September

September was another crazy busy month for us.  It was probably the craziest time of the year for us with things happening every weekend. So let's get started.

Since school began, Logan has been saying it is getting hard to see the board at school.  We took him to the eye doctor and sure enough he needed glasses.

Logan was actually quite excited to get glasses.  He has been wanting them for a few years now and finally failed the eye test good enough to need them.  His glasses look pretty good on him making him look very sophisticated.

September 7 was Charlotte's 7th birthday.

We had a really fun "Frozen" themed birthday party with her friends.  She loved it.

The main reason September is so crazy is because of Mountain Bike races and Marching Band performances.  The first weekend was our second Mountain Bike race of the season.  This race was at Snowbasin.  This was a rough course with a ton of uphill and loose gravel.  The kids did great.

Here is Colby with the other 7th Grade Boys in his race.  This was Colby's second race and his bike did better than at Beaver.  At least his derailer didn't fall off.

Colby worked so hard on this race climbing the hills and taking all of the rocky switchbacks.  On one turn though he hit a stump and slide off his bike.  With a scraped up leg, Colby got back on his bike and finished strong moving up a couple of placements.

Emily is a mountain goat.  She loves climbing hills so Snowbasin was her best race of the season.

This race was the first time Emily had done two laps and it was a workout.  The hills were killer and during the feed zone transitioning into the second lap, Emily looked really gassed but she kept pushing.  Emily finished strong also moving up a few placements.

In the end, the kids were exhausted which is a good thing.  We had fun hanging out in the Pit Zone with the team.  We also ran up and down the mountain cheering for the kids.  So we were exhausted too when it was time to go home.

When we are not at Mountain Bike races, we are at Marching Band competitions.  The first show in September was the Parent's Night.  During this show we got to watch all of the Cache Valley high schools' shows.  This was the first glimpse at what the season would look like.  

It was the first time we saw Mountain Crest's field show and it was pretty cool.  Emily plays in the Front Ensemble or Pit.  This is where all of the keyboard percussion instruments are as well as the other percussion instruments not used on the field.  Emily plays the Marimba and does a great job.  This first performance was my first experience with what Marching Band is.  I thought it was just a play your instrument for fun kind of thing but it is not.  This is a sport!  It is a competition and those kids are working their hearts out.  It was cool to watch.  I especially liked the Green Canyon Marching Band show.  It was amazing.

About the middle of the month was the Mountain Crest Homecoming Parade.  This involved both the band and mountain biking.  Emily got to play the snare drum in this parade and said she likes marching with the snare better than the crash cymbals.  

Russell and Colby joined the Mountain Bike team in the parade and rode their bikes while throwing out candy.  Russell thought he was being so tricky by doing wheelies like the high schoolers until one wheelie went wrong.  He was doing a wheelie while still clipped in to the pedals.  All of s sudden he realized he was wheelie-ing a little too far and could not get his feet out of the pedals. The next thing he knew, he was on his back in the middle of the parade route with his bike on top of him.  All of the people were like "OHH!"  And all of the bike team was laughing.  In a few words it was embarrassing, humbling, and hilarious.  Life is hard when you are 40...

The day after the parade, Russell and I headed to Colorado Springs, CO.  Grandma and Grandpa Farnsworth came up to stay with the kids for the weekend.

This was a fun getaway for the two of us but the real reason we went was to memorialize one of Russell's co-workers, Brian Holbrook, who had died, at the Fallen Firefighter Memorial.  We went there with a few of his other co-workers as well as Brian's family for this special honor.

Before the Memorial though, we took advantage of the time in Colorado Springs and did some site seeing.  Our first stop was the Manitou Incline:

The Manitou Incline is a one mile climb straight up 2,744 railroad tie steps.  You rise 2,500 feet in elevation in this steep climb. It was not for the faint of heart.  It was a workout.

