Introducing the Newest Member of our Family

About 5 months ago our van started acting up. We decided it was probably time to replace it. It took a long time for me to decide on what kind of car I wanted to replace it with. I got it narrowed down to the Chrysler Pacifica and the Hyundai Santa Fe. Then in the process of deciding, my van's battery died so I had to drive our Tahoe around for about a week. After driving the kids around in the Tahoe, I decided that I really wasn't ready to give up on the convenience of my mini van with young children, so we settled on the Pacifica.
Once we had it narrowed down to a specific car, then we started a more specific search for the right car. This is the one we settled on. It looks black at night, but in the sunlight it has kind of a maroon sparkle to it. I love the new car and have really enjoyed all of the new features it has.

Alyssa and Middle School

Alyssa decided to join her school cross country team this year. She enjoyed running, but learned that she does much better at shorter distances, so she is looking forward to trying track and field out in the spring. She did enjoy being part of a team and being forced into exercise every day. The only bummer was that she injured her foot at the first meet and ended up having to rest her foot and sit out of practices and meets for a couple of weeks so she missed a fourth of her season.

Alyssa is part of the beginning orchestra at her school. When she started school, she had never even picked up a string instrument and now she is able to play recognizable music. She decided to learn the viola because it isn't one of the big instruments and she thought it would have less competition than the violin. She had a concert in the middle of October that I was able to attend. They did a good job considering they had only been playing together for a little over a month. She especially loves having her good friend, Olivia, in the orchestra with her.

It's fun to see her try new things at her new school. She is doing well in all of her classes and seems to like her school.

Labor Day Fun

On Labor Day, Gawbie and Grandpa invited us to join them on a short hike around Silver Lake(up Big Cottonwood Canyon). It was supposed to be a half mile walk around the lake. The weather was beautiful and the kids had fun exploring.

However, as we were walking around the lake, we got sidetracked by a trailhead. It didn't seem too difficult(after all, our kids had hiked to the Y and Danny and I had just hiked to the top of a mountain). The hike was a little harder than anticipated and we certainly were not dressed for a full on hike. As a result, my nice running shoes and Tyler's school shoes ended up super dusty. And Camden's shoes would not stay strapped so they kept falling off of him. We did see some fun wildlife and scenery along the way.

 

When we got to the destination, some lake that I cannot remember the name of, I walked around the lake a bit with Alyssa and we found this cave.

So we called the others to come explore it with us. It had a pretty narrow opening, but you could stand all the way up inside.

 While the others rested...

I took the girls down close to the water. They had fun wandering around and I was just glad their feet didn't end up in the thick, quicksand-like mud.

Our hike ended up taking much longer than we had anticipated and we were super hungry by the time we got back to our cars. So we got linner at Black Bear Diner.

It was a fun day, enjoying the last bit of summer and warm weather. We are so glad that Gawbie and Grandpa invited us to join them.

We Came and We Conquered - Mount Timpanogos

Two years ago, Danny had the opportunity to hike to the top of Mount Timpanogos with the young men. I didn't tell him beforehand, but this was one of the items on my bucket list and I was SO JEALOUS!!! When he got home, he was exhausted. He told me later that day, "Never again." I replied "But I really wanted to do this hike. Who is going to go with me if you don't?" It took him 2 years to forget the pain that this hike caused (he seriously struggled to walk for like 3 days), but out of love he did it again with me this summer. We had planned to get his fitness level up to the point of being more prepared to do it. However, we didn't end up doing anything (except for one hike to the Y and sending him on Trek).
The hike did not disappoint. We left at 2 am, hoping to beat the crowds and be able to park in the trailhead parking lot. We had invited multiple people to join us, but on hike day, only 1 other crazy couple joined us- Aaron and Rachael Hales. We are so glad they did, because we got to know them really well and talking with them passed the time more quickly. We were not early enough to reach the summit by sunrise.

It looks so close in the picture above, but it was still quite a climb to get up there.
When we got up to the saddle, most of Utah County was still in the mountains shadow. Oh, and it was soooo cold in the wind up there.

