didn't stop us from eating it all though I did feel a bit more round that usual.

Also in August, one of my very first childhood friends got married up at Bogus Basin. Nate, Spencer and I went to the ceremony with my parents and it was a gorgeous night and she was the cutest bride and they had the most delicious food. My favorite part of the night was that she was marrying a boy named Spencer so every time they said his name, our Spencer would look at me and ask, "me?!" It was totally adorable and by the end of the night he was convinced he had married Shaun.

The bad news from August was that I wasn't pregnant...again. It was the hardest month yet as I was still emotionally recovering from my early term miscarriage the month before, but also because August was the month we had determined to get pregnant since the year had started. In addition, the Moeller side of our family was blessed with 2 new babies which was so fun and exciting, but I got a little taste of what true infertility sufferers feel, torn between being so happy for them and being so devastated in yourself and your body. Thankfully, the envy and sadness was short lived and after a few days I was at peace with all that had happened and I had renewed hope and faith in the Lord's timing and plan for our little family.

I Graduated!

After almost 10 years, I finally graduated with a bachelors of science in web design and development! I had done about 2.5 years right after high school between BYU-I and BSU, but then decided to pursue esthetics instead.
After moving to PA and having a baby I kind of fell out of sync with the esthetics world and decided I should just finish the bachelors I started so long ago! In January of 2015 I started back to school online through BYU-I. I then did 6 semesters of 12+ credits in 18 months so that I could finish faster. Graduation was July 20, 2016 and we went to Rexburg for the occasion.
We first drove to St. Anthony to meet up with one of my all time favorite roommates, Erika! She had just had a baby but she still made us an awesome lunch and it was so fun to meet her husband, daughter, and just catch up! It was like no time had passed even though I hadn't seen her in probably 8ish years?!
After that I had to get back to Rexburg to pick up my cap and gown. The rebel in me worse shorts. ON CAMPUS. to get it. I had looots of stares, ha. Once we picked it up we went to Porter Park to meet up with another roommate, Megan, and her family! She has 2 adorable little boys and it was so fun to see her and watch the boys play. Spencer saw the little splash pad/water park as soon as we got there and it was a lost cause trying to get him to do anything else. He was fully clothed and sopping wet just bombing it head-first down the water slide! He was in heaven. Jake and Emily met up with us at this point and as always, it was so fun to see them (and to have extra eyes on Spencer).
We went and ate dinner with Jake and Emily and then went back to Porter Park to see even more friends! Another roommate, Becky, who lives in Arizona, had been up in Island Park with her family and so they were nice enough to drive down to Rexburg to see us, even though it was only like 20 minutes!

I got really lucky in the roommate department at BYU-I and lived with some of the best girls! I love that even though we never see each other, they were willing to come reconnect! If only I had taken some pictures with any of them!!

Finally, it was time for the actual graduation. We were running late so I didn't even have time to fix my hair or really even look in a mirror. I ran into a bathroom stall and put a dress on about 10 minutes before the ceremony started. I walked, and for some reason I was about to cry the whole time I was shaking the important people's hands, ha. I think just the relief that I was actually done, and because it was a really hard year and a half for me!!

The next morning we headed for Yellowstone with my mom and dad. We had such a fun 3 days there, camping, hiking around, seeing all the wildlife, and just not having anything to worry about!

Spencer spent a lot of time up there.

seriously, so pretty with the blue and orange!

Nate's at the bottom of the falls, can you see him?

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

we thought that looked like too many stairs for us.

this guy walked right through our camp the last night.

he's pretty popular with the tourists! This is the second time the Asians have just been infatuated with him and wanted to hold him and take his picture :)

Spencer was hilarious, every time we saw a buffalo he would say, "there's a buffalo lets laugh at him" and then he would do this crazy fake laugh. Or else he would say "let's moo at him" and then would moo. No idea where it came from but it was great!

I had really wanted to see a bear and a moose while there and I did get to see a bear's back half, it wasn't good enough so on our way back to Rexburg we made a stop at Bear World and it was so much fun!

When it was finally time to head back to west Idaho on Sunday, we drove the "back roads" and made a stop at Craters of the Moon. It was neat, my favorite part was climbing through the caves, plus it was nice and cool down there, great to escape the hot sun! We also had an eventful half hour where my dad locked his keys in his truck. Fortunately, his window was cracked just far enough that between he and Nate and fishing poles, and a bent roasting stick, they were able to get it open. Though not before setting off the alarm multiple times.
A fun trip but I am SO glad to be done with school!