October

Here we are in October.  Since September was so busy we decided to add some more things into the mix for October: Flag Football, Safety Week, Hunting season, Canning Season and Halloween.  Bring it on. 

 

This was the last month of mountain bike racing. Emily's last race was at Eagle Mountain for Regionals. We went down the day before and Russell rode the course with her and said it wasn't too bad. In his opinion, it was not a very exciting course. Emily was ready and a bit nervous. I blame myself for this. I learned a lot that race about how to handle kids during race days. 

Here are all of her Freshman girl friends ready to rock their final race.  Each of them were hoping for a state qualifying placement.  This race would determine the state placement.

Here she is ready to ride at the starting line.

Off she goes. I'll tell you what, she is some rider. She needs to give herself more credit when it comes to riding. She has picked up this sport so fast. I am proud of her and her accomplishments and the progression she has made in the two years.  

I went up and down this course multiple times to cheer for Emily in different areas.  I got some really good pictures of her passing someone. I knew this was a hard course for Emily because she seemed to struggle each time she passed me.  I didn't know how to help her.  This was a rough course.  Not only that but I think she felt a lot of pressure to get a good placement for state.  Finally I just told her to forget about state and just ride.  In the end, she did have a strong race for her last one of the season. She finished strong. Way to go Emily!!  Her time was good but unfortunately she placed 45.  We told her it might still be okay though because the lowest race gets dropped.  We would have to see how the results ended up in a week or so.  Good Job Emily! It has been a great season no matter what.

Nibley Flag Football has arrived again. Both boys wanted to play again. Logan's team was the Raiders.  They had a great season almost undefeated.

Logan had a great time playing with his friends, Curtis and Kendryck and the other boys.  Logan was Mr. Speedy Gonzales.  He could sprint so fast toward the person with the ball and pull their flag before they even knew what had hit them.  Logan played Quarterback and Safety a lot this season and did a great job.

Nice Job Logan and the Raiders!

Russell was a little overwhelmed with flag football and finishing up the mountain bike season, but it all worked out. He was the assistance coach to Colt Pini, our good friend, for Colby's team. Colt's wife put him in to help coach so he asked if Russell could be his assistant. It was a fun season.  Their team was the Aggies. 

Colby and Tony had fun playing together on the team.  They also had a bunch of other good guys on their team.  We felt like this league was a hard one this year.  The age group was 7th-9th graders.  While this is just a two year gap, it was a huge gap for physical development.  Our Aggies team had only 7th and 8th graders but it seemed like all of the other teams had huge 9th graders on their teams.  Our boys were so small compared to the others.  I feel like we had the skills to play a good game especially toward the end of the season.  Even with our skills though, when we were up against 9th grade boys that were twice our height and size, there was no way to win.  Our boys made a good run of it though and the final game was fought so hard and won.  Colby played a good running back and ran the ball quite a few yards throughout the season.

Nice job Colby and Go Aggies!

These three boys became good friends over the football season.

Ryker, Tony, and Colby even got together to go to a Sunday fireside.

Fall is definitely in the air around here and all of the leaves are changing colors.  For Activity Days we took the boys Geocaching up Blacksmith Fork.  The leaves were awesome.

The boys didn't know what Geocaching was at first but once we found the first few caches, they were excited to find more. 

Russell's job had a fun family activity this month. The Peer Support Team put together a family night at the fire training tower. They put together fun stations for the kids to tryout. The biggest hit was the actual firefighter physical agility test course. At first the the kids were not quite sure if they wanted to try and then they got the confidence to do it. Emily was the first to go and get it done. Russell suited up also and did it with her. Off they went up the stairs to pull the hose up to the second story. Second was the keiser sled. She did really good. Then she sprayed water, raised a ladder, pulled a hose through a pipe, and last was to drag a very heavy dummy about 30ft. She made it through it all with a little bit of Russell's help without giving up. 

Colby and Logan did it also. They both had a blast and Russell had fun running through it with them. They all struggled with the dummy of course because it weighed 175 lbs. We had a great time hang out with the     other families. 

I did not realize how hard of a challenge this was.  Good job kids and good job Russell for doing this everyday for your work.  I couldn't even lift the hammer to to the Keiser.

Pumpkin Walk in North Logan is a tradition for us every fall. This has always been a fun place to go every year. I am glad the kids have not out grown this.  

It has always fun to see the theme they put together and the different scenes made out of pumpkins. Here are a few of our favorite this year.  The Grinch, Moana, Magic Tree House, and Trolls.

