The oh-so-creepy and exciting holiday of Halloween has come and gone once again. This year was another good one for the books. However, it was definitely not quite as exciting as the previous years. Let me expound... There is something about Halloween in elementary school that cannot be recreated anywhere else. Those kids are bursting with excitement! When Halloween was on a weekday, the kids came stoked to be wearing their costumes, having a class party, going trick-or-treating that night, and mostly, let's be honest, for the CANDY! The next day, all those kiddos would be in a sugar coma. Talk about night and day difference from one day to the next. I had such mixed emotions when teaching on Halloween. It was so darling to see the kids in such a heightened state, but at the same time, classroom management was SO HARD. I would have to put on my tough teacher pants that morning haha.
So since I am no longer teaching, I missed out of the craziness of Halloween at school. My holiday was pretty calm and mellow, all things considered. And you know, it was actually kind of refreshing to have a change this year. The past, gosh I don't even know how many, years have been full of parties, dressing up, etc. on "All Hallow's Eve", so it was fun to switch things up this year.
Our Halloween festivities started last weekend with our ward Trunk or Treat. Hunter was a dragon, and Eric and I had great intentions of coming up with a theme to go with his costume. However, lack of planning on our part put us in desperate need of a last minute costume. Thank you Pinterest for the idea.... we were salt and pepper. Easy and cute. We also decorated our little trunk and freaked a few kids out with the interactive chomping. You'll see what I mean. Eric was getting a kick out of it! :)
There was also a cupcake contest and chili cook off. I made a version of these cupcakes a few years ago for my piano students, but decided to improve them this year. Instead of a using a box and pre-made frosting, I got real domestic and made these babies from scratch. Frosting and all! They turned out delish. Want the recipe? I would too. :)
The next day, we celebrated with my family at the 3rd annual Bagley Family Halloween Party. My aunt Michelle is such a great party planner and is always finding a way for the Bagley clan to get together. I think it's so wonderful! Her home was decked out for Halloween...it was AWESOME! So we enjoyed a few little games, some delicious food, and some even better company until Hunter was too tired to be pleasant. Then he really did turn into a little dragon haha.
On Halloween, we enjoyed a lovely evening with our good friends, the Patrick's. They are the last of our cute little culdesac friends that are still living here. They will head off to (they find out where next week) in January to start their career. It is so exciting, but so sad to have to say goodbye to another dear couple that we just adore. Anyway, we had a great time with them taking our babies to the pumpkin patch and picking out pumpkins. This patch also had a petting zoo and a corn maze. Ir was so much fun! P.S. Halloween evening is a great time to go pick out pumpkins. There was hardly anyone there...including no owners. No one seemed to be in charge. So free pumpkins? Don't mind if we do. :) We then ate pizza, carved pumpkins, answered the door for an occasional trick-or-treater, and of course, watched a scary movie. A successful Halloween night in my book!
Eric's costume is FaceBook. Get it?
Halloween jammies for a Halloween night!
So Hunter's first Halloween was a great one. He, of course, will never remember it, but we sure will. Next year he will [hopefully] be walking and I'm sure Eric will try to convince me to let him go trick-or-treating. :) And then it begins.... years of taking the kiddos out door to door. So I'll enjoy this relaxing Halloween as long as I can. Until next year!
P.S. The best part of Halloween being over? Christmas music will now be freely flowing in our little house! WAHOO!
"Be someone else's sunshine. Be the reason someone smiles today."
A couple of weekends ago, we were able to get some family pictures taken by the wonderful Jessica Jenkins Oberg. Jessie J and Eric performed on Young Ambassadors together back in 2011-2012, and then that summer we all performed together up at Pickleville. So she was there through all of our courtship and could give me some dirt on Eric. ;) I also got to hear all about her missionary, Jake, who she is now married to! What fun times. We love Jess so much. She is one of those people who radiates goodness and light. She is a dear friend and I feel so lucky to have her in my life. Thanks Jess for such beautiful pictures!
I would post them all, but I might blow up this blog. So I'll just share a few of my favorites. I sure am blessed with this little family of mine.
By the end of the photo shoot, Hunter was plum tuckered out. Eric and Jess went to take a few professional head shots while I pushed Hunter in his stroller. When we lifted the car seat cover, this is what we found... I guess he was just too tired to fully spit out the pacifier or suck it back in. Whoosh, the life of a baby. How exhausting! :)
"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine."
