Yes. . .we do still exist!

I usually try to do photos with posts, but if I wait much longer to post, I will have forgotten everything that has happened in the last two months!!!

August--Kids started school: Mitchell-Sophomore; Stockton-8th Grade; Parker-5th Grade; Brigham-3rd Grade. Mitchell and Stockton are running cross country this year instead of doing football. I think they will really enjoy it.

September--Brigham starts flag football in Laurel 2x a week. Mitchell and Stockton are doing really well in cross country. Parker is getting ready for a 3 day field trip to Yellowstone Park with his class. Cub Scouts is starting up again. Luckily, I have turned the Cubmaster position over to Sue and will no longer be running anything, yeah!!!!!

October--Fundraising, fundraising, fundraising. We sold pies, coupon books, popcorn and magazines!!!!! Cross country is almost finished. Stockton's last meet was on the 16th in Joliet, he placed 9th, yahoo!!!! Mitchell has qualified to go to State!!!!! He is very exicted to go as a sophomore, he has the 4th best time on the varsity team. His beginning numbers were in the 20-21 minute range and he has improved so much he was switched from JV to Varsity in his first year doing cross country. He set a PR at the Yellowstone invitational of 19.09. And this last weekend at the Joliet home meet, he toasted that record by running an 18.31 race!! The state meet is this Saturday in Helena, so we will be going over for that race on Friday and staying in Butte with Jared's brother.

I am sick, again, the dreaded cough has returned. Although, this time I went to the doctor after a week instead of 7 weeks. Of course it is viral, but he did give me something to help me sleep. Apparently, it is deep in my lungs so he prescribed an inhaler for me to use for the next two weeks. I have had the thing for two days and I'm still not sure I'm using it correctly. Who knew it would be so difficult to figure out! Unfortunately, I think I gave it to Jared (who never gets sick). Hopefully no one else in the family will get it.

Cavemen

We hiked up to Timpanogos Cave as a family while in Utah. The boys had a great time in the cave looking at all the cool formations. Here are some highlights.

Ready for the hike (had to waste 2 hours before our tour)

The Heart of Timpanogos

Do formations get any cooler than this?

Southern Utah Sites

I has been about 11 years since we have been to St. George. The last time I was pregnant with Parker, yikes!!!! I have a picture of Mitchell and Stockton in front of the St. George temple from that last trip and wanted to let them experience that beautiful place again. We spent one day going around to all of the LDS sites in St. George and learning some important history.

Brigham Young Home

Jacob Hamblin Home

What a view

The boys and I spent a couple of days hiking through Zion National Park this summer while down in Utah for a family reunion. It was soooooo HOT, but we had a good time anyway. Here are some great photos of our adventures.

Incredible. . .but TRUE

While Jared was out of town last week we had quite the event at our house. Parker had a headache one night (he gets them quite often) so he had some Tylenol and went to bed. At about 12:30 he came into my room and told me that his ear was hurting. Assuming he has a run of the mill earache, I start walking him to the bathroom to apply a warm compress. On the way to the bathroom he starts screaming that his ear hurts. We quicken our pace. He calms down just a bit and I get a warm compress on him and he starts screaming again (several cycles of screaming and then calm). I can see that he is in terrible pain and wonder what on earth is going on. The only thing I can think of is to heat some olive oil and put in his ear and then take him to the ER if he continues to be in pain. I heat some oil while he is screaming in pain and put a few drops in his ear. Creepy, beyond creepy, an earwig crawls out of his ear. That little buggar had been biting him!!!!! I can't even imagine the pain he was in with that THING in his ear munching on him.

Needless to say, once the bug was out, Parker was just fine. Although, I had the creepy crawlies all night and could not get to sleep becuase I kept "feeling" things crawling on me.

Parker, my hats off to you buddy, you ROCK!!!!! (This is not an actual picutre, but you get the idea.)

Billings Tornado

We were in the middle of breaking down our day camp site, which is about 5 miles from the Metra when it hit. We could see the storm moving in as we were working, but had no idea it would turn into a major weather event. Our crew that was heading to the storage shed in a U-Haul called us and told us they were driving straight toward it coming down the hill from camp. We evactuated to the Pictograph Cave building and waited it out there for about an hour. Earlier in the week we had a huge hail storm at camp with about 117 Bear scouts that we had to deal with. You could always tell when a huge storm was coming because the ranch owner's cattle would move into our lower parking lot because there is some shelter there from the cliffs. At the caves we could see to the south that another funnel cloud was close to forming, but it never materialized. It was a beautiful storm, I wish I had my camera. I will post a picture that one of the guys from our crew took.

Bears, Horses, Moose & Cranes. . .oh my!!!

It has been a "wild" week at our house. We have had more visitors than normal hanging out at our place. Last Wednesday we had a bear on our back deck, on Sunday a runaway horse decided to hang out around our house for a few days, Tuesday a moose was in our yard and then we had a pair of Sandhill cranes (a/k/a nosiest birds on the planet) making a racket in our neighbors field. Have I mentioned that I LOVE where we live??????