September Happenings

Our random happenings for the month start with a picture Bryan sent me when he was TDY in Tucson, AZ.  Check out the temperature!  (And that's in September...what must it have been in July and August!?)

Miles found this black plastic tube somewhere--I don't know what it is from--and he decided to use it as a prop like from an Egyptian sarcophagus.  Ha!

And our sweet Tess likes to go outside and do this on the back window.  Funny girl!

Oh, our Parker dog is pretty patient.  He puts up with all sorts of abuse from Tess.  What a good dog. 

And Bree, ever creative, asked if she could decorate her own shirt.  She is always decorating her face with markers and paints because she loves to color, paint, and draw.  We found an old hand-me-down shirt from Tess and let her go to town with her markers.  She loved it!  (And it looked really cute too!)

Finally, we took our annual drive up through Sardine and Logan Canyons today to see the gorgeous Autumn leaves.  We also make sure to stop by Gossners for milk and cheese, Pepperidge Farm for crackers and cookies, and Casper's for ice cream!  Yum!  Here is a picture at beautiful Second Dam in Logan Canyon.  I love Cache Valley!

Women's Conference

The LDS General Women's Conference was tonight.  The Stake asked our ward, along with another ward, to be in charge of decorations, refreshments, and advertising for the broadcast.  I was asked to be on the committee.  I actually did the advertising part of it, and created the image for the posters/flyers.  But the decoration committee also asked me if they could use my bike for part of the decorations!  I was flattered.  My old bike has been around the block a time or two, starting in 1998 in Copenhagen Denmark!  I loved my bike so much that I brought it home with me after my mission.  I have had a bike trailer hooked up to it non-stop since Tess was 6 months old and we've put lots and lots of miles on that thing!  (In fact, we just sold the bike trailer this summer since Bree rides her own bike perfectly now.  It was pretty bittersweet to get rid of it!)

Here is Tess with a friend from school, and my bike in the background.

Arrowheads

For a Bear Scout activity, we took the boys to the workshop of a man, Mike Sjoberg, who makes and sells arrowheads.  He gave us a little tour of his shop and showed us some neat tools (his parents owned an antique shop all of his life, so he had all sorts of old and interesting things to see.)  Mike and his wife are "rock-hounds";  they search for obsidian together and then he makes arrowheads and sells them at rock shows.  He also had lots of geodes, petrified wood, and even fossils!

This is a fossil of part of a vertebrae.  I'm not sure what type of animal it came from though.

He let each of the boys have a bit of obsidian to try and carve their own arrowhead.  It was a lot of fun!

Frightmares!

We went to Frightmares at Lagoon for the first time last night.  It is a lot of fun!  Almost all of the rides are still open, plus they have several haunted houses to go through.  There is a rating of 1-5 "spiders" with a "1-spider" meaning not scary at all and a "5-spider" meaning absolutely too scary for children.  We went through a "3-spider" haunted house with the kids and I think it was too much for them.  (I don't love haunted houses either, so it was just about right for me.)  Then we found a few "1-spiders" where the kids just walk through and see people in costumes.  The workers even give out candy in those ones!  I think I'm a 1-spider kind of gal.  There were also lots of great places to stop and take pictures.  

This picture is funny to me...  Miles stepped into the coffin and began making a creepy face for me to take his picture, but then a Lagoon worker--dressed up and with red contacts in his eyes--jumped around the corner to scare Miles!  He screamed and jumped, then laughed. 

Here are the kids doing the "walk like an Egyptian" dance in a 1-spider.

Fun time!

Nature Center Field Trip

I was happy to be able to go along with Bree on her 1st Grade field trip to the Ogden Nature Center.  I only had to chaperone 3 little girls, so it was pretty relaxing.  Here are Bree and one of her cute little friends.  I love when kids hold hands and be buddies, especially without any prompting from anyone.  So sweet!

For one of our activities we went "bug-catching."  Everyone thought it was funny when they spotted a praying mantis on another mom's sunglasses!

Here the kids are learning about predators and prey.

The teacher is showing the kids a fox skull and a deer skull.  She talked about the difference in their teeth and in the placement of their eyes ("Eyes in front, they like to hunt; eyes on the side, they better hide!").

Peaches

I found out peach trees only produce peaches every other year.  (There's so much I don't know!)  We had a lovely big crop last year, so I wasn't expecting anything this year.  Boy, was I wrong!  While we did not get nearly as many as last year (last year we got enough to bottle 40 quarts!), we did get a basket of beautiful, HUGE peaches to eat fresh.   They were so delicious!