The trail at this point was mostly rocks, like stepping up a bunch of rock steps. There was a bit of a drop off to the right.

We made it to the top around 8:15am, if I'm remembering right. The view was AMAZING! But it was super windy and my whole body was shaking from shivering. I could hardly even take pictures because I was exhausted and I didn't want to take off my glove to work the camera. This is the Utah County side of the mountain.

And here is the Heber Valley side, with Deer Creek there in the distance. I was able to find a nice sunny rock looking off in this direction with a bit of the mountain behind me, blocking the wind.

After sitting there for 15 minutes, my body finally stopped shaking. I didn't want to leave my perch, but Danny talked me off of my rock to take some pictures and to sign my name on the white shack.

I did take this video right after we got up there, before I started shaking so bad I had to retreat to my warm rock.

The hike up to the top, really wasn't that difficult, in my memory. It was especially cool to hike in the dark, with only our head lamps to light our way. I didn't enjoy the long stretches of hiking over medium sized rocks(like the kind of rocks that aren't big enough to fit your whole foot, but too big meld into each other to make a flat surface for your foot. In other words, my ankles took quite a beating during those long stretches.
The most difficult thing for me was hiking back down the mountain. The first stretch, on the rock steps, was so hard on my knee joints that one of my knees was bothering me quite a bit by the time we got back down to the saddle. And unfortunately, we still had like 6 more miles to go. Then, I started to feel a blister forming on the toe of my other foot, so both legs were giving me trouble. Danny wanted to run down the mountain, but the rest of us were not up for that. When we were probably a mile from the trailhead, we gave him permission to take off and get the car from it's parking spot about a quarter mile from the trailhead. We did make it to the bottom before he returned with the car.
The kids were very kind to us for the rest of that day, letting us sit and rest while they fetched things for us, especially from upstairs. I had put a pork roast in the crockpot for them to enjoy for lunch which did not cook the way it was supposed to and ended up being completely burned by the time we got home. We ordered pizza for dinner and had it delivered to our house for the first time, ever. We introduced all of them to the movie "The Three Amigos" that night. Danny and I would cringe and look at the girls every time we heard a cuss word or some kind of crude joke. I think most of them sailed over their heads, but they picked up on a couple of them, including an fairly inappropriate joke that, to our horror, Ashley repeated for Gawbie and Grandpa the following week over Sunday dinner.
I'm so glad that I got to experience standing on the top of such a tall mountain. We hiked about 15 miles that day, climbing and then descending about 4500 ft. On that day, I told Danny that he never had to do this hike again, but now that some time has passed, I would be willing to try it again if the opportunity ever presents itself.

Family Hike to the Y

In preparation for our(Danny and I) hike to the top of Mount Timpanogas, we went on a family hike up to the Y. The last time we did this was probably 2 years ago. On that hike, Danny and I both carried a boy in a hiking backpack. Not this time, though. Both boys hiked all the way to the top of the Y and back down. We were so proud of them both. They did so well. In fact, the one that struggled the most on the hike was our child we didn't even think would complain about it, Ashley. Her body seems to shut down, a bit, when she is hot, and it was pretty hot that evening.

We took lots of rests on the way up, but they did great.

The view was amazing, and somehow we timed it perfectly to be able to watch the sunset from up there. Actually, now that I think about it, we didn't plan it that way. Tyler went to this pond with one of his buddies from preschool and they ended up bringing him home an hour later than they had told me they would. That put us behind schedule by an hour, which ended up giving us the opportunity to watch the sunset from the mountain.

 We sure love these 4 kids.

Unfortunately, the late start also made for a very late dinner. I think we ended up at a pizza place eating around 9pm.

Tyler and Ashley - First Day of School

Ashley and Tyler started school on the Wednesday following Alyssa's first day(a Friday). Tyler is in half day, morning, kindergarten with Mrs. Bingham. Ashley is in 5th grade with Mrs. Cory.

We were late on the first day because a drive that normally takes us 20 minutes, took 45 minutes on that first day. The traffic has been awful because they are doing construction on the freeway onramp. Now that we are 6 weeks into the school year, the traffic is finally getting better and the drive is back to being 20 minutes again. It was embarrassing to walk Tyler into his classroom so late that morning, but fortunately I know his teacher pretty well and she was nice enough to stop class for a minute to let me take a picture of Tyler sitting at his desk.