This was the view the whole way up.  Stairs, stairs and more stairs.  Thankfully it was overcast so it wasn't very hot.  There were a lot of people climbing to the top while we were there and we all just kept asking each other if we were there yet.  I was feeling pretty good and just kept climbing.  Russell told be to go on ahead because he wanted to go a little slower.  I kept climbing and climbing.  I felt fine until I stopped to look back to see if I could see Russell.  As I turned, I looked down and my vertigo went a little weird because of the height and steep slope down.  I got a little dizzy so I turned back around to face the uphill side and just kept climbing.  It felt better to look up than down at that moment.  

While I was climbing I passed a couple of Russell's co-workers that had started before us.  Finally I made it to the top and the views were amazing.  This was a great accomplishment!  I walked around the top for a few minutes until Russell got up there and them we took some pictures as proof of our climb.

We did it!  Look how steep and far that is!  The whole time I was climbing I kept thinking there has to be some life lesson you could glean from this.  Something you could share in general conference at some point if you needed to.  I just kept thinking you have to put one foot in front of the other and keep pressing on no matter what kind of uphill battle you are facing.  At some point you will overcome that trial and look back and see how far you have come.  And the views will be amazing.  I also thought it was hard to get started again once you had stopped but if you just kept going one step at a time and let that momentum keep you going, it was much easier to just keep going.

At the top of the mountain, I saw this big three-point buck just grazing on the grass.  It was a cool sight. After hanging out at the top for a while we decided to start making our way back down.  Thankfully we did not have to go down the way we came because I don't think our knees would have loved it very much.  Instead there was a side trail that switch-backed its way down the mountain.  This was a beautiful 4 mile trail down the mountain.  

The views on the way down were also amazing.  We hiked down with Russell's co-worker, Brian Davies, and his wife, Terri, and had a good time chatting with them the whole way.  This was a fun hike and an accomplishment not many people can say they have done.  

When we got back to the car, Russell and I decided to do some more site seeing.  We kept seeing signs for the North Pole so we had to check it out.  We climbed the Rocky Mountains and drove to the North Pole!

Of course we had to stop and see what the North Pole had to offer.  This was a cute little amusement park at the top of the mountains and it was decorated like Christmas all year round.  Sadly it was raining so we didn't check out the amusement park. We did walk around the gift shop, though, and wanted to buy everything.

After leaving the North Pole we were starving so we stopped at Red Robin for a burger, salty fires, and some much needed refueling.

That night we met up with the rest of the firefighters (and the whole city of Colorado Springs) to watch the Firefighter Memorial Pipes and Drums parade.

This was so awesome!  There were so many bagpipe players and drummers it was so loud.  There were also about a million people there to watch so we were crammed in this block like cattle.  But that was all part of the amazing experience.  After the parade was over, all of the individual pipes and drum bands broke off and did their own little side performances.  By this time most of the crowd had separated so we could walk around a little more freely and watch the bands.  One guy even let me play on his drum for a minute.  It was so cool.

The next morning was the Fallen Firefighter Memorial Ceremony.

This was a very special ceremony.  Brian Holbrook was deemed a line of duty death because the cancer he died of was caused by his work as a firefighter.  So his name was engraved on the memorial wall.  During the ceremony, over 200 other names and men and women were memorialized for their sacrifice in the line of duty.  Each of the families of the deceased were presented with a firefighter flag by a member of the Honor Guard.  It was a long program but a good one.  

It was an awesome experience being a part of this ceremony.  It was also nice to be there to support the Holbrook family. 

 All of the guys looked really sharp in their Class A Uniforms.

Terri took some nice photos of all of the guys and they turned out really good.  The rest of the day was spent reflecting on the significance of the ceremony and celebrating Brian's life with his family.  We all got together for a luncheon and it was cool to hear stories from Brian's dad and other family members about him.  

The next morning we started the long drive back home.  On the way we stopped in Denver to see the Broncos Stadium.

It was a game day so there was no way we could get in to see the stadium but we took some pictures outside. There were a bunch of tailgaters and die hard Broncos fans already there getting ready for the game.  This was a fun little getaway.

On September 17, Clint and Haley welcomed their cute little baby into the world.

