Family Photo Shoot

A family photo shoot is a hard thing to blog about because I love every one of the pictures we got back from our photographer. A day or two before the photo shoot, I asked the photographer if we could add Casey to some of our pictures. We had never taken professional photos with him in the shots and the photographer was able to get some good shots with him in them. Here are some of our favorites from the shoot.

 

We did the shoot on the trails pretty much across the street from our house. Our photographer also lives on our street. It was close, super convenient, and the weather actually cooperated. The only hitches were that the boys were done after the first pose and there was this boy that decided to ride by two different times with his dog(he was on a scooter or skates or something) and Casey decided to chase them down the second time breaking his collar in the process. After a few words from Danny, we didn't see the boy again. Our photographer wasn't happy with the results of the boys single head shots, so she let us come back a second time with just them and try again. The pictures of the boys above are from the second shoot with them. If you look closely, you will notice that they actually switched outfits from the original shoot(out of convenience).

Grand Canyon For Fall Break

For Fall break, we took a trip to the Grand Canyon. We have been looking forward to this trip for 2 years. We weren't able to make it to the Grand Canyon when Alyssa had her fourth grade National Parks pass, so we knew it was one of the first National Parks we wanted to visit when Ashley was in fourth grade. We decided to visit the south rim and quickly learned that because of how long the drive is and the lack of campgrounds close to the park that it would be better to go without our camper this time. We found a vacation rental near Williams, AZ that was big enough to sleep up to 10 people. We decided to invite Brian's family to join us and we were so glad we did. The kids always get along so well together and this trip was no exception. Having cousins around, made all of the walking and hiking a lot more fun for all of us.
We started off our explorations walking along the rim trail. We let the kids get close to the edge, only when there was a railing.

We brought the GoPro along and had fun figuring out how to take group pictures with our selfie stick.

These next two pictures were taken at the desert view tower located on the southeast side of the grand canyon. It was a long drive out there, but we were so glad we made the trip. We were allowed to climb up to the top of this tower and see the views. It was pretty amazing.

The kids had as much fun climbing fun trees and sitting on interesting logs and benches as they did looking at the big hole in the ground.

 It sure had some amazing views.

Our cabin was nice. The kids especially loved this porch swing and the fun games(including Corn hole and Chess).

On day 2 in the park, we decided to attempt a hike down into the canyon. I had researched hikes beforehand and decided that the most recommended hike was Bright Angel Trail. So that is the one we hiked. I was so nervous, at first, because the trail was not nearly wide enough and the drop off was so steep and far. But after hiking for a bit, I decided that I either got used to the drop off, or it wasn't nearly as steep as we hiked further down. We made it to this tunnel pretty quickly and had the goal of turning around at the second tunnel(which the sign claimed was about 3/4 of a mile from the trail head).

 Ashley and Lydi were not happy about this "no dogs" sign.

We never made it to that second tunnel for fear that the kids would not make it back to the top. As it was, we had to leave Alyssa sitting on the side of the trail. She was a little more affected by the heights than the rest of us and had headaches and upset stomach pains because of the sheer cliff drop offs. The kids did great and we all made it back to the top without too much difficulty. I had to carry Camden most of the way, but Tyler walked almost the whole time. After the hike, we had a picnic.

Shortly after we finished the lunch, we visited a lookout where we could see the trail that we had hiked. I labeled the points of interest below. The red line is the part that we hiked.

We visited some other lookout points along the west side of the south rim via shuttle bus, but had our experience ruined a bit due to a bus driver on a power trip who ended up kicking us off of his bus. We were kind of done with shuttle buses and lookout points after that.

Hermits Rest was the last site we visited. It was mostly a trail head, but the shuttle bus stopped there for 10 minutes, so we got off, used the rest rooms, and walked around a little bit. Alyssa found a book in the gift shop there that basically had different accounts of people who had died at the grand canyon. She commented that she wanted to read and not read the book. She was interested to know how many had died there and how, but didn't want to scare herself by reading it.
We got off the shuttle back at the first stop where we got on and were glad to be done with the shuttles. I thought it was cute seeing these little boys hold each others hands.

Brian and Maryn headed back to the cabin after that, but we stuck around a little longer to finish up the kids Junior Ranger Program. I think this is the 3rd or 4th Junior Ranger badge that they have earned. Camden missed out on earning his because he fell asleep.

Overall, it was a fun trip. We were glad that we finally made it there with our kids. We were especially glad that we had Brian and Maryn and family there to enjoy the weekend with us.

