September Stuff

September has been full of activities for our family. Here are just a few of the things we have been doing.

First, Russell and I are the activity days leaders for the boys Colby's age. We like to do fun activities for the boys so when our primary president told us we were not going to be able to do the pinewood derby this year, we knew we had to find something just as exciting to take it's place. So we decided to do a Cardboard Boat Regatta!

This was such a fun activity! The boys seemed to love it. Like the pinewood derby, we gave each boy a large cardboard box and a few rules and told them to build a boat. We said they could build the boat as big or small as they wanted as long as they were able to fit inside it and float. It was fun to see all of the different designs and creative ideas the boys came up with.

For the Regatta, we all met at First Dam in Logan because the water is pretty shallow there and it is free. The boys were all excited to get out in the water and try out their boats. Many of the boats floated really well and the riders just paddled along. 

Quinn (pictured above) was so relaxed in his boat he almost took a nap!  Other boats however had epic Titanic-like sinks! Those were fun to watch too. Thankfully everyone was a pretty good sport about the whole thing.

In the end we gave out three awards for the Regatta. 

Colby won the award for Best Ship Design for having the best looking boat. Jace won the Titanic Award for the best sink. Andrew won the Speed Boat Award for having the boat that floated the longest. Everyone cheered for the winners and we finished the evening off with desserts. 

Colby's really wanted to save his best designed ship but it was pretty waterlogged and just king of fell apart at the end. Sadly, Logan's boat didn't last very long either. He was one of the first ones to sink. Logan was pretty sad about that but we told him it was just for fun and everyone else was going to sink eventually as well so just go have fun in the water.  Despite the few tears shed over Logan's sunken ship, we had a really good night. I think this activity might just become a tradition.

Some other things we have been doing this month is playing Barbies:

I'm not really sure what is going on in this picture. I think the Barbies are having a picnic and hanging out. The best part of the whole picture to me is Brooklyn's face.  She is just standing there so innocently with this little smirk smile on her face. It's like she is so proud of what she is doing. I just have to laugh at it.

We have also been doing a lot of canning and gardening.

During Peach Days in Brigham City, we drove down and got a couple cases of peaches. We drove from stand to stand trying to find the best deal for the best peaches. We finally stopped at a little truck and trailer on the side of the road and they had the biggest and best looking peaches I have ever seen. We bought two cases from them! When we got home, we tasted the peaches and we about died they were so good!! My mouth is watering now just thinking about it. Since then I have canned peaches and made jam as well as froze some of the deliciousness. 

The second picture is of our pumpkins we grew! We have never been able to grow pumpkins but this year our plant survived and we were able to get three pumpkins off of it. Logan was so proud of his little plant and so was I.

This girls continued to be in the parades in September. They were in the Wellsville Founder's Day parade over Labor Day weekend.

This parade was one of the longer parades so it was fun to watch. Like usual the boys collected a ton of parade candy. We even got bombarded with string cheese. The Schreiber's float always throws cheese and this time they threw a couple giant handfuls right to us. Half of it landing right in Brooklyn's stroller.  It was great.

Emily is continuing to enjoy mountain biking with the team especially when they have GRiT (girls only) rides.

Sadly the season ended for her and the JR Devo riders this month. The High School riders go until the end of October.   She has really enjoyed riding, discovering new trails, and making new friends.

Speaking of friends, Hahna has been a great friend for Emily. These two do a lot together. They especially like going to the temple to do Baptisms for the Dead. 

The final parade of year for the Hyrum Royalty was the Mountain Crest Homecoming parade.

The girls have loved being involved with the Hyrum Royalty this year. They have really liked being in all of the parades and waving to everyone. Emily thought there should have been more to the Royalty than just parades but she still had fun and was happy to be the princess.  You both made a beautiful royalty! 

One weekend we took a hike to see if we could find some geocaches.  Emily has planned a YW activity to take the girls to find a geocache  so we decided we had better go find one before taking the girls.  We searched the geocache site and thought we could hike to one near the MC really quickly.

Well, we made it to the MC but the pin leading us to the cache was taking us every which way but right and we finally decided that the cache was actually in a cave or something accessible from the other side of the mountain. So we finally gave up and drove to the Blacksmith Fork trail to find some caches there. These caches were much easier to find and we were able to find 3-4 with in a little while.  One cache that was hard to find was one that was inside the mouth of a rubber snake wrapped in a tree. We thought this cache was mismarked as well until we looked up and found the snake (which was kind of creepy).