After walking Tyler to class, we went out to the field to watch the beginning of year flag ceremony and cannon blast. I got a picture of Tyler as he walked past us.

 I got this picture off of the school website. Ashley happens to be front and center.

Both Ashley and Tyler are having a great year, so far. Tyler loves kindergarten and his teacher. They are teaching him his letters so quickly and he really struggles with writing, so I'm noticing that he is starting to fall behind a little. I am trying to work a little extra with him to keep him caught up. He is still struggling with holding the pencil the right way. Ashley is just enjoying being with her friends. She has her best friend in her class again this year for the first time since 2nd grade, so they have both been enjoying that.

Alyssa's First Day of School

Because Alyssa is at a new school this year and it is her first year of middle school, she got to start school extra early. On the Friday before school was supposed to start, her school had a 7th grade only shortened day, just to get those 7th graders used to switching classes and being at a new school. It was a surprise to us when we found out about this only 2 days before it was supposed to happen. We had to change some end of summer celebration plans around to make it work.

She met up with some of her Ward friends outside the school before they all walked in together.

She made plans for her backpack back in June and we worked on it all summer long. It took some effort to find just the right color of backpack. We bought some of the patches and the others I made on my brand new embroidery sewing machine. They were my first attempts at embroidery, so they don't look great, but she was happy with them and it saved us a few dollars per patch.

So far, she has been having a good year. It has been quite an adjustment for us, not only adjusting to middle school, but adjusting to being part of the Alpine school district and having to go and look for any kind of information, rather than having information about school sent to us. Her favorite thing about the new school is not having to wear uniforms. Her least favorite thing is middle school girl drama with her friends (although, she probably would have had this, no matter what school she attended).

Some End of Summer Fun

While Alyssa and Danny were at Trek, the rest of us had some fun. One of the things we did was brave the crowds at Chik-fil-A on cow appreciation day. The line was long, but they moved us through fast. We took our food to a park instead of fighting for a table there.

We were going to do free slurpees on 7-11, too, but it didn't work in our schedule that day, so I bought them slurpees the next day, with out the long line.
Our Ward had to cancel their annual fathers/sons campout this summer because of a fire that was close to their campground. Instead, Danny brought home a big popcorn popper and snow cone machine from the Convention Center and they did an outdoor movie at the Stake Center. Danny had to spend most of the night making snow cones, but he set up a blanket for the boys and they had fun coming back to him for refills on their snow cones and popcorn.

We finally cashed in on our free escape room, because of the mix up on times with the business we had reserved our room with back in May.  We did a room called Leonardo's Loot. We were able to escape again, with only a couple of hints along the way.

Alyssa started school almost a week before Tyler and Ashley, so on her last day of summer, we took the kids to Cowabunga Bay. It was much overdue, since Ashley has been asking to go there since we moved here 7 years ago. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I snapped a couple as we were leaving for the day. They are super washed out from the sun, though.

 We invited some of Danny's employee's and their families over for an end of summer BBQ. We served hamburgers and hot dogs, but I bought way too much for the number of people that actually came. As a result, we were eating hamburgers, hot dogs, and their buns in every form I could come up with. One of the meals I did took me back to my mission days. It was the Brazilian Hot Dog. I remembered buying these in one of my areas from a member, who owned a hot dog cart. It had the normal bun and dog, but it also included many more toppings. The 3 toppings I remembered most were mashed potatoes, a meat mixture, kinda like chili, and these little hard French fries. Everyone ate it except Tyler and Camden. They said it was pretty good, too.

The end of summer is always a little hard for me. I love the heat, and playing in the water, no schedules, and having my kids around. Although, it is nice to have less fighting and no guilt about whether or not I got my kids to do enough educational activities and work for the day. School kind of takes care of that for me. Now, as the weather cools and the leaves are falling, we can look forward to the fun holidays we have coming up. I will try not to be too sad that snow and cold are just around the corner.