December Sky

We've been having really nice weather lately and beautiful sunsets....
Here are the boys in the front yard-


And Kaitlyn and Jack in the back....

No snow yet!

Pinewood Derby...Chapter 2

The competition....

(Cameron's car is the black one with 2 green racing strips on the front row).

The weigh in....
This time we were right on!

Race #1....

his car went 7.9 mph.

Here he is with Grandpa, the "aircraft graphite" supplier, and Dad, the builder.

Cameron took home a cool medal and many happy memories!

Halloween

Okay, here are some pics of what we looked like on Halloween. This one is of our good friends Jane and Mark as Palin and McCain, but if you look closer, you'll see rodeo clown Chris in the infamous red wig in the background. (I forgot to get a picture of him!)

The "Queen of Everything"

"Kareem"

"Indiana Jones"

"Fairy"

We had a fun holiday!

Crazy Hair!

It's been Red Ribbon Week at school (Say "No" to Drugs).

This is how the boys looked on Crazy Hair Day....

They're pretty crazy! Hopefully they didn't like the hair too much...

One of them will be a teenager in a couple years!

Belagio Hotel Fountains- Las Vegas

Loved it! We stood there for an hour.

Vegas, Canyons and a Temple

We went to Las Vegas last week for UEA (school) fall break. Chris had a convention so we tagged along for fun. We stayed at the New York, New York Hotel. Kaitlyn and Cameron rode the scary rollercoaster that loops up and down and all around the hotel.

They loved the M-n-M's store the best. It was fun to see an actual NASCAR race car.

They were creeped out by this talking tree in the Belagio Hotel.

We went to Egypt...

And Paris...

Check out the first blog if you'd like to see a clip of the fountains at the Belagio at night.

Amazing!

On the way home we stopped at the Kolob Canyons in Zion's National Park. The red cliff walls don't show up as bright on camera. It was a beautiful place.

After spending time in "Sin-City" it felt so nice to visit the St. George Temple on our way home. It was the best scenery of the trip. And for all you Utahns...Mark Ubank (weather guy) was our

tour guide in the visitors center. As you can imagine, he tells the story of the temple and it's history really well!


Good times!

Hike

We went on a great hike last weekend up at Causey Dam near Eden. We were on a mission to see the Kokanee salmon run. We hiked for 1 and 1/2 hours until we found them.

When they spawn, they are bright red,

and easy to see, so Jack went after one...

Grabbed it.....

And pulled it out!

His bravery was impressive and fun to watch. What a funny guy!

He's off to the races!

Jack started Kindergarten yesterday!

Here he is with his good friend Stevie.

They've been in preschool together for the last 2 years.

He even gets to sit by Stevie.

He was so excited. He knew half the class already.

He did come home a little worried though because his class lost a gingerbread man that they had put into the oven to cook. Hopefully they'll find him today!

It's going to be a great year!

It's back to school time....Already???

Summer went by way too fast!

Kaitlyn and Cameron headed back to school today.

Kaitlyn is now in the 8th grade- yes, I said 8TH! Time flies.

She was excited to get back to the fun social scene at the junior high.

She spent some of her babysitting money on this cute backpack...

Cameron is now in the 5th grade- yes, I said 5TH!

It seems like he just finished preschool on the "COW" bus.

Again...TIME FLIES!

Before we know it, he'll want one of these!

I really missed them today and couldn't wait for them to get home and tell me about their day. Final report--they both had a great day and can't wait for tomorrow!

Next Tuesday I send my baby to kindergarten.

What will I do with all my time?

This is gonna be a long one!! (Bear Lake trip #4!)

We've been hanging out at Bear Lake for the last week and a half. We went up for Raspberry days and had fun spending time with friends and lots of extended family.

The kids spent a lot of their time playing in a tree on our property.

Sadly, on Saturday an airplane crashed on our beach as we watched. Chris was the first on the scene and the two people aboard did not survive. It was fortunate that it happened early in the morning because not very many people had set up on the beach yet. We are sad for their family and wish it wouldn't have happened.

Despite the tragedy,
We spent lots of time on the beach, soaking up the sun and playing. Jessie and Jackie brought up this cool water trampoline to play on.

Chris can build some wicked sand castles...

The boys can't get enough sand, which seriously penetrates their swim suits, so it cannot be washed out!

Kaitlyn did a "Spa day" with her friends on the beach.

This is how we set up each day ...

Chris left on Sunday evening so he could work during the week and I stayed up at the lake with my friend Shauna and her kids. We decided that we could live there if we needed to!


Kaitlyn and her friends Jessie and Sammy got creative with cat tails and weeds, weaving them into place mats.

Jack found a "baby cat tail named Thomas."

We even did some laundry- this is Shauna by her trailer.

We got creative with the campfire treats. Here we are making eclairs-complete with pudding and frosting-YUM!


When Chris was there on the weekend, we went on a great hike up to Bloomington Lake. It is a beautiful glacier-fed lake high up in the Cache National forest.

It had an amazing rope swing that our friend Jeff wasn't afraid to try, even though it is freezing water!

Cameron wore his funky hat that he picked up at the Raspberry Days craft fair.

Here are all of the kid's friends that we hiked with.


During the week, while our husbands were gone, Shauna and I decided to head up to Star Valley, Wyoming to visit her mom and ride some horses. It is a beautiful valley.

We even hiked up to the world's largest intermittent spring. It was beautiful.

Our adventures are quickly coming to an end with school starting next Monday. We have had a great summer and loved spending time together (even in a very small trailer for 10 days!)