The next week, Emily was able to take her YW group geocaching and they were able to find the few caches we found a long the Blacksmith Fork trail. They even found the snake...  Emily said the girls has a good time and even swapped out a few things in the caches for things they had brought along. 

Finally, Charlotte has been enjoying her Let's Play Music class. She is learning the piano this year.

So far she has learned middle C, and the red, yellow, and blue chords in the right hand. She is doing really well and likes going to music class.

Whew see I told you September has been busy. Now on to October.

Happy 14th Birthday, Emily!

 Happy Birthday to Emily!  She is 14 now!  How is it that I have a child that is so old when I am so young?  Emily is the best oldest child.  She is so responsible and on top of things.  She is also involved in everything so she keeps us busy.  She is in band, Mountain Biking, Student Council, Young Women presidency, and everything else. 

Emily is in 8th grade and likes being the oldest in the school.  She does have a little too much of her mom in her though so she has to have everything perfect.  She also wants to do every thing and can't understand why the other kids in the school do not want to participate or help out.  Emily is a typical teenager as well though.  The moodiness is real and we never know when we will get the happy go lucky Emily or the moody teenager Emily.  We still love her no matter what though.

For her birthday this year she wanted a party with her friends. So she invited a few girls and they all had a great time hanging out and playing games.

These teenager parties are much easier to plan than the kid parties. All the girls wanted to do was hang out and giggle and do girl talk. No planning necessary!

Emily invited a few friends from school, church, and the mountain bike team. She wasn't sure if everyone would get along because they didn't know one another. But they all became fast friends within a few minutes of meeting each other.  The girls that came were Reagan, Cambree, Ella, Ellie, Mia, and Hahna. The girls in this group are so nice. It was funny listening to them talk.

For her birthday Emily got a new mountain bike and some Chacos sandals. I thought I had a picture of her new bike but I guess I don't. It is a really nice Kona. It is teal green and pretty fancy. This bike has 1 by 12 gearing as well as tubeless tires and a drop seat. Basically all the bells and whistles she will need for mountain bike team next year. She is pretty excited to try it out very soon. 

Happy birthday Emily! I hope you had a great day!

More Mt Bike Races

More mountain bike races!  This time we were in Richfield at the dirt bike courses there.  We made a trip out of this race and drove down with the trailer and all of the bikes.  At the course, there was a designated camping area we stayed at.  Because we arrived early, we were able to get a really good spot right next to the course.  We could watch the race right from our trailer.  The day before the race, Russell and Emily were able to do a pre-ride and ride the course to practice.  The boys really wanted to ride with them but were not allowed because they were not on the team or a coach.  The morning of the race, we all walked Emily to the starting line to cheer her on.

At the starting line they called our numbers to line up and since I moved up a few places at my last race my call number was 26 this time.

After the count down we were off.  The beginning was super dusty with all of riders.  I was pretty much riding blind for a minute hoping that there wasn't a bump or something in the way.  As you can tell from the picture below.  Luckily the beginning stretch was straight and flat.

This course was probably my favorite because it was pretty flat so it was super nice.  During the race there were some small hills and some different turns.

On the end loop there were some tabletops (small hills) that I had to get a lot of speed on to get up them.  On the last tabletop I petaled fast to the top and sprinted to the end.

During the race it was super dusty and my camel back leaked a little and as you can tell from the picture below I got quite dirty.  Since the race was close to Grandma and Grandpa Morwood's property they came to see me race.  Tyrel and Jack also raced on this course the week before me.

The last race of the season for Emily was at Mantua.  This was another good course and one that Emily and her team had used a lot to practice.  This gave them a little bit of an advantage on the other teams because they knew the course.

At the race it was really cold.  This course was not quite my favorite because of the hills and switchbacks. Close to the beginning of the course there was a steep hill and then quite a bit of switchbacks.  Whenever I ride this course I crash at least once and I did today too.  The trail was fun, in the middle of the course the trail went straight then it turns to a small switchback and did that a few times.

