Happy Halloween 2021

Happy Halloween!  We had a great Halloween this year.  We love all of the fall activities we participate in during this time.  Our first Halloween tradition is carving pumpkins!

 This was a fun night watching the kids grow up and carve their own pumpkins and come with their own designs. It was different this year because I am usually the last one to carve my pumpkin because I am cutting everyone else's pumpkins.  But this year, Emily, Colby and Logan were all about getting the knife and digging in. They all had their own unique way of doing it. I think this is the best pumpkin carving I have seen since we started carving pumpkins. 

It was Brooklyn's first Halloween and also her first time carving a pumpkin, so we got her this small one. 

 I cut the top off and she started digging out the guts of the pumpkins. It is always fun to watch her hesitate at first and then dig right in. She loved it so much she started to eat the guts of the pumpkin.

Here is the finished product of some amazing carved pumpkins. They all look really spooky and some look funny and goofy. I was amazed how well Colby's and mine turned out when we lite them up with a candle. 

With our pumpkins carved, we were ready for Halloween!

Each year on Halloween the elementary school puts on a Halloween costume parade so all the parents can come and see the fun costumes everyone wore. 

This year instead of being inside they decided to have the parade outside in the back of the school. This was way better. After the parade, the whole school got together and did a cool Halloween dance. It was a fun day full of parties and lots of candy. 

This cute girl loves "pumpkin spice and everything nice!"  She also made an adorable little piggy!

Tiffany does a great job with Halloween costume themes for all of us. This year she had the idea to do Charlotte's Web because of our little Charlotte. Charlotte was excited to be an eight legged spider for Halloween.

Charlotte's Webb would not be complete if we didn't have Wilbur the pig and the Farmer. Tiffany found a pig costume online for Brooklyn and boy does she look cute in it. Tiffany borrowed Colby's beard for her farmer costume.

Charlotte loved her spider costume and laughed every time she moved her arms and the other legs moved too.

The other three had their own ideas for their costumes. Colby was Neil Armstrong the Astronaut.

                                                    

Logan had a random funny idea to be a snail.  I think he made a good snail once we figured out how to make the shell.

 Emily was our beautiful nice witch.

Here we all are ready to go out and make a killing on candy. 

I dressed up as a farmer's side kick in my wranglers and cowboy get up. I was not very festive this year...

This year was an odd year. Usually we go out before it gets dark because it gets really cold once the sun goes down. This year the weather was pretty nice even after the sun went down. It gave us a longer time to walk around and see the neighborhood. 

This year Emily took off with her friend, Eden, to go Trick-or Treating.  She has decided she is too old to go with us any more.  Okay not really but she did have a good time with her friends. It is crazy how fast Emily is growing up. It was her first year we let her go out and hang out with a friend to go trick or treating. I gave her my phone and Tiff said be home by 8:00 PM. Off they went to have a good time. 

Once we got home, we dumped out all of our candy to see what we had brought in.  Of course Brooklyn was mine and Tiffany's helper to get candy. She fared really well for her first year. As you can tell from the last picture, we will have candy well into the new year and passed.  We had a great night!  Happy Halloween!

Red Ribbon Week

This was a fun week. GO RED RIBBON week!!!! Tiff and I were in charge of Red Ribbon week for Canyon Elementary. It was a fun task to take on and get ready. I had a vision to make it a big, memorable, crazy week. We planned out each day to have some fun activity. The first day everyone wore red. We found out that we could enter into a contest to help the school win some money. Tiff and I spent at least 5 hours trying to get this aerial ribbon shot to go off without a hitch. 

There were 750 students and 35 teachers in this ribbon. We were watching the weather all weekend and the weather was not looking good. We found an opening in the morning get the picture done. We made the announcement and all the classes lined up. It went so smooth and we had everything done in 15 minutes. The kids loved it. 

We also had each kid sign their name on a red paper and then their class linked them together and promised to be drug free. Once we got all the chains from the classrooms, we hung them up in the hall where everyone could see them. We also had the principle make a big copy of the aerial red ribbon and we put it in front of the school so everyone could see it all week.   

The kick off to Red Ribbon Week was having the kids participate in a "Squash Drugs" pumpkin painting contest. The pumpkins had to match the theme of "Drug Free Looks Like Me." We thought we would have maybe 30 or so kids do it, but we were way off. A total of 120 kids participated in the pumpkin painting contest! 

There were some really cool ones. Colby painted a face that looked like him and said "Drug free looks like me." Logan also did one of a ghost that said "Say Boo! to drugs." Colby got runner up in best of theme. It was a great time judging them and see all the kids creativity. 

On Tuesday we had a school assembly with the Hyrum Fire Department and the Cache County Sheriffs K9 division. The kids and the teachers had a blast with both departments. The Fire Department had 4 teachers come up and see how fast they could get there turnouts. 

Once they had their turnouts on, they walked around the kids to show them what they wore in fires. 

