First Snow

Around the first week of October it snowed for the first time. The kids were thrilled.

Funny Max

Max hate socks, even in the middle of winter I have a hard time getting him to wear them. So when warm weather shows up he is thrilled that he can wear his flip flops. This summer he decided that not only should he wear flip flops everyday, but they should always be different colors.


A week or into preschool Max brought home a bag or gummy bears, telling me excitedly "Mom you take them home and they sword fight!" I didn't quite understand and Max said again, "You sword 'em mom, they sword fight." I still didn't understand until I also saw this paper that went with the gummy bears.


Max was a little sad when he learned that his gummy bears were not to be "sworded," but rather sorted, but then I told him that he still got to eat them and all was forgiven.

A few day after that I found all of the kids playing around the large electrical box in my yard. They seemed to be having a great time so I went to check out their game. They seemed to alternately afraid of and trying to conquer the box, and I asked for further explanation from Max, who pointed at the this sign and said in all seriousness, "Scary monster in the box."

Who knew we were housing scary monsters right in our own front yard.

First Day of School

This year Mason is in first grade. He was excited for school this year, especially the chance to ride the bus home and have lunch at school.

His first few weeks of school were a little more stressful than I had anticipated. I was surprised when Mason came home each day very discouraged and unhappy. Mason loved school last year and I was sad that he wasn't loving things this year. Thursday on the first full week of school he got on the wrong bus to come home. Mason was quickly located, but there were a nervous few minutes where I wondered anxiously why no one had been looking out for my child. Friday I visited the school at the end of the day and felt further discouraged about Mason's classroom. On Monday after spending some time observing his classroom and praying for some direction on the matter I felt strongly that I needed to ask the principal for a class change. It was a fairly drawn out and stressful process, but eventually the change was made and Mason has enjoyed his new class so much. All of this drama happened while Shane was in Poland. I had to be the primary parent dealing with this problem. It was challenging and it made me really appreciate and miss having Shane for support.

Max's first day was about two weeks later. He is going to this wonderful little preschool in the neighborhood, and Miss Karla is his teacher. He was excited and a little bit nervous on the first day, but so far is absolutely loving preschool.


This last picture has nothing to do with school but I took it while Shane was still out of town. I told the kids that we could go out to dinner twice while Shane was gone. One time Mason could choose the destination, and one time it would be Max's choice. Mason had first choice, but this night it was Max's choice. I snapped this picture because I thought the boys were being so sweet to each other, but upon further inspection I discovered that Mason was trying to talk Max into choosing the restaurant that he wanted that night.

Labor Day

Labor day weekend we celebrated by taking a quick trip out of town. Shane had flown in from two and a half weeks in Poland on Friday night, and Saturday we celebrated Max's birthday, so Sunday we headed to Logan. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time taking our kids to some of our old haunts.



Shane wanted to show the kids the place where he and I got engaged. It was fun to visit although the kids were not as interested. The temple grounds were very beautiful.

On Monday we drove through the beautiful Logan canyon to Bear Lake. Shane had promised the kids that he would take them to a cave, so we visited Minnetonka cave. The kids thought the fact that they could go deep inside a real live cave was amazing. They were truly in awe, it was so fun to be on such an adventure with them.



On the way home we had the most unusual thing happen. Driving down the road we heard a loud crack and Max started screaming, I looked back to see Max's window completely shattered and falling in on him. Max's was incredibly upset and there were a few confused seconds where we tried to figure out what had happened. We found that something (we never discovered what) had hit the window and the safety glass instantly shattered. Max was seriously upset and kept crying, "My window came apart!" but thankfully only had a few minor scrapes. He was so upset after we finally got him cleaned up and calmed down a bit, Mason the sweet boy that he is, suggested that we say a prayer. Shane said the sweetest prayed thanking the Lord that Max wasn't injured. We drove home from the Bear Lake area a way we had never been before, so not only did we have a broken window most of the way, we also got fairly lost once, when Shane chose not to trust his navigator (me). I teased him quite a bit when the empty road that we were on turned to dirt without any civilization in sight and we had to turn back. The entire trip was quite an adventure.

Max Turns Four

Please forgive me I'm going to be playing some catch up with my blog. I wanted to write about Max's birthday in September. I just can't believe that he is getting so big. Max was sick during the week and Shane was out of town, so we just planned a simple family party. We were lucky to have my mom and dad come up for a quick visit, on his birthday, but we waited until the day after to have a little party since Shane was not flying back in (from Poland) until late that night. So Saturday with Shane finally home we had Shane's family over for cupcakes. It was a fairly simple affair but everyone had a good time.

Cultivating faith

Last spring we had a family night lesson where we talked about what a testimony is and faith. We talked about how both can start very small like a seed, but when properly fed and cared for can grow into something wonderful. That night we planted seeds in paper cups, and then a few weeks later we transferred those seedlings to the back yard. We also planted a few extra seeds just for fun. I was later so glad that we planted those extra seeds, because our first set of seedlings didn't make it, which could have been quite a blow to the effectiveness of the object lesson, but after a few days we saw a tiny green plant poking up through the dirt. It was a new seedling! Hooray! Mason carefully watered and regularly checked on his plant, and at the end of the summer was rewarded with this.