Cookies are yummy!

We had a fun time making and decorating these cookies. Dallin didn't decorate any, but he sure ate a bunch of them. Paul decorated this tree and was so proud of it. I give him an A for abstract! Here is the whole lot of them. We tried to make an argyle pattern on one of the socks. It might not look good, but it sure was yummy!Dallin loves to wear hats now. He also takes any object and "talks on it" like a phone.
What a handsome boy he is!
Lately we have been finding random toys in our Christmas tree. Dallin loves to hang any sort of ornament of the tree and he pulls down our stockings and puts them on his feet. He loves Christmas decorations.

These are a few of my favorite things...

I love to sit, lay, and bite on mommy and daddy's feet, especially when they are trying to make dinner or clean up. I love to steal the oven mits from the kitchen and put them on my hands AND feet.

I LOVE my new Elmo slippers. On and off and on and off and on and off they go. And pants are SOOO last season!!
This is my all time favorite spot to sit. In the cupboard, by the breadmaker and canned food. Today, I got my pinky toe stuck in the lid of the bread maker. Mom laughed at me even though it hurt and I couldn't get it out.

Meanwhile, we've have had an early Christmas here in the Duncan home. We made an arrangement with Santa to be here early, since we will be in Utah come Christmas time. Dallin got his Elmo slippers, a few toys and a sweet pair of suspenders for church. Also, we needed to get our new camera before all those picture perfect moments disappeared. Thanks Santa!!

The projects never end...

Projects, projects, Projects. Regardless of what they are and if we ever get them done, we always have some project or another. Paul's latest project is a picture frame. He is building a 24x20in picture frame for our Temple picture that a group of friends gave to us when we got married. The poor guy is missing all of the tools that he had so readily available back in Utah. Some of you older folks might remember the old saws without electricity, the ones where you have to push and pull the saw over the wood to cut it. They still carry them in some stores and we were lucky enough to find one!!

My latest project is knitting. Paul bought me a kit and book on knitting for my birthday and I am now teaching myself to knit, or knot as I like to call the beginning stages. Although I have some ambidextrous qualities, I will always be a lefty at heart. I am trying to teach myself how to knit right-handed so that I won't have to knit any patterns, that I do try to tackle, backwards. As Elmo said on Sesame Street one morning, regarding the tortoise and the hare "Slow and steady... Slow and steady..." My knitting is knotting and my purling is pooling, but I still have hope. I will one day knit SOMETHING that will be recognizable.

Dallin's projects, of course, are ongoing. In fact, I don't think that his ever end. He is busy undoing everything that Paul and I do. He loves to unfold the laundry, but he does put it back in the basket for me. He loves to rearrange his dresser drawers, a rebel he is, putting the pants with the pajamas. But, I would have to say that his ALL-TIME favorite project is hanging my Pyrex casserole dishes on the wall. You may use your imagination on this one. Paul and I have become quite the power picker-uppers with this little goon running around.

Needless to say, we all keep quite busy.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Happy Halloween to everyone!! We had fun this year dressing Dallin up in a Chicken costume. Everyone called him Chicken Little, and for the fortunate one's, he did a little chicken dance. As per Duncan tradition, we carved a pumpkin and were very proud to display it on our porch. We thought that Dallin would get into the goey middle of the pumpkin, but he didn't want anything to do with it. I, Kristen, broke our digital camera a week ago, so we had to improvise with our methods of photography. We got some cute pics thanks to some friends and our trusty camcorder. We hope you all had a spooktacular night as well!!

I wanna be a cowboy baby!!

With Dallin's obsession with shoes, big and small alike, Paul thought it would be fun to get out his old cowboy boots. Dallin LOVED them, although he reminded us of a drunk cowboy when he tried to walk in them, haha!!

S'mores!!!

We grilled some burgers on a little grill that a co-worker of Paul's is letting us borrow and Paul put together some s'mores. We gave Dallin one and he LOVED it. We are still finding marshmallow all over the place.

Crazy Boy!!!

Welcome to the crazy world of a busy, busy boy!!!

He finally gets his own room, so I had to show off my first project for it...

He LOVES to help his mom fold laundry and tries to put his clothes on himself now... For some reason, this picture reminds me of Dallin's cousin, Sydney.
He also likes to TRY to take his clothes off by himself...
Poor guy's forehead met the door and then his eye met a heavy speaker that he was trying to carry... Doesn't he look like such a "big boy" in this picture???

Dallin has discovered the fine art of eating hotdogs with ketchup. He was covered head to toe, front to back... BATHTIME!!!