During the second assembly, we had some really competitive teachers. Mrs. Rocky Kendrick came up and I called her husband, one of my retired fire chiefs, so he could watch her and laugh. Travis Swan was talking to the kids and he said, "Lets see if she can get into her turnouts faster than her husband can." 

All the teachers were really good sports and had a blast. 

After the fire department did their thing, the K9 Sheriff and his dog did a fun demonstration. His dog was huge!  I would not want to be chased by him.  The officer demonstrated how his dog could find some drugs hiding under a cone. 

The best part of the whole show was when he had the principal put on the bite suit and had the dog attack her!

 The kids were loving every minute of assembly. The second assembly had more excitement than the first. The principal, Mrs. Williamson, got the wrath of the K9 even more the second time. The dog got a hold of her and she slipped and went right to the ground with the dog still at her arm. It was funny and scary to watch. The kids loved it!  

The two departments also did a show and tell during lunch time so all the kids could ask more questions and see the fire engine and dog up close. It was a fun day for everyone. 

We also had daily prize drawings at the end of each day and handed out some really cool prizes. On Thursday during lunch, we had a couple of moms come and take the kids' pictures with the Drug Free Looks Like Me picture frame.

 Friday was Halloween day and the kids said said Boo to drugs by dressing up in their Halloween costumes. There was a costume parade at the end of the day.  This was a fun Red Ribbon Week.  I think we will do it again next year.

To top off the week, Emily had her first band concert and she did awesome. It is crazy to think we have a kid that is a teenager and is playing in the band. Emily is having a great time playing percussion. She is the one in the witch hat in the back.  We loved listening to her concert.

Fall Break

Fall Break this year was like all other times in Cache Valley. As you can see from the pictures below, the weather likes to play a trick on us. It snows once to get things cold and reek havoc. This year the trees had not lost their leaves, so the added snow bent and broke a lot of the trees all over the valley. 

It was like the wind storm last year that toppled big trees. I got up and had to assess the damage on our property. The front yard tree lost some good size branches and same with the side yard. We were lucky and faired a lot better than others.  Once the snow melted and we saw grass again, we headed outside to get as much sun as we could until the sun and warmth goes away.  This snow fall only lasted one day before it all melted away.  Then the temperatures went back up and we had another warm Indian Summer.

We had a great time going the the annual pumpkin walk in North Logan. This year was a fun year with a lot of cool scenes. The theme for the Walk was "A Little Bit of Everything." This year there was definitely a lot of that because each scene was different and unique. 

This was my favorite year because they had some really creative ideas. They had a small black bat that we had to look out for in each scene.  Our favorites scenes were the Monster's University Scare-o-Meter bed that actually moved when you roared at it, the Paw Patrol scene, the Halloween candy scene, and the Wile Coyote and Roadrunner scene.  They were all cool.

At the end of the Walk we always made sure too see the witch at the end to get a donut.

Once we went were done with the Pumpkin Walk we went home and spent time playing around and getting the house and yard ready for winter. On Friday we went to the American West Heritage Center for the Fall Festival and did all the cool activities. This has been a family tradition since we moved into the Valley. 

The kids have always loved going even though they have the same activities every year. The Corn Maze is always a good time. This year we went with the Checketts and it was cold but fun.  Alex used the map to lead us all through the corn so we wouldn't get lost.  Once we were though the big kids wanted to go back through the maze without the map to see if they would make it.  While we were wiating for them, Charlotte and Logan played on the outdoor equipment and games. We saw a lot of people in our neighborhood while we were there. 

Since Tiff works at the Heritage Center we went multiple times through out the month of October. Emily, Logan and I went to the Haunted Hollow and it was a fun time trying to get scared.  Logan loved it and was not scared at all.  Colby decided to stay back and watch the little girls while everyone else went through the Hollow.    

Also the end of October was the general deer hunt and I drew out this year for a buck tag. I took out all of the oldest kids on Saturday. The weather was showing bad weather all day and I was bummed. I woke up around 5 am Saturday and it was not raining, so I decided to wake the kids up and give it a try. We got to Left Hand Fork and it was barely raining. The four wheelers were unloaded and it was still not raining. Off we went to have a good time. We decided to go to a new area to see what it was all about. We were about an hour or so in and the rain started to come down. Thank goodness for rain gear and kids that were in good sports to carry on for a little while up the trail to see what was in the area. We turned around when it started coming down hard. It was an amazing area and it had so much water where we were at. The mountain side had multiple streams coming down onto the road. When we got back to the truck we were cold muddy and wet. I told the kids to ditch there shoes and go in the truck to get warm. They were happy to do that. We sat in the truck to see if the weather would lift and stop raining. We had some nice hot cocoa and muffins as we waited. It was a good morning hanging out with them. We decided to head back because the weather was not getting better. 

Later that afternoon the weather lifted and Colby and I went up to Rock Creek to hike around. It was fun to have my oldest boy with me hunting and hiking. It reminded me of when I was his age hiking around with my dad hunting for deer. I am glad that I can make the same memories with my kids. The afternoon was full of hiking and only seeing a herds of doe. The whole week of the deer hunt was full of hiking and see doe. It was fun seeing new areas in the valley to hike with the family though. 

