September 2018

School Pictures - September 2018

Olivia - Kindergarten

Ashton - 5th Grade

Kaleb - 9th Grade

This cabin weekend we found a new hike up to a small waterfall. Olivia loved to stop and pose for pictures along the way.

September 1, 2018

It's always fun being outdoors and checking out somewhere new.

That evening we walked down to the river to hang out. The kids love exploring and playing in the water. I loved how pretty the light was as the sun was setting.

The next day some friends came up to the cabin for dinner and we made a quick stop at the lake to kayak. It was kind of windy and cooler since it was already in the shade so we didn't stay long. The water level was also the lowest we have ever seen it since owning our cabin.

September 2, 2018

The garden continued to grow and the pumpkin plant and sunflower pot took over.

September 5, 2018

There was a pretty sunset when we were out working in the yard. It's nice to have 2 boys that can mow so I don't think I mowed more than once or twice all summer.

September 10, 2018

I love seeing different school papers come home. Obviously this assignment made use of descriptive words.

September 12, 2018

At my work we've had bunnies the last couple years that keep multiplying. A property behind us had some and they've taken over the neighborhood from what I've heard. Our tenants love having them around but they like to dig holes everywhere and obviously the biggest problem is the rate they multiply. We're working on catching them and taking them to the shelter but it's never ending. Olivia loves to try to pet them and can usually get pretty close before they run.

September 13, 2018

This was after their last soccer game of the season. I ended up coaching Kaleb's team at the last minute which made it hard to make it to the other games but it was a fun season. Ashton's team was usually short handed which meant no subs so he was usually pretty worn out after his games but he's really good at defense and scored a couple goals. Olivia loves scoring and going after the ball but she mostly enjoys socializing the best.

September 13, 2018

Another cabin day. Fall is my favorite time to be in the mountains with all the leaves changing colors.

September 22, 2018

Olivia the day of school pictures. She's always good about letting me curl her hair although lately she likes to have a say in how we do her hair which I usually let her pick and it usually involves no curling. :)

September 27, 2018

After our primary program the bishopric came in to play a game with the kids. If they couldn't remember the answer (and the questions were about the program) they had to turn the pie face game.

September 30, 2018

Matt ended up getting it once in the face. The kids thought it was hilarious to see them all get whipping cream on their face. I play the piano in primary so I've been in there a long time but I love it. It's fun to be with the kids and there's always so much entertainment from the things they do and say.

We celebrated Olivia's birthday at Sunday dinner the Sunday before her birthday. She wanted a Moana cake.

September 30, 2018

She loves everything about her birthday and always looks forward to planning every detail of how it should be.

We do taco Tuesday most weeks at my parents house and Olivia picked out this gift bag when she went shopping with my aunt.

August 2018

Matt's parent sold us one of their cars since they were leaving for a mission and so after having our Elantra for 15 years we sold it. It's been a great car that we only paid $4,700 for and still only had 126,000 miles on it. If Kaleb was closer to driving we would have kept it but we didn't want it sitting for 2 years.

August 1, 2018

The kids still love building blanket forts in the basement.

August 1, 2018

We decided to go miniature golfing at Mulligan's. Olivia wanted to hit the ball hard so there were lots of holes where it went outside of the green.

August 4, 2018

After we went to Leatherby's to get some ice cream. It's definitely one of the kids favorite places to get dessert.

Matt and I decided to go hiking for date night up above Silver Lake.

August 6, 2018

There were deer everywhere as we hiked up the mountain.

I had never hiked the trail above the lake but it was pretty to see everything from higher up.

This is at the top of the hike. We decided to hike down a different way through the ski resort which worked okay until at the bottom at a road with a huge moose in front of us. We didn't want to walk all the way back and you couldn't cut through the bushes anywhere so we just walked slowly on the other side of the road past him.

We spent another night in the Uintah's with the young women.

August 10, 2018

Matt was using his hat to try to catch a dragonfly for Kaleb's biology bug collection and accidentally dropped his hat in the water. Thankfully he was able to get it without having to go swimming.