Monroe Max Morwood is the cutest baby ever.  He has the bluest eyes and has the chubbiest cheeks! He's probably 3 months old in the second picture.  Isn't he cute?

Well its time again for another Mountain Bike race.  This time the race was in Mantua.  This was the last race of the season for Colby and the Jr. Devo riders.  

For Colby's last race we challenged him to beat Randy.  These two have been neck and neck all season.  Colby generally does better than Randy at practices but due to bike malfunction and a wreck in the previous races, Randy has beaten Colby in the races.  We knew he could pull ahead if he just put his mind to it.  A good bribe of a bike component upgrade didn't hurt either.  Colby did really well on this race.  It was probably his best race of the season.  Colby and Randy were neck and neck again but by the end, Colby had pulled ahead.  He was happy with his finish time and place.

Emily also had a good race.  She said she felt really strong on this course and said she felt like she was going really fast.

Before this race, we found out that the state qualifying placement had changed from top 25 to the top 39 for Freshmen girls.  So that meant that Emily had a good chance to go to state if she could keep her placement.  With this on her mind, Emily rode as fast as she could worrying the whole time whenever anyone would pass her.  She rode her two laps hard and did so well coming in under an hour, which is an amazing time. Unfortunately though her placement dropped a couple of slots.  She was still within the top 39 though but barely.  It would all come down to her placement at the final race in Eagle Mountain in a couple of weeks.

We had to hit up Lagoon a few more times this summer before our passes ran out.  This time the park was decorated for Halloween and Frightmares.  Our main objective in this Lagoon trip was to check out the brand new ride that had just opened, Primordial.  As soon as we got there, we got in the long line for the ride.  Two hours later we finally got on the ride.  Primordial is a combo of roller coaster and a 3D virtual ride.  It was pretty awesome and yeah I think it was worth the wait.  As part of the ride you have a laser gun that shoots all of the bad guys coming at you.  Then you get points for how many you shoot.  It was a fun ride.  

After Primordial, we decided to check out a couple of the Halloween events. Here we are in the Pumpkin Town tunnel.

We took advantage of the Trick or Treat things and Spook A Boo.  Brooklyn liked these little walk through places and we got treats.  

Next we went through the Scarecrow Maze in the Pioneer Village.

This was fun for the kids.  Next time we go we will try out the Haunted Houses and Frightmares. 

With the coming of Fall, it was time to forage the garden.  It actually did pretty well once it got going.  Look at all of those potatoes!  We also got a ton of carrots.

This year our little apple tree actually produced apples!  We had threatened to pull it out if it didn't start producing.  Well it finally got scared enough to do it.  We were so happy but we also didn't realize it was actually going to produce so we didn't spray it for bugs.  So the apples did have some worms and stuff but not too badly.  I was able to make 7 quarts of apple pie filling from the apple of our little tree.  That is pretty good for a first year crop.

Charlotte is still learning a lot in Let's Play Music.

This is a picture her teacher took of us as we were learning our note names on the Grand Staff.

On September 28, we celebrated Emily's 15th birthday.

She's growing up and super involved in everything!  We sure love her.

Finally September 30, Mountain Crest had their first Band Competition of the season: the Bridgerland Band Invitational at the USU Stadium.

This was the first competition of the season and it was cool to watch all of the bands from all over the state compete.  In the 4A category, Mountain Crest did really well placing 2nd overall.  We spent the whole day at the stadium watching all of the bands play.  The most impressive were the 6A groups.  These bands were huge and they sounded amazing and their shows took up the whole field.  American Fork was the best overall in placement but all of them did really well.

To top all of this stuff off, I have also been busy with the PTA at the elementary school.  I am in charge of our t-shirt fundraiser again this year so that has been going on all month.  We didn't make quite as much as I had hoped for this year but we still made enough to cover all of our activities for the year so that is the main goal.  Russell has also been a head coach for the mountain bike team, and the Fire Fighter Union Secretary/Treasurer which has kept him busy.  We just felt really overwhelmed this month with things so we will see how things go next month.