Colby and I went up to Dry Canyon later in the week and it was an amazing view when we got to a spot to glass. We found a cool cave and this awesome view of Logan City with the temple. Colby hiked so much with me that his poor feet and heels were sore. He even had a knot in one of his calves. I was proud of him because he did not complain one bit. 

I also had a chance to take my friend, Justin Slack, out with me. He also drew out for the hunt. We hiked into Rock Creek again and it was way cool. We actually saw a few bucks that were just out of shooting range. I had a three point in my sites, but his back side was turned to me the whole time. He walked into the trees and we sat and waited on them to see if they would move. About twenty minutes later we heard a shot and knew the deer was gone... It was Justin's first time deer hunting and it was fun to see him get excited when he had one deer in his sites. He was not sure if he wanted to pull the trigger. I said go for it and then the buck was gone. 

I went back out on Thursday and hiked even further back into mountains by Rock Creek. I found an amazing place to glass. I spooked a herd of deer with a two point and missed a run shot. I found a place to glass and the whole mountain was awake with doe and a few bucks that were out of range. I sat on the area for a couple of hours and got bored. I decided to walk closer and get to a new area. I jumped another herd with a two point and couldn't get a shot off because there were too many doe in the area. After I pushed the doe herd all over the hill side I took a lunch break. No deer that day...

Justin and I went out one last time on Friday up to Green Canyon. I thought it was a four wheeling trail and was excited to not hike that day, but I was bummed to see that the road ended and it was a hiking trail. So off we went on another hike. I am glad we did go up and hike because we saw two good size moose about thirty feet away from us just off the trail. 

It was something both of us have never experienced. It was a good hike but no deer. 

On Saturday, I went clay pigeon shooting at my friend, Devon Nelson's house in Paradise. His brother-in-law was there hunting and I said, "Good luck but there is nothing here."  I had come to this area they day before and saw nothing. I left around 10:45 and Devon called me and he said his brother-in-law had just shot a 3x4 and asked me if I wanted the meat. I couldn't believe I had missed this deer earlier but I said heck yes to the meat. He had it skinned and quartered for me.

I hiked hard and played hard all week and the deer came to me already shot and cut up! What a good week. I finished up the hunt with one last four wheeling ride and hike with the kids on Saturday. It was a fun week with a lot of good memories.

Football

This is my third year being a flag football coach and it has been a blast every year. This year was a different year. Instead of being the Steelers, we were the Green Bay Packers. I was originally the assistant coach of the Steelers, but they needed more coaches for the boys so I agreed to be a head coach of a different team.  I am glad I decided to change and do it. This team was a great group of boys and they had a blast playing.  I also had a great assistant coach that was also a Farnsworth. Earl Farnsworth is my 3rd cousin from my Grandpa Farnsworth's side. It was funny when we told the boys we were both Coach Farnsworth. The season was great they had some wins and some losses, but in the end they all came out at the end of the season better than they started. 

Colby did a great job this year and has really stepped up his game. He wanted to run the ball more instead of being quarter back. I did my best to do that but in the long run he was the best quarter back that new what he was doing and would listen.

The last game of the year was fun. Nibley city did a cool open ceremony and did a play by play commentary with music during breaks.  One of the parents took all of these awesome pictures during the final game.  The boys played their hearts out during this game and were able to end the season with a win.

  At the end of the game, we had an after game pizza party. We made certificates for each of the boys and this year Colby got the Most Determined. This fit him well because he was determined to work hard. 

Here is a funny story for the end of the season: The city did a half time show with the boys and I decided to get in on it. They had the boys line up on the end zone and sprint to the other end of the field. I got all puffed up and said, "I am going to beat you all!" Earl wanted in on it also. I laughed and told him the last time I did this I fell flat on my face. The bell rang and we were off. I was picking up speed and was staying with the front pack and then it started to happen. I felt myself starting to fall forward and next thing I saw myself eating grass and skidding on the grass. Everyone saw it coming and one of the boys mom's had her camera and got it perfectly in picture. It looks like Earl was going down with me, but he managed to skip around and miss out on the cool fall.

I was a great season with a lot of fun memories. I can't wait for next year. GO PACKERS.

Logan also played flag football for the first time this year.  He was on the Rams team this year. He had a really good time playing and running around. 

The first part of the season he was not to sure what he needed to do, but about three or so games in he was on fire pulling flags. He was catching up with the ball and getting the flag from the other team. Every time he got a flag he got so excited and was grinning from ear to ear. Logan also got the Most Determined award which was so true. He was determine to get those flags and run as fast as he could when he got the ball. 

He played a few different positions, but he played center for the majority of the games and he did a great job. He is so fast when it comes to sprinting because runs on his toes. He is ready for next year to pull more flags and run up and down the field. 

The boys love playing flag football and it is really fun for us to watch the games as well. Good season boys!