At the end there was an entire Gingerbread House scene from Hansel and Gretel.  We were even able to walk inside the house.  The cool thing about it is all of the characters and decorations and things were all made out of pumpkins.

We also like all of the photo props.

Its crazy to see how much everyone has grown as we take a picture by this sign every year.

My favorite displays are the fancy carved pumpkins.

This year they were all scenes or characters from Winnie-the Pooh.  We love the Pumpkin Walk.

Here is a silly picture of Brooklyn after she was jumping on the trampoline for a minute:

Crazy hair!

The results were in for the State Mountain Bike qualifiers and unfortunately Emily did not make it.  She was so close. Number 41 so she missed it by two.  Next year for sure she will make it I just know it.  In a way though it was good because she had a Band competition in Pocatello the same weekend as State Mountain Biking and she couldn't be in both places at once.  So we headed up to Pocatello for band.

Russell pulled the Band trailer to the competition so were able to get into the event for free as well as be fed and also hang out with the band.

Here's Emily with her Pit friends getting all of their instruments ready to play.

The competition was held at the Idaho State University indoor stadium.  It was a really nice facility.

The band did really well at this performance and was able to place 2nd in this competition.  The show is getting better and better every time they perform so it will be awesome to see them perform at their peak at the end of the season.

Here is Emily doing her thing in the Pit.  There is so much talent in this group.

October is canning season.  Especially apple canning season.  The Lee's trees were chuck full of apples this year and they gave most of them to us.  

With the help of this cute muncher, I was canning and preserving apples for a week.  I made probably 30 quarts of applesauce, a double batch of pie filling, 9 quarts of Apple juice, and a lot of dried apples.

I also finished up the last of our tomatoes while the canner was out.  We are set for a while and it is nice to fill up the pantry again.

While I was canning, Russell was out deer hunting.  Here he is to talk about it:

The deer hunt has come and all the orange and camo came out of the closet. The four wheelers got to stretch the wheels, spend money on gas, and we get to hang out in the wilderness for a week. This year was a fun year. It was Emily's first year hunting for general deer hunt. I was an excited Dad to have her go with me.

 We woke up bright and early Monday morning to go with Tyson Booth. We went up Rock Creek to hopefully see a buck or two. It was a dark hike trying to get to the meadow that was about a mile up the mountain. We got up there just after sunrise. We posted in a spot and started to glass a hillside hoping to see something. To make a long story short, it was a good hike for opening day. On Wednesday I was able to take Emily out. We started up at Temple Fork, hoping to find the big one. We started going up a four wheeler trail, and found a great glassing area. Just as the sun came up, there was a dark spot on one of the mountain ridges in front of us. I took a look with my binoculars, and was amazed with what I saw. A good size bull moose. Emily was like too bad we can't shoot that. I agreed it would have been cool to shoot it. That was all we saw until after lunch. We rode for about a couple hours and stopped for lunch. Then we took a hike around the mountain to find a doe hiding in the shrubs. The four wheeling trail we were on was new to me, I was excited to find it and found where it starts and ends. Future family trip. We four wheeled and hiked a ton to about 1pm and made the decision to try a new spot. We took off out to the top of Logan Canyon and took a right on a dirt road heading South. We drove for a few minutes and found ourselves in a cool camping area. We decided to explore the area for a bit. We drove for a minute longer and saw a 2 point with two does. Emily got excited to see them. I got the gun ready and the does are so smart. One doe stepped in front of the buck just as we aimed. By the time we got re-positioned, they were gone. After that it was a long drive home, because I got intrigued on where the road goes.  

We drove for 3 hours with the four wheeler trailer. It finally lead us back to Hardware Ranch. We were just entering the no hunting area, and what popped his head out on the wrong side of the road a really good size two point. I rolled the window down and started to yell at it for fun. I said, "Hey deer what the heck, you are on the wrong side of the road." Emily laughed at me and was bummed. I had a great time with the mighty hunter. She even found a funny tree to ride it like a carousel. We were bummed we didn't get anything, but the memories are priceless. 

Too bad no deer but really that would have just added one more thing to our plate so in a way it was good.  Just some fun memories and none of the work.

Brooklyn and Charlotte loved the Halloween pants Grandma Morwood sent them.  They especially loved being twins:

The cuties!

As Activity Day leaders for 10-11 year old boys, we have had a blast with them.  For our second activity in October we carved pumpkins.  

It was funny to watch each boy design their pumpkin and carve them. Some knew exactly what to do and others had no idea what to do. All the pumpkins turned out really cool and no one cut off their finger so success!