Dallin was very helpful while we were unpacking our boxes for the kitchen. He took care of all the paper very well. He has loved helping us take everything out of boxes that he can get his hands on. Yesterday, he grabbed a can of food from a box and dropped it on the tip of his toe. It took a good chunk of skin off the tip and luckily missed the bone and he didn't even cry. He just screamed a little to get our attention. Once he knew we saw what was going on, he stopped screaming and went on his way. He has also been quite moody lately, considering that he has four molars coming in. He loves to brush his teeth with his new Elmo toothbrush and freaks out when we take it away.


This is our back yard when it rains really hard. We actually had eight people die in Lexington from this actual storm. They say that it is unusual for us to get this much rain. It rained for three days straight and one night we thought that we were going to blow away. Kristen even put clothes and shoes by her bed that night. That was after Paul told her about the tornado watch. Scary!!

Unpacking is so much fun!

Hello one and all! We now own a house, and the bank owns us! We closed about a week ago and spent a week in an empty house with none of our boxes and such. We has some ward member bring over an air mattress, toys, a TV/VCR (Kristen has never watched so many Disney movies in her whole life), etc. A co-worker of Paul's who lives in our neighborhood brought over a card table, chairs, pots and pans. After three weeks in a hotel, we made it into our house. We actually missed the hotel a bit, the swimming pool, cable TV, the maids to clean up, and all the employees for Kristen to talk to during the day while Paul was at work. After a week of being in an empty house, we got our stuff. Boxes and boxes and more boxes and boxes. We have gotten the kitchen unpacked and are close to getting the family room done. We think that the only thing missing is part of the filing cabinet. Paul especially feels bad about this one because he worked so hard cleaning it up and painting it and turning it all into our computer desk. We are going to use our coffee table as our desk for now, but Paul says that he will make them replace the lost with the best, sturdiest filing cabinet out there. They also ripped our couch back in Utah and they are going to replace that. We found a hole in our green leather chair and are hoping that it is a new hole so they will replace it also. Hopefully, all of our ugly furniture will vanish and be replaced with beautiful, handcrafted, ornamental, high class........Ok, maybe something even a step up with what we are working with now. Back to the unpacking. Paul's company paid for packers and movers, so unpacking has been quite entertaining. Most things are packed nice and snug and in categories. But then we will open a random box here or there and there will be a single shoe, scrapbook paper, and an empty box of cereal all in the same box. It was nice watching the movers bring everything in and telling them where to put it for two hours. Fun times. Dallin thinks that it is Christmas with all of his toys arriving. He must have forgot about them and thinks that they are new. He sure had fun with the paper that everything was wrapped in. We do feel a little more at home in our house now that our own, familiar, things are with us.

It is rainy season here and with the creek in our back yard, things get exciting. When it rains hard, half of our back yard fills up with water. We thought that this would wash away the three inch gold fish that live there, but they stay put. We also find some frogs occasionally. We were thinking about lining the creek with rocks to make it a bit nicer. Then the storms came and filled the creek bed full of rocks fours inches thick in some spots. Half the work is already done for us, until the next storm.

We live close to Kmart, Lowes, Kroger (Smith's), and Wal-mart. This has been nice because being in these stores, we forget that we are in Kentucky until we go outside. We haven't gotten too home sick, however we do miss people to hang out with.

Dallin is growing upwards like a weed. He can't fit into his 12 month "snap at the bottom" shirts anymore. His bum is still tiny though. He still fits into his 6-12 month pants, although they are floods. We were barely into a new box of number three diapers when he started waking up soaked from head to toe, literally! We bought size fours and put those on him at night and then keep him in threes during the day. So far, in the fours, he has woken up with is PJ's dry. He gets around quicker every day and is quite the explorer. In a matter of two days he scraped up his shin, fell down our hill in our backyard, boncking his head, creating a small scab, fell down the stairs, and had a couple new bruises. He is a busy, adventurous, little boy. He still makes a lot of noise, but instead of the small words he was using (Hi, Mom, Dad, Bye, Supercalifragi- listicexpialidocious), he moves his mouth a lot and whispers mimically in regards to what we are saying, nodding his head the whole time. It is really quite entertaining. He does love to bark, moo, and meow. He also LOVES attention. When we go to the store or to church, anyone that talks to him gets a huge grin and a wave. Quite often he will launch is whole body toward the person, who then takes him. Not even two seconds later, he goes back to mom or dad. He plays hide and seek now. The best part is when we find him and he laughs his head off. He certainly keeps things going around here.

I am unable to get any pictures to upload at the moment. I will put them on in our next entry.

Until next time.......

A new discovery!

Today Paul and I were sitting with Dallin, reading and singing songs. Paul started whistling "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" or so I thought. I picked it up and started whistling along with him. We finished the tune off with a quite impressive harmonized rendition. After we finished, he said, "I was actually whistling the Abc's." Whoa! We then both started singing. Him "ABC's" and me "Twinkle, Twinkle". Ofcourse we sounded professional. We sure got a kick out ourselves. Amazing that our whole lives we knew both songs and yet never put the two together. We are nerds sometimes!!!

