Father and Sons Camping in Heber

This past weekend, Bret, Anders, Tait and Finn headed to Heber for a yearly father and sons camping trip with other fathers and sons from our local church/neighborhood.  We decided Hans needed to wait until next year.  Bret would not have been able to have fun with the big boys due to the constant attention to Hans.  The highlight of the trip was Finn's ginormous fish he caught with his new fishing pole.  He was in heaven.  Finn loves to fish and asks to go often.  The last time the boys went fishing, he caught the 1st fish (typical) and then sat back and enjoyed watching everyone else.  He was completely content to catch 1.  Well, the one he caught this weekend was a lunker.  Check out his smiles in each picture.  I think my favorite was the one of all three boys in front of Bret's truck.  It makes me smile just thinking about it!  I asked Tait if he caught any with his new fishing pole.  He said the fish only liked Finn's pole.  He had an enormous fish on 2 times but lost it both times.  I love that even though Tait and Anders didn't catch anything, they still had so much fun and loved that Finn had such great success.  What amazing boys!  I just realized that is appears to be very apropos that we named Finn what we did!

Labor Day at the Ranch

Labor day weekend was spent at the Ranch.  What a beautiful weekend it was.  Poor Hans hit his nose and mouth on our wood stairs and looked so unfamiliar to us.  Poor thing!  He also was incredibly mellow for a couple hours.  Although it was more calm and peaceful than the usual overactive, opinionated little boy, we couldn't help but miss that crazy little thing!  We also had a chance to go boating at Palisades Reservoir thanks to Jess and Keri.  What fun.  The only problem was it increased our desire to be a boating family!!!!

Enjoying Palisades Over Labor Day Weekend

It's Football Season!!!!

It's here-football season.  The sounds of Al Michaels or John Madden gives me goosebumps!  Here are my two favorite football players and our future football star.  Anders is playing on the 9th grade B team.  It will probably be Bret's last year of coaching Anders.  Anders has improved so much this year.  Even though he still hasn't started growing in comparison to most kids his age, he has found a whole new confidence that has helped him so much.  He focuses on technique to help until his size catches up.  Their team is HUGE!  There are 48 boys on their team.  It is truly a tribute to Bret and coach Goold.  Those boys LOVE them and the parents love the lessons their sons learn beyond football.  That is why there are so many boys on one team.  There was supposed to be 2 teams but there were so many boys and parents that have had such great experiences with Bret and Coach Goold in the past, they had a hard time imagining playing for anyone else.  I'm proud of Bret and the person that he is.  He wants those boys to not only learn how to play football, but to have a fun experience before things get too competitive and they also are incredible examples of good sportsmanship.  I hope this helps everyone look past the fact that this year hasn't been as successful as all the previous years.  Playing 48 boys each game is a challenge.  They do a great job.

College football has certainly been exciting this year!!  How bout them Cougars!!!!  Go BYU!

S'mores with our family and the Ellis Family

Celebrating the End of Summer at the Ranch

We spent a beautiful end of summer weekend at the ranch with family.  Ken's friend Steve Ellis (who I also attended High School with ) and his beautiful family were there as well.  It was a typical, beautiful almost fall day in Star Valley, Wyoming.  Of course the kids had a ball as they always do.

More school pictures

School Starts

The first week of school was quite a crazy one!  Anna and Elli started on monday.  Tait started wednesday and Anders on thursday.  Tait and Elli are in elementary school, Anna in middle school and after finishing middle school, Anders has one year at the Jr. High before he heads off to high school.  I have three carpools this year.  Needless to say, my calendar is of tremendous use to me!  They were all so excited.  Anders went from a very small charter school with 50 students in his grade to an overflowing Jr. High with 1600 plus students.  It has been an adjustment for him.  He actually has adjusted very well.  He misses, however, the quaintness of his old school.  I also think he appreciates more the experience he was able to have there.  Anna is in her first year of middle school and loves it.  She seems so mature for her age and was very ready for the change.  Her aunt Keri got a kick out of hearing that in between some classes was her "4 minutes to socialize".  Here we go!  Elli is in 3rd grade and has incredible confidence and loves her teacher.  Tait started kindergarten this year.  Talk about confidence!  While in line, waiting to go into his class for the first time, another parent commented it looked like his child was going to be sick.  He then looked at Tait and said, "well, Tait's ready!"  He's a powerhouse.  He acts like he is 5 going on 35.  All in all, the start of school has gone smoothly and I'm enjoying my time at home with the little boys.  Now if only I could find a minute or two to quilt!

Summer Birthdays

Anders turns 14 and Hans turns 2.  It's so hard to believe on both accounts.  Anders is excited to go to a larger Jr. High next year.  A little nervous.  He does miss his Charter school friends and I think he realizes what a great opportunity that was to know so many kids and have the teachers and administrators know them so much as well.  He also loved his 8th grade core teacher and I'm sure he'll miss her teaching style.  It was perfect for Anders.  We appreciate the unique experiences he had there.  He looks so forward to the new chapter coming up in his life.  Every time I look at him I think he has grown.  My sweet and easy and peaceful little Hans has turned into me energetic, crazy bundle of energy.  WOW!  I thought I got off easy with my last one.  Either that or I thought I had perfected my parenting skills and had really done a number on this last one.  He has done what Elli did when she was 18 months old.  When Hans turned 18 months, almost to the day, he realized he had his own agenda and could enforce it.  It feels like he runs our household!  His eyes are always huge, like he just saw the greatest thing he has ever seen in his life-except he's that way all the time!!  He is completely excited about the world and enjoys every minute of it.  That also means he's into EVERYTHING!  I'm feeling old.  I can hardly keep up.  I absolutely crash into bed every night!  He loves animals, especially elephants and grandma and grandpa's horse Pepper.  He also LOVES tractors, loaders, back hoes etc.  Like Bret says, these 3 little boys will either keep us very young or cause us an early death!  We love them!

Miniature Golfing

School is about to start! Very bittersweet!  We decided to go miniature golfing for our Family Home Evening on monday.  Bret admitted it wasn't as he imagined.  Things are pretty chaotic with the 3 little boys.  It's a total free-for-all!  Anders and his new found, 14 year old, too cool attitude struggled to see the beauty in the little boys craziness and excitement, but oh well!  It was memorable and the crazies woke up the next morning talking about more golfing, or as Hans says, "more dolfing".

Gorgeous George!

Bret and I were so excited to have an opportunity to go see George Strait in concert.  We both absolutely LOVE him.  Not only do we love his music but what a classy guy!  We went with Bret's sister and husband, Keri and Jess and their friends Laura and Jonathon.  He did not disappoint!!  He sounds fantastic live and we all had a ball!  After the concert, we sat in the car for over 2 hours before we even moved a car length.  Perhaps USANA should do something about their parking situation.  That and the many inebriated groups around us had no effect on the overall excitement we felt at our first (and hopefully not last) George Strait concert!