This past weekend was a blast and very special, in so many ways! So considering it is now Wednesday, I'd say it is about time that I got to blogging about it. Well, first things first:
Thursday
On Thursday, we had the fun opportunity to learn a little choreography for a flash mob that the BYU Young Ambassadors were putting together for BYU's homecoming week. All of the Sackett kids have been on the performing group, and Eric's sister, Megan, is on the group right now. So we went to support her and were able to put on our boogie shoes. Afterward, we walked along this beautiful pathway on campus to the duck pond. Eric said that he thinks about bringing us here every day that he walks past it, so it was extra special for us to get to be there. Hunter was a bit young to appreciate the ducks haha, but maybe next year when he is walking, he can waddle along with the little duckies. Nonetheless, it is always the best spending time with these boys.
Friday
This was the day that we were able to perform the flash mob at the Riverwoods in Provo. It was a fun experience and we were happy to be able to help out and support family. What impressed me the most was Eric's parents! They learned the choreography and did the dance with everyone else. I'm pretty sure they were the only grandparents out there doing that. Woo hoo! That's pretty awesome. Here is the music video that the YA's put together of the flash mob. If you look close, you will see his parents dancing! And if you look really close, you can sneak a really fast peek of Eric.
Saturday
Saturday was a glorious day, in every sense of the word. We started our morning off by taking a drive up beautiful Provo canyon. The leaves are in their autumn prime and we knew we would feel so sad if we missed out on spending time in the mountains before it got too cold. We packed up Hunter and headed to Squaw Peak. Then we strapped him in his carrier and hiked around the mountain. He was such a trooper and loved it! Eric and I just kept finding ourselves in awe of the beauty all around us. The leaves were all changing and dying, but we discovered that there can even be such beauty in death. I'm sure that Heavenly Father must sit back so pleased with the color combinations of autumn. They are SO majestic!
Saturday afternoon, we took Hunter to his very first movie! He did so great, too. Just throwing that out there haha. We went to the new film Meet the Mormonsand boy, was it awesome! I should have figured it would be because everything the LDS church does is just top notch! But I went into the film not super excited, thinking it would be a plain documentary of LDS people. However, I was sweetly surprised at how entertaining and inspiring the documentary was. And so heartfelt... Watch out if you haven't seen it yet. You may or may not shed some tears. Consider yourself warned! :)
"Glorious" sung by David Archuleta is played in this movie. What an inspiring song!
That night, we had the awesome opportunity to go see Hudson Lights perform. If you have never heard of this group, you seriously need to YouTube these guys. They are amazing! Our good friend, Ross Welch, is a member of the group. The Welchs lived underneath us for a year and a half until they moved to Lincoln, NE in August for school. We are SO SAD they are gone. Seriously, we go through withdrawals all of the time. So it was such a blast to see them again and get to spend a little time with them during their quick trip to Utah.
Sunday
Sunday was such a special day for our little family of three. We started the morning off by having a deeeelish breakfast at the Patricks. The Welchs came over too and we had a fun morning together as friends.
But perhaps the most special part of the day was Hunter's baby blessing. If I told you why it took us four months to finally get him blessed, this blog post would be forever haha. So in a nutshell, we just had so many things come up on Sundays for like the past month and a half, resulting in him being four months when he was blessed. You know, it wasn't all that bad having him a little older though. My dad said he was very inquisitive during the actual blessing. He just was staring at all of the men circling him. And afterward when Eric held him up, he was wide-eyed and looking around. Super cute and funny!
Eric had been thinking about this blessing for a really long time. Maybe nerves for giving his first baby blessing were setting in early on? I don't know. But I do know that Eric is in love with his little boy. He was so thoughtful and deliberate with the things he blessed Hunter with. We both agree that Hunter has such a sweet spirit about him. He makes us want to be better each and every day. I am thankful for a husband who holds the priesthood and exercises it with authority. What a blessing to have a priesthood holder presiding over our home. I am also thankful for a son who brings the light of Christ into our home.
We had so many wonderful friends and dear family members come to support Hunter on his special day. I couldn't say thank you enough to our parents and siblings and close friends for the way they show their love to us. Now that I am a mom, I am blown away at all the things my mom [and dad] have done and continue to do for me. Parenthood is truly the definition of selfless sacrifice. I would give anything and do anything for Hunter. And gosh, he is only 4 months old!
