October Catch Up

Reed the "mummy" waking up from shoulder surgery.  I was hoping to catch him being loopy but he came out of it joking.  He is recouping well.  It was an old injury and good timing to fix it.
Halloween Houses.  A traditions we started a few years ago.  I love the jack o' lanterns on the front porch.
I had heard there were a lot of bees/wasps in the canyons, more the usual, on the news a while back.  Well we experienced them on our first trip up there.  Emily with her bright pink dress on was the victim of one's stinger. 
Jadey turned 12.  Having her turn 12 was huge for me.  It was sort of like the first child in elementary school milestone.  I have a young woman, it's crazy.  
The harvested pumpkins.
The rooster strikes again.
Emily is a fan of perfect looking pumpkins...thus her choice.
While Jadey was looking for the biggest...120lbs of pumpking there!
After several frosts the garden was dead and the pumpkins were ready to harvest.  From one plant we got 13 pumpkins.  A couple of them were 70 and 80 lbs and the largest was 120 lbs!

And we had a fun visit from our cousins and one of my angel sister in laws (I have many) saved my day with dinner when the day was appearing to be more then I could handle.  You gotta love angels.

Herds

I was quizzing Max about school the other day.  It's hard to get much of an answer from most boys, so I was trying to ask probing questions that would elicit more then a 2 word response.  Knowing that I wouldn't get anywhere asking him which girls were cute I opted for which girls were nice.  He listed a few.  I asked who they hung out with at recess and his answer was so enlightening..."They hang out in herds."

Can you just imagine it?

Not gangs.

Not cliques.

Herds.

I suppose some would refer to them as gaggles

or flocks

or pogs (i had to research this one)

or raftors.

All right I'm getting carried away.

Herds it is.

A little on the deceptive side

I am rather confused this election season.  I have made myself watch the debates and I find myself saying, "Yah, that sounds right, that sounds good."  Then the other person says their schpil and I think, "Well yah, I see your point."  And then I hear others on the news telling about how they were lying and I wonder, "how do you know what the truth is?"

They say in the birth order that the second child tends to be more like the mom, the first like the dad and I think it's the third that is most affected by the parents relationship with each other and then there is something about the fourth.  Anyway, while I am watching the debate the other night my second was in the room working on something else and says "Yah, that sounds right" to one candidate and "that was good" to the other and I realize, not only that the birth order thing might be right, or that I am as easily swayed as a fourth grader, but that this really is confusing.  I'm glad the gospel is a whole lot easier for me to know truth in, and that we don't have to vote for prophets.

And speaking of a deceptive season...these photos may look like Emily is one enthusiastic soccer player who was able to convince her dad to coach her this year....

but she really only signed up for the treats, and ran really hard the one game I brought my camera.

Inspired

I really loved the post over at cjanerun today.

Making life a little easier...

So I'm looking to make up my own version of the emealz, meaning mainly that that I have at least 10 weeks of different meals that we like, listed with instructions and grocery lists.

I thought if I put it out there that some of you might be interested too.

And if we each came up with a weeks worth of menus with sides then we could combine them and easily come up with 10 weeks.

So if you're in let me know here or email me.

I will email you an excel file for you to fill in for your week.

Kite Festival

The Kite Festival was in Spanish Fork near the canyon and at the shooting range/reservoir.  