Cornbelly's Pumpkin Patch

We went to Cornbelly's again this year. I chose to take the kids by myself on a Thursday evening early in the season in order to avoid crowds. The weather was perfect and the kids hardly had to wait for anything. We had a lot of fun. Here are some of the fun things we did.

The cow train

Pretending to milk the huge fake cow

A huge bench swing

  Pulling a tractor

 They insist on taking pictures and every single one of these signs

 The corn crib.

We even walked through the corn maze(in the dark) which was a super hero theme this year. We ran out of time so we didn't walk all the way through, but we saw about half of it.

Catch Up

I am so far behind on blogging that it has been a little overwhelming to try and sit down and catch up. I'm going to attempt to get caught up. The girls have been having a good school year so far. They both love their teachers and ended the first term with a 4.0 GPA. We got to attend Alyssa's 6th grade devotional last month and she did wonderfully with her part. She said that they each got to write their own speaking part for it and you could really see their testimonies come through as they shared stories and experiences.

Alyssa also had her big Egyptian Mask Celebration last week. I got to be there to help 72 6th graders plaster their faces to make their masks. It was a lot of work, but fun to be a part of. Here I am working on Alyssa's face. All she had was a little hole at her nose to breath through. She was nervous, but did great.

Alyssa also had her "Fiddler on the Roof" production last week. She did such a great job with the 4 scenes she was a part of. We had seats on the front row and that still didn't hold the boys(and even Ashley's) attention for the whole play. I had to leave with them at intermission and come back another night to see Alyssa's last scene. The play was well done, but we are so glad that it is over and that we will have Alyssa around more often.

Somehow, I ended up in charge of buying and making the food for our back to school Fall Festival. It was super stressful and a lot of work and I was so glad when it was over. Ashley enjoyed spending the evening with her best friend at school, Kaci. They got their faces painted like dogs and were so cute.

Tyler is having a good year of preschool. Somehow he ended up in a class with 11 boys and 1 girl and 9 of the kids in his class had birthdays in October. I don't know how it is so lopsided, but he is in the same class as a couple of boys in our Ward and seems to be enjoying his teacher and going to class.

He had a field trip to the fire station in September. They talked about fire safety and then looked at the fire trucks.

 In October, they had a field trip to the pumpkin patch. They loved the big slide...

 They got to pet some animals...

 Climb on some tractors...

And play in some corn.

Danny had a mission reunion about a month ago that we were able to attend. He didn't know a lot of the missionaries there, but he had fun catching up with the few that he knew and he enjoyed seeing his Mission President and wife.

 We took Casey to Dog Days in the Thanksgiving Point Gardens again this year. The kids always enjoy taking him to new places and letting him interact with other dogs. We went on a Monday night, so we waked through the Light of the World Statues and counted it for FHE.

Back to School

On the last day of summer, we partied. We started off the day with and early breakfast at Black Bear Diner. We started this tradition a few years ago. We wake the kids up at the time we wake up for school in order to get them ready for the first day. We figure if they wake up early then they will be ready for bed early and thus, ready, for the first day.

After breakfast, we headed home and got on swimsuits for a fun day at Cherry Hill(a family fun center/water park). We didn't tell the kids where we were going beforehand and they had a lot of fun trying to guess what we had planned. All they knew was that it was something to do with water. In fact, when Ashley broke her finger, her biggest concern was being able to still go to the "fun place" that we had planned to go to. We went and just let her get the wrap completely soaked. Her hand was so wrinkly by the end of the day. We didn't take any pictures at Cherry Hill because we were too busy having fun, but the kids were sad when we said it was time to go home. After all, keeping them out late would have defeated the purpose of waking them up early that morning.
The first day of school came and went. The girls are in 4th and 6th grade this year. For the first time ever, they have male teachers. It seems to be going well so far. Ashley was quite sad that she is not in the same class as her best friend, again. But they still find time to play during recess and after school.

As happy as Ashley looks in this picture, she was actually quite anxious for school to start again. She was sad to loose the freedom of summer, but her biggest concern was how to get past the uniform policy about her black wristband that she has worn since first grade. In past years, she has hidden it under a sweatshirt, but she really did not want to face another year of having to always wear her sweatshirt at school. So Danny went and talked with the principal(who happens to be in our ward) and got an exception to the uniform policy for just her. She was so happy and has been better about going to school. She still doesn't like all of the work, but she is doing okay so far with the work load.

Tyler started preschool a week after the girls started school. He goes 3 days a week for a couple of hours each day and has a class of 12, all boys except 1. Two of the boys are from our ward, so we were able to work out a carpool with them, which has been nice. So far he loves his teacher and going to preschool. He especially loves to show me the things he has made that day and what he learned.