On to more band things! The High school band put on a Halloween concert and it was so good.  I am used to the middle school band concerts but the high school band was much more loud and involved.  They sounded great and Emily did great on her parts.

And another Marching Band competition.  This time we went to American Fork.  It was so cold there!  The wind was blowing so hard and it was such a cold wind.  I felt so bad for the color guard girls that were trying to stay warm in their little outfits.  The band did well though considering the wind.  I believe they placed 2nd at this competition as well.

Colby's middle school band was supposed to have a Halloween concert this month as well but it was cancelled.  On the day scheduled for the concert, something happened at the high school like a broken water pipe or something so they had to cancel the concert because no one was allowed in the building.  It was really strange but Emily came home from band practice saying the stage crew kids did something and now the school is closed.  So Colby missed his first band concert.

The week before Halloween was Safety Week at the Elementary.  I was in charge of putting the week together and implemented.  This Week took the place of Red Ribbon Week and kind of pulled a bunch of weeks into one week.  So Safety Week included, Red Ribbon Drug Free Awareness day, Green Ribbon Bike Safety day, White Ribbon Internet Safety day, Yellow Ribbon Mental Health awareness day, and Blue Ribbon Pedestrian Safety day.  It was a week pack full of activities and learning opportunities for the kids.  And it was a lot of work.  For the theme my committee and I did the Safety Week Olympics.  Each day there were activities for the kids to do to earn points for their class. By the end of the week, the class with the most points earned the gold, silver, and bronze medal for the Olympics as well as a class party.  It was nice to get everyone involved as much as we could.  On Monday our resource officer brought his drunk goggles and let the kids try them onto see what effect drugs and alcohol would have on their brain and vision.  This was a huge hit.  On Tuesday we had a bike rodeo after school to teach the kids bike safety.  On Wednesday we discussed Internet safety and had the kids color a picture about how they were going to be safe on the Internet.  Then we hung the pictures up around the halls.  On Thursday we talked about big feelings and how the kids could deal with the big feelings they might have.  The kids wrote their ideas on paper ghosts and hung them on the walls.  Finally, on Friday we had a walk to school day to teach pedestrian safety.  Each night the kids brought home some safety tips to read and discuss as a family.  I really hope they did the at home stuff because we didn't have a lot of time to teach and discuss at school.  In the end, I think it was a pretty successful week.  Whether or not anyone learned anything I don't know but it seemed to go smoothly so that's good.  I don't think I will be in charge of this again next year because September and October are too busy for our family.

Happy Halloween everyone; let the activities begin. We love carving pumpkins with the family. It is fun to watch each of the kids do their pumpkin. This year all of them did their own designs and cut them out on their own.

It was cool to see the end product of all their pumpkins.  I think they turned out pretty creative.

Spooky!

On Halloween Russell and I spent most of the day at the school with class parties and then the Halloween parade.

Charlotte and Logan looked so cool in their costumes.  Logan wanted to be Batman this year so I was stressing over finding a costume for him or possibly making one.  Then I went to the DivvyUp sale and found this awesome Lego Batman costume for $6.  When I told Logan about it he wasn't too excited because he really just wanted to be normal Batman.  Then he saw the costume and the mask and was super happy.  He made a great Lego Batman.  Charlotte just wanted to be Elsa again this year so that was really easy.  This is probably the last year she will be Elsa though because the dress is getting too small.  At school all of the girls in her class were oohing and aahing about the dress so that was fun.

That night we all went out Trick or Treating in our costumes.  Aren't we scary?

Russell was a hunter, and I was a high schooler.  Emily was a Zombie Rapunzel.  Colby was a Zombie biker.  I have no idea how to do costume make up but I think I did pretty good making them look dead.  Logan was Lego Batman and Charlotte was Elsa with Brooklyn as Olaf.  This Olaf costume is the best costume I have made.  It is so cute and this is the last year it will be worn...

Emily's friend, Hahna, went Trick or Treating with us too.  She was Zombie Merida.  Sadly Hahna broke her leg a few days before Halloween so she was trying to trick or treat on crutches.  This was super hard and she even fell once before we had a great idea to help her.  We decided to pull out the four wheeler and let Emily drive her around to all the good houses in the neighborhood.  This helped Hahna a lot and the two girls had a great time together.  Colby also went out with his friends so we just had the three youngest to take around.  Soon we were cold and ready to come home.  Everyone made a killing on candy.

What a fun busy month.  Now that the sports seasons are complete our November is sure to be more relaxed.