Where did all the hair go???

It was just supposed to be a trim. The hair around Dallin's ears was getting bushy and driving me nuts. So while Paul was at work yesterday, I pulled out the clippers and began to trim. For those of you who don't know, Dallin is a wiggly little boy. So for me to cut his hair without any assistance is very daring. I had planned to trim the sides and bottom just a little. I got the sides done without a hitch and took the guard off the trim the bottom. With a sudden and exaggerated jerk of the head, Dallin's haircut became quite complicated. It was like the first time that I cut my mom's hair and Kodi, my mom, and I were left in tears, laughing, when one side was ear length and the other side was chin length (it turned out to be a very cute cut when I fixed it, I received a lot of compliments and felt good about myself, haha). Anyway, back to the story. About half way up Dallin's head was a big bald gouge. I spent the next ten minutes fixing it and I think that it turned out pretty cute, just really short. Here are the pics....

The Daniel Boone Pioneer Festival!

If you have ever been to the Scottish Festival in Payson, you know what it is like. Now take that and times it by five, add a ton of incredibly delicious greasy food, and you get the Daniel Boone Pioneer Festival. To the left is a picture of Kristen and Dallin at the heart of the festival.

We spent the first little while looking at the booths. We saw some great antique Civil War memorabilia, some beautiful handcrafted rocking chairs, and some amazingly intricate quilts. They reminded me quite a bit of my aunt's quilts. We then went over to the gymnasium, which had the majority of the antiques and art. I found a great 100 year old copy of Longfellow's poems. I thought about getting it just because it was a cool looking old book, but decided to forget it. I think that I am having non-buyer's remorse.

Dallin then found his favorite part of the entire festival. The picture on the right is the best description possible. The "rocking bike" was great, and Dallin loved it. He sat on it until we made him get off. He was not a happy camper when we left without the bike. It was $85, which was more than we were willing to part with.

Now on to the best part of any festival like this: The Food!! First we start of with a delicious funnel cake, shown by our own loverly Kristen and Dallin below. For the unitiated, a funnel cake is made by drizzling a sweet batter into hot frying oil, making a criss-cross mesh of cake. The cake is flipped and cooked on the other side, and after being taken out of the oil sprinkled with a liberal layer of powdered sugar.

While waiting for the funnel cake (almost a full thirty minutes, but well worth it), I ventured to the roasted corn on the cob cart. They dipped the entire cob in melted butter, the only way to butter corn on the cob. After a few sprinkles of salt, pepper, and a little cayene pepper, my master piece was complete. It was delicious!

Kristen is going to finish the entry for me, because if I keep going it will be three pages long. So... here she is:

The end.

Camels in Kentucky...

I promise that this picture IS NOT photo shopped. Today we hopped in the car for a drive and turned on a narrow road that we had never been on. We saw corn fields and hay fields and barns and cows and camels.......wait a minute, those are CAMELS!!! They were chompping away in a field right next to cows. So naturally we took a picture.
This is a really cool picture of a sunflower. Paul took it in a field full of industrial pipes and equipment.

Where are all my cousins?

Dallin sat on the air conditioning unit at the window in our hotel room for five whole minutes (for a 15 month old that is almost unheard of, haha)watching two "grandma-ish" ladies load their car. We like to think that he is staring longingly out the window thinking about the cousins that we used to play with all the time. We are working on getting some kids over for him to play with. Kristen will even volunteer to babysit so that Dallin will have someone to play with (shocking, I know)!

Hello everybody, this is Paul. I've started the new job and am really enjoying it. Although this whole 9-5 thing is going to take some getting used to. That is over eight hours a day! I am just kidding, it is really going by quickly. Certainly no real complaints from me.

Things are very rainy this week in Winchester. We are starting to think that the sun never shines here in Kentucky. However, it is supposedly supposed to clear up over the next week. http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/40391?from=36hr_topnav_undeclared

We miss you all, and would love to hear from you. Ya'll take care now!

We made it!

We made it to Kentucky safely! It took awhile, with both legs of our flight delayed, a screaming and ancy 15-month old Dallin, and two bags of luggage delayed a day. But we are here! Paul took Dallin up to the cock-pit (we were on the tarmack waiting in the plane to take off for an hour) with the pilot's permission and got some pretty cute pictures. We are in a hotel until we buy our (hopefully ours) house, which will be a few weeks. We are excited to start our new life here! As we were saying our last good-bye to my almost 3 year old neice, she said, "Mommy, I want to go to tucky tomorrow." Anyone else can come, too! Paul starts his job at Nestle/Hot Pockets on Monday, he is pretty excited. Dallin and Kristen are excited to find something to keep each other busy in a hotel for 9 hours a day. Any ideas? We are having fun so far and we love Kentucky already.