So after a weekend full of exciting shenanigans, we are back to the grind of real life. Let's be honest, that mostly applies to Eric, because he is the one cranking out the crazy schedule. But, Hunter and I are back in the groove of our schedule too. It took him a good day or two to recuperate from being passed around all day on Sunday haha. This weekend is BYU's homecoming, so that should provide some fun for us. This will be Eric's last homecoming as a student.... YAY for him graduating this spring! I am so grateful for fun-filled weekends that bring such joy and sunshine into our lives.
"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow."
After a long blogging break, Our Little Corner of Sunshine is revamped and ready to go again! The past year has been jam packed with a lot of change, much of which probably should have been blogged about, but that wasn't at the top of my priority list. Not gonna lie. So, here I am, clicking on my blogging seat belt, ready to start the ride again.
Well, what has been going on this past year with our little family?
Let's play a game of [picture] catch up.
I successfully finished my one and a half year teaching career. At least, that's the duration for now. Who knows? Maybe one day I will get to go hang out with 30 third graders every day again. It is the best job in the world...besides being a mommy, of course. What a privilege it was to get to teach these young, spongy minds and work with their quirky personalities day in and day out. I will miss their excitement for life (and especially holidays). The energy of a kid. Wow! I will look back on teaching with the fondest memories. And honestly, I think these kiddos taught me more than I ever could have taught them.
I survived 9 (nah, basically 10) months of being pregnant! Woohoo! We feel so blessed to have had such a smooth pregnancy. I was able to be teaching kids choreography for their dance festival two weeks before our little guy came. That's truly a blessing. Morning sickness was minimal and this go around was quite ideal. Eric was so supportive and offered extra foot rubs all of the time. What a babe. Being pregnant is really a remarkable thing. No, I don't really miss pregnancy, but it is pretty cool to feel that sweet baby doing dances inside your tummy. And having a thick head of luscious hair isn't all that bad either!
Our sweet Hunter Eric Sackett was born on Friday, June 13 at 5:15 am. I am oh-so-looking forward to blogging about his birth story, but not today. In a nut shell, things went incredibly well and we have been loving the new parent experience. There are so many things that I didn't understand or know before becoming a mommy. Good things and bad things. But things that I could only understand by becoming a parent. No one could have prepared me for the exhaustion from sleepless night after sleepless night. For the innumerable times I have been pooped or peed or spit up on. For the heart warming feeling of baby snuggles. For the giddiness of baby smiles and giggles. But mostly, no one could have prepared me for the way my heart has grown. I didn't realize how my capacity and ability to love could grow so exponentially. And not just for my Hunter. But I have a deeper love for my dear Eric, for my parents, and for all women who are mothers. Seriously, sometimes I look at women in the grocery store with utter awe and appreciation for what they are doing or have done. Moms are amazing. Simple as that.
Eric is super man right now. He is in full swing with his senior year at BYU studying Public Relations. He is doing three internships plus full-time school. On top of that, he is serving as the executive secretary in our ward. And he still finds time to sing at events here and there. I don't see much of him on a day-to-day basis, but it amazes me how he is able to balance everything. He must be doing something right. He is a wonderful dad and if Hunter would talk, he would most definitely agree. Playing with daddy at lunch and at nighttime are the highlights of his day. His smiles and giggles are a dead giveaway. :)
Being a mom to Hunter is pretty much my world right now. He keeps me real busy. I'm not going to lie, sometimes it gets lonely. Sometimes, I miss heading up to USU each day and the buzz of campus life. Sometimes I miss working with other teachers and trying to figure out how best to meet the needs of our students. Sometimes I miss the days when Eric and I could watch movies or have friends over without the worry of being too loud. And sheesh, sometimes I miss the freedom of hopping in the car and running to get a treat whenever the heck I want. But, then I just look at my little mister and I honestly don't mind that those days are in the past. A new future is here and it is a good one. I mean, doesn't this little face just make you smile?
As I sit here relaxing after another full day, with baby Hunter snoozing away, I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for the ways that He is blessing my life. That's not to say that life is always peachy-perfect. It's not. But life is good. It is so good. I am grateful for my Savior who is there for me through the lonely times and through the happiest of times. I was refreshed and renewed and inspired again this past weekend watching #ldsconf. I have a renewed energy to do better and be more like Christ. To bring a little more sunshine into the lives of others.
And with that, I'm signing off! Yay for blogging again. It feels good, real good.
"Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine."
