A perfect Fall day

Before and after wicker

Lookie what I did....

I painted and fixed up my old white wicker.

I like it.

Summer's first field trip

Summer went on her 1st field trip with her pre-school class to Lebanon Hills visitor center. They went on a nature hike and learned about trees, leaves, pine cones, squirrel nests, acorns, crows and other fun naturey things. Summer & Claire on the bus.
Learning about pine cones.


On their nature hike.

Tree Huggers!

The whole class.

Utah Football

Let me start by stating some facts:
1. Bart is a HUGE college football fan.


2. Bart went to the University of Utah.


3. Bart LOVES U of U football.


So when the Utes came as close as 3 hours away from us to Aimes, IA it was a no-brainer. Bart's brother Mark falls into the same category as Bart does when it comes to Utah football. Mark lives in Utah but flew out here and they drove down to Aimes together. They had a really great time and of course, the Utes crushed the Cyclones! Here are some pictures Bart took of their fun weekend.

Bart & Mark at the game.

You can see the final score of 68-27 behind Bart.

After they win the Utes sing the U of U fight song to their fans.

Applewood Apple orchard

Ahhh...It's that time of year again...Fall! Going to the apple orchard is just one of our families favorite fall activities. We love eating the Honeycrisp apples, the hay ride, the mazes, the apple brats, the mini-donuts and I love taking pictures of it all!

Dance

These next few posts are all about Summer. She's got a full schedule this fall and is really enjoying all the new experiences she is having. Summer has got some pretty great dance moves if you can get her to show them off to you. We've been privileged to see them a few times. So I thought I'd put her in a dance class to see if that talent blossoms into anything. Here she is looking all cute in her leotard and skirt. She loved her dance class and did a great job listening to the teacher and following directions.

Gymnastics

Summer has been asking for a long time to be in a gymnastics class like her sisters. I finally put her in one this year. She's really exicted to finally be in a gymnastics class and she's in there with her friend Sophie. All summer long she's been drinking lots of milk and telling us it's so she can be strong for gymnastics. I think it's working! And I think she's got some pretty good skills. Take a look...

Pre-school

Summer started pre-school this school year and she's really enjoying it. Thank goodness her good friend Claire is in the class with her otherwise she would've had a hard time going. She loves being in there with Claire and has started making some new friends too. Here is a picture of Summer on her 1st day of school and one with her and Claire.

Ready for school!

Yesterday was the 1st day of school and we were all ready for school to start. We all had a really great summer vacation. I planned a lot of fun things for us to do together and we did almost all of them. However, the kids were anxious to see and be with their friends, wear their new school clothes, and have a bit of a break from each other and from mom. I am anxious to get my house back in order (clean it!) and have some time to do things I like to do. Here are my cutie patooties on their 1st day of school.Kenzie in her 1st day of school outfit.
And she's all ready to go!
Ainsley in her 1st day of school outfit.
And she's all ready to go too!
And ofcourse, here's our cutie Summer who prefered sleeping in than seeing her sisters off at the bus stop. She starts pre-school tomorrow!

Washington 2010

Now that I've got the pictures up I'll write a description of our trip to Washington. This was our first time ever visiting the Pacific Northwest area. It really is beautiful. The very 1st thing I noticed as we flew in were all the extremely large pine trees...everywhere!

Thursday: This was our 1st day in town and we took my mom and Charles' boat down the Puget Sound to Blake Island. Here we hiked through the woods until we came to a very nice beach with soft sand and lots of seashells for the kids to collect. We spent a long time hanging out on the beach and we were practically the only ones there. We eventually hiked back to the lodge where they were cooking salmon by big fire pits for our dinner that evening. The salmon was delicious and even the kids loved it. After dinner we saw a short Indian show. Coming home on the boat back to Port Orchard it was dark out and we accidentally ran into a fisherman's net. Luckly, we quickly got it untangled from our motor with no harm done. We quicky learned to stay away from the other fishing boats that night.