On the course closer to the end there is a small switchback that kind of blends in with shadows that I wrecked on but I got back and kept riding.  This race course there were a lot of places were people were able to go on the side of the trail and cheer for us.  It was fun to see Mom and Dad and all the kids go from place to place to meet me and cheer me on throughout the race.

On this race I placed 31st and got a time of 35 minutes.  This sadly was my last race of the season.  These races have been super fun and I have improved so much at riding.  I can't wait until next year to race more!

This has been a really fun but short season.  Emily has learned so much about biking and has become so much more confident on her bike since the beginning of the summer.  The high school team members will have one more race in Manti before the State Finals race in St. George.  Good luck to the rest of the team!

Happy 6th Birthday, Charlotte!

Happy Birthday, Charlotte! Can you believe this girl is already 6 years old!  I swear she was just a baby.   Charlotte is growing up so fast and is the sassy one in our family.

Charlotte loves going to Kindergarten, playing with Barbies, and being the boss.  She also likes to make messes and not clean them up.  We have to constantly remind her to pick up after herself and she constantly complains about having to clean.  I guess that comes with being 6.  She is also very helpful so don't get me wrong.  She likes to set the table and help sweep the floor.  In fact, she like to organize her friend, Everett's toy room so his mom, Jess, loves having her come over.  Now if I can just get her to organize our toy room, that would be great.  

Charlotte is very friendly and makes friends easily.  Her teachers say she know everyone and everyone likes Charlotte.  She is also quite independent.  She likes things to go her way and thinks her way is best.  She is  a leader.  She is not afraid to try new things and copy what the older kids are doing.  

Charlotte also likes learning and loves school.  She is getting better at reading, and math, and is currently learning to play the piano.

For her birthday this year she wanted a Tangled party.  This was great because we were able to use a lot of the ideas and decorations from Emily's Tangled party a few years ago.   I made her two cakes, one that looked like Rapunzel's tower, and the other one a purple round with the sun logo.  

Charlotte invited many of her friends to her party.  While everyone was arriving, we colored some pictures.  When all of her friends had arrived, we played some games.  The first game we played was "Pin the Nose on Flynn Rider."  The wanted poster of Flynn Rider was missing his nose so we had to try and get the right nose on his face.

Next we played "Duck, Duck, Goose" at the Snuggly Duckling Tavern.  I don't know how well the kids knew how to play this or if they liked it because we had a little emergency during the game.  One of Charlotte's friends sat right in an ant pile that we didn't know was there and got ants all over herself.  After getting her cleaned up, we decided Duck, Duck, Goose was over...

So we moved on to the pinata!

For the pinata, we decorated an old oatmeal container to look like Rapunzel's tower.  We even included Rapunzel and her long hair.  The kids' mission was to break through the tower to free Rapunzel and all of the goodies inside.  They really went at it to get the job done.

Oatmeal containers are actually a lot stronger than we thought!  It took quite a bit of force to break down that tower.  When we finally got to the candy, all of the candy was broke from all of the hits.  That was pretty funny because they worked so hard to get to the candy and all that was left was sugar dust.  Oh well... There were also some little toys in there that survived so it wasn't a total loss.

Then it was time to open presents.

Charlotte received a lot of fun things from her friends.  She received Barbies, coloring books, a new hammock, a watch, and a purse to decorate.  She loved it all.

When all of the presents were opened, we headed back over to the table for some cake and ice cream.

The wind helped Charlotte blow out her candles but she was okay with that.  

On top of cake, ice cream, and broken candy from the pinata, each guest received a Pascal blower.  These were a big hit.  All of the kids like blowing them at each other.

Here's Charlotte with her two friends, Sloan and Sophie.  At first Sophie was scared to stay at the party without her parents but she finally decided it was so fun and then didn't want to go home at the end.  She is a cute girl.  Sloan is also a cute girl and really shy.  I don't think she said a word the whole time.

These are all of the cute friends that came to Charlotte's birthday.  Maverick and Everett, Sloan, Charlotte, Xaylee, and Sophie.  They all had a great time at the party.

After the birthday party, we rushed to Logan's flag football game to watch him play.  Then we headed to Texas Roadhouse because that is where Charlotte wanted to go out to eat.

She especially liked sitting on the saddle while they sang Happy Birthday to her.  Charlotte said she had a really fun birthday party and was so glad all of her friends were able to come.  Happy Birthday Cute Girl!