October '19

Temperatures have dropped into the TEENS this week. Why oh why? I blame Obama and Trump. 

Anders and his friends have an Instagram account called the QT's. It's a tongue and cheek account about how cute they are, and even though I think Instagram is the devil, I follow the QT's and think they're pretty funny. And, Anders' friends are all pretty great and I'm thankful he has them in his life.  

I was pressured into doing this, and it wasn't that funny for me or Cade's mom, I think we mostly just felt weird about it. Teenagers.

Anders' Priest quorum + the bishop rode 50 miles from the Payson temple, to both Provo temples, to the Mt. Timpanogos temple and back home on a Saturday. They did baptisms at the Payson temple. Anders even passed by his cousins at an intersection in Orem, and another one of the boys saw his missionary cousin outside the MTC. It was a cool experience, and everyone's butts were super sore.

Home at last

YW In Excellence- Aani displayed her drawings

Addie displayed her drawings and viola

Nils and I went to dinner one night, and my food had a tree stuck in it. I dunno. But I LOVE SWEET POTATO FRIES. They're my current most favorite food.

We had a delightful trip to Moab over Fall Break. I really like Moab. A lot. We don't camp or bike because those things are complicated; we don't even wear Patagonia clothing, and still manage to love it. We stayed in a hotel, hiked, and bummed around town.

We hiked to the Corona Arch, which is way cool! It's not in a national park, it's just BLM land, so it's much less crowded than Arches and other popular attractions. The hike was really quite fun and scenic the whole way, and the arch is ginormous.

 Yoga in the field of cairnes.

Hold to the rod, children

We were probably a 1/4 of a mile away from it at this point- you can see the people underneath the arch for perspective on how big it is.

Burgers at Milt's with the rest of the world- we waited for an hour. 

Sisters- they were really doing this, but as soon as I got my camera out they stopped, so I had them reenact their cuteness.

Ward Halloween party. Who's the bigger nerd? The one dressed up as a nerd, or the one who 3D printed his own storm trooper costume? It's a real riddle.

The Priest quorum all gave talks on Sunday. Not pictured is Gibson, who was at the pulpit giving his talk. Pictured are Anders, Hyrum and Andrew. Also, Anders got a perm.

Whilst in Moab, we got some fun family pictures. This was near the trailhead of the Corona Arch- we hiked by it and thought it would be perfect. Aside from being crazy windy, we managed to get some pretty good pics. We were doing stupid, cheesy poses first, so that made the kids laugh a lot. It worked out!

'Tis been a good month! 

September Adventures

We headed up to the Idaho Falls area for Labor Day- the boys rafted the Snake River with friends and had all kinds of adventures. Us girls had a great time exploring the city of IF, hitting the farmers market, mall, the Green Belt, and we saw the Dora movie, which is actually pretty funny.

Road trippin' and so excited.

Just in case you've even been confused about this...gotta love rest stop bathrooms.

Anders stayed with the group of friends, so we exchanged church-going pictures on Sunday morning.

We did Cupcake Wars for FHE, and the theme was "seasons". I hate to brag, but I WON. Mine is the first picture of the bears roasting marshmallows, so I won for obvious reasons. :) 

Nils and the kids dyed the dog purple, so that's been fun. Lots of double-takes when she's seen in public. In the second picture, I was cutting her hair, and she was trying to hide from me in the basket. Nothing is easy with Pip, except dying her purple, maybe.

Anders went to Homecoming and had a lot of fun. He's got a good group of friends.

After 4 weeks and 1 day of online/homeschool for Addie and Aani, the school was deemed "done enough" for the students to enter. This has been quite the fiasco for everyone involved, mostly the poor principal and administration, but they have handled it well, and it will make for a memorable school year for sure. Half of the school still isn't done, like the auditorium, gym, etc., so everyone is improvising.

Where the lockers will be one day. :) 

Nils and the kids went on a walk, and the girls all hung on to him the whole time. Patient father.

We've had this flock of sheep grazing in the field and hills behind the house all summer, but last week they managed to jump the fence and were having a heyday in our yard and the land by us. Fortunately Nils was home and managed to herd them back to the field and fix the broken fence. They would have eaten everything in our yard!

Things are good. Just the busyness of regular old life, and a few random sheep and a purple dog thrown in there to keep things interesting.