Fall

This is my favorite time of year. I love the warm days and cool nights. I love the colors of the trees. But I don't love Halloween. Don't worry, I put on a happy face for my kids and I will post about Halloween after it is over. But for now, I want to share with you some of our fun fall pictures. Every year we make sure to drive up Payson Canyon (Nebo Loop). If you want to see a few more and read about a new easy hike we found, check out our other blog Utah Valley Family Adventures. We have a picnic and then we collect leaves for the boys to use in art projects or just to enjoy. It was a beautiful day this year and we got some great pictures!

The mountain looked so beautiful with all the colors!

We followed this Monarch butterfly around for awhile.

Our picnic

Dax taking a 5 second break from throwing rocks into the stream.

I love this picture because they are both showing their cheese face,
 but neither one is looking anywhere near the camera!

I thought this tree looked so beautiful next to the blue sky!

Mark! He is so grown up.

What did you do at work today?

Hey, this is Randy . . .

Going to work every day can be a grind-- unless you have a job like mine. As part of our school fundraiser (we raised $20,000) I agreed to wrestle our principal. Of course, we agreed to wrestle Sumo-style. There was significant showboating before the match started. I was even placed under a curse by our secretarial staff, but I managed to come away with a victory, winning 2 out of 3 falls. (The fall I lost really hurt, though. Don't let anyone tell you these suits are too padded to let you feel anything!)

Showboating

The Curse

Suiting Up

Ready to Rumble!

This is actually what I look like in a thong.

Victory on the first fall

Adding insult to injury

That Hurt!

The Champ (My principal admitted he took a dive to get out of that suit!)

I took a cheap shot

All Glory, Laud, and Honor-- but especially Laud!

Victory is Mine!

Apples

A few months ago, I posted about raspberries at my mom's house. Well in September and October it is apple time. So my boys and I headed up to grandma's house to pick apples and make homemade applesauce--our favorite treat. There were a ton of apples just waiting for us to pick them. Unfortunately, it rained the entire drive up, through the night, and the next day. We tried to sneak out when it was just sprinkling, but it was so cold that our hands were icicles after about 3 minutes. We hurried the kids back inside and decided to work on applesauce from the apples that had already been picked. Mark loves to turn the crank on the food mill and Dax had fun pushing the apples down. We made 20 quarts of applesauce--it was fun and crazy! My mom deserves a medal for patience for letting us monopolize her kitchen for two days.

Tons of apples!

We were freezing, but having fun. That's Abby, my sister's daughter, out there with us!

Mark cranking the food mill.

Dax mashing the apples.

The next day was a little bit warmer, although still rainy, so we headed out to pick apples to take home. We filled up a huge basket that is now sitting in my basement keeping cool. The boys will eat 3-4 apples a day. They love the apples from my mom's tree. I have made an apple pie and plan on making many more. And we have already eaten two quarts of applesauce! Thank goodness for grandma's apple tree.

Abby and Dax had to have their own blue buckets--see below.

Dax's bucket.

Dax would run to throw his apple in the basket--yes, we have quite a few bruised ones!

Picking more apples. Mark took his job very seriously.

This is the bucket we filled with apples--Dax couldn't budge it and it is only 1/3 full.

Families Forever

Since it has been forever since I blogged anything, I am going to take a quick minute and tell you about something fun we have been doing at our house. We live near a lot of LDS temples and luckily, my boys love to see the temple. So Randy and I decided to make them a little temple book--like the temple book we have. When we got married, we made a book with a list of all the temples in the front. Every time we go to a temple, or stop and see one, we take a picture to put in our book. Then we highlight that temple on the list. We have been to over 20 temples in our 9 years of marriage. This is a popular book for the boys to look at in our house. So we created a temple book for Mark and Dax with those photo books you can find for a dollar or two at Target. They LOVE them. They each have about 6 temples in their books (Mark has a few more than Dax since he is a few years older), but we try to visit a new temple every once in awhile so we can add a new picture to their book. It is a great way to talk about being together as a family and preparing now to go to the temple. And they are awesome for taking to church for quiet books. Here are a few of our recent temples.

The boys are the Oquirrh Mountain Temple (west of Salt Lake City).

Dax at the Provo temple--I love his big smile!

Mark by the Manti temple--this is probably his 5th time with a picture by this temple!
But it is a family favorite since Randy and I were married here.

Okay, I know this isn't a temple picture, but Mark and Dax love their new little cousin, Aiden,
 and I thought this picture was adorable.

OUR first day of school

Randy headed back to school on August 23rd. Well, he really went back the week before since he is a teacher, but that doesn't count since we could still go and play in his classroom and he was home around 3 PM.

I decided to do something fun to distract the children from the fact that dad was no longer home all day long. So we headed to the Zoo. I love Hogle Zoo and so do my children. We had fun digging for dinosaur bones, even though Dax cried every time we walked past a dinosaur. And we had some exciting experiences with the animals. The tigers were very active. One was bathing in the water and another was pacing right in front of the glass. Then he would turn and look at the glass (I don't know if they can see through it or not), and all the children would squeal because he was so close! The gorilla came outside and climbed up right when we happened to walk by--this is exciting because Mark loves the gorillas.

Anyway, we are having a great school year. Randy is busy and we miss having him home all day, but we like the routine of life that somehow melts away in the summer. Here are some pictures of our first day of school.

Mark digging for bones!

Love the carousel!

Tiger close-up!

Enjoying a bath.

Our gorilla friend.

Bowling

Dax requested we go bowling when he filled up his potty chart last week, so we decided to go. Yes, he is potty trained. I hadn't planned on potty training until he was at least three, since I had such a hard time with Mark. Dax had a different plan. He basically potty-trained himself. So after he filled his first potty chart, we headed to Jack and Jill Lanes in Lehi for some fun times. Here are a few of our memories.

Mark is very focused--that is probably why he won!

Mark getting a strike!

Dad complaining about how the bowling ball doesn't have big enough thumb holes (he was just looking for an excuse since Mark was beating him).

Dax insists on carrying the ball himself.

We love bowling.

Sunflowers

We have been growing lots of things in our garden this year, but we decided to try growing some sunflowers. My sister Melanie and I had the kids plant seeds in little pots so they could get started early. My boys had fun watering the little peat pots and watching their sunflowers grow. We finally decided they were big enough to move outside. Unfortunately the next day there was a huge wind and rain storm, and none of the sunflowers survived. My boys were so sad. Luckily I had a huge bag of mammoth sunflower seeds in my church primary closet, left over from an activity. So I took one home and we planted it. Nothing grew for a long time, but one day when I was weeding I noticed a little plant. A few months later we have a 10 1/2 foot tall sunflower. It is a big attraction at our house (the boys run and check on it every day) and everyone who comes to visit has a comment about the sunflower on the side of our house. And, there is a two foot sunflower trying to grow in the shadow of our mammoth sunflower--one of our original plants is trying to make a comeback. We will have to see how it does. Check out our sunflower!

Dax's eyes were closed, so I tried another picture later.

Now Mark isn't looking, but you can see how big the flower is compared to the boys and our 6 foot fence.