Friday: This day we took about an hour long trip to Seattle on the ferry. While waiting for the ferry in Bremerton we played at a park next to the station. It had really cool water fountains and sculpted stones that the kids (and us) climbed and played on. While on the ferry we noticed lots of jelly fish in the water. The kids had fun counting all the jelly fish they spotted. While in Seattle we ate lunch along the waterway, walked through Pike's Market Place and took a monorail to the Space Needle. It was way too expensive and an extrememly long wait so we did not go up in it.

Saturday: It was a cloudy day today and we drove to Maple Valley about an hour away from my mom's house to see some friend's of ours, the Fuller's. Mackenzie and Mikell are really great friends and have continued their friendship even though they moved away from MN 2 years ago. We visited with them and went to see Snoqualmie Falls with them.

Sunday: Went to my mom's ward in the afternoon for sacrament mtg. then we went on a drive around the area. We drove to a cute town called Gig Harbor and walked along the dock there then to the nearby Kopacheck State Park. Here we hiked through more woods to get to a small rocky beach. It was high tide so it was even smaller. Again, we were the only ones there and we just relaxed on some drift wood while the kids played. That's another thing I noticed was that almost every beach we went to had lots of large driftwood on it.

Monday: We started our 2-day road trip today along the very western part of Washington. We first drove up to a small town called Sequim (but you pronounce it Squim) and quickly popped our heads in to a friend's dental practice. He and Bart went to school together and we visited with him for just a few minutes. After that we hiked again through some woods to get to the longest spit in the world called the Dungeness Spit. We walked along part of it. Aparently it goes out 5 miles and there is a lighthouse at the end of it.

We ate lunch in Port Angeles and drove on up the Olympic Mountain range to the Hurricane Ridge visitors center. We took about a mile long walk along a beautiful path through the mountains. It was gorgeous with all the wildflowers blooming and the coolest part was all the deer. They were every few feet more deer just wandering the path. And just right close to us a couple of times we saw fawns with their mothers. I loved this part of the trip the best. And the scenery was magnificent.

That evening we ate dinner and spent the night in Forks, WA. We stayed at the Dew Drop Inn where Stephanie Meyer had once stayed. I learned that none of the Twilight movies were filmed here but they sure are proud of their Twilight fame they have recieved. They have a tour you can take (we did not) that shows you a house that sounds like the description of Bella's house in the book, one that could've been the Cullen's house and other Twighlight places like that. All the hotels have at least one Twilight themed room and all the restaurants have at least one item on their menu that is Twilight themed. It really is a very tiny town.

Tuesday: Today started out with a hike through the Hoh Rainforest and a visit to a very large Spruce tree. We ate lunch at the Kalaloch lodge right along the ocean...vey good food. Then drove a short bit to Ruby Beach. This beach was gorgeous with lots of very picturesque rock outcroppings. We came while the tide was in and we spent a very long time walking/running and playing on this beach which had a rocky part to it and a sandy part to it. By the time we started walking back down the beach the tide had gone out and we discovered lots of really cool starfish and sea anemones.

Wednesday: For our last day in WA Bart wanted to go back on the boat on the Puget Sound. We boated around for a couple of hours and it was a clear sunny day that allowed us to get a great view of Mount Rainier. We had an overnight flight so we had a BBQ in my mom's backyard that night. Charles and my mom have made their yard beautiful with all kinds of beautiful flowers and a pond, with a bridge and even waterfalls. They kids had a blast playing back there.

Because of a few delays (traffic, wrong charge for our car, long airport lines, missed train to gate) we literally had to run as fast as we could to our gate. We made it to the gate at the time the flight was supposed to be taking off. Luckly, we weren't the only ones and there was still a line of people getting on the plane. That was a close one!

Overall, it was a great vacation. We did and saw stuff we'd never seen before and we all enjoyed our time with Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Charles!

Washington 2010

Here is the slide show of our trip to Washington. This slide show took me forever so you'll get a more detailed description of our trip later. Enjoy!

P.S. I tried to narrow it down but there are still almost 70 pictures. We did alot and saw alot!

P.P.S X out of that stupid ad so you can see the captions.