Pretty sunrise in the morning.

Our garden did pretty well for what little we planted. We have 4 pots with raspberries, 1 pumpkin, 1 lemon cucumber, 1 banana pepper and one pot with Olivia's fairy garden that gets taken over by sunflowers every year even though we haven't planted any for years. They pop up from the seeds that fall each year.

August 14, 2018

Another soccer season was in full swing. Olivia knew a lot of the kids on her team from school and loved it. She would score most games.

August 18, 2018

This is how Ashton felt about back to school shopping.

August 18, 2018

Random bus backdrop at Wal-Mart.

August 18, 2018

Having a freezer full of bugs and spiders for Kaleb's bug collection was a little gross. Matt helped him catch this spider that had babies all over its back. This is before they went to the freezer.

August 18, 2018

First day of 9th grade for Kaleb. He has early morning seminary and then starts his day at the high school since he's a year ahead in Math. Due to the block schedule the high school does he takes 2 classes at the high school and then walks over the the Jr. High for the rest of his classes for the day. It's a crazy schedule with really hard classes but he does amazing and never complains about getting up early, even if he doesn't enjoy it. :)

August 20, 2018

Ashton's teacher is Mrs. Nilsson and she's really sweet. They're trying a new grading system for the older kids in elementary school and their whole grades are based on tests/quizzes. They still have assignments to learn the material but their grades are just based on tests. They also aren't your typical grades, A, B, C, etc. The grades now are AD, MA, NM, etc. that stand for Advanced, Mastery, Near Mastery etc. It's been an adjustment knowing what everything means but Ashton's always done great in school so he's still excelling and enjoying school.

The pumpkin vines quickly started taking over all the walkways between the pots in the garden area. It was crazy how fast they would grow.

August 20, 2018

Olivia wanted her picture in some dollar store Halloween stuff.

August 22, 2018

This was Olivia's second to last game and her whole team was there so we took pictures.

August 23, 2018

Some of the girls in my ward had a girls night and went bowling and to the Cheesecake Factory.

August 23, 2018

It was a weeknight and close to closing and they brought everyone of us a loaf of bread to take home.

We went shopping for Halloween decorations at At Home, in August which is clearly early for an October holiday and I was shocked to hear Christmas music playing! They were definitely the first store to get Christmas going this year.

August 25, 2018

We had tinfoil dinners up the canyon with some friends that were camping and I loved to see the pictures the girls took on their own photoshoot.

August 25, 2018

Olivia and Avaree get along really well and love playing together.

Olivia started kindergarten a week after the boys and she was so excited. She was bummed she wasn't going to get to eat school lunch like her brothers. She is in the afternoon class and her teacher is Mrs. Dow. She is such a nice teacher and loves the kids so much. Olivia did the upstart preschool program online the previous year which helped her tremendously and so she was already reading and doing 2 digit addition and subtraction so I was worried she would get bored easily but her teacher has made sure she has stuff to do on her level. We recently had a parent/teacher conference (Feb.2019) and her teacher said that when she has a substitute she writes down to just ask Olivia if they aren't sure what do to and she'll know what to do. She also helps a kid in her class and it's cute to watch her take his hand and walk him where he needs to be. She's definitely excelling and passed off all her sight words before they even started learning them and is reading simple chapter books during class.

August 27, 2018

Matt came to see Olivia off for her 1st day of school but all I remember when I see this picture is the speeding ticket he got on the way to the school! :) At least the cop hurried and let him make it in time. He also was generous to not write it for how fast Matt was actually going. He said he had no clue he was going that fast and that he wasn't used to driving the new (to us) car.

This kid always does his reading before bed which means he falls asleep reading quite often.

August 27, 2018

Matt sent me this picture of a snake in our carport. Gross, I've never seen a snake in our yard and hopefully I don't come across any. The boys took it over to the park around the corner to let it go so it wouldn't find its way back to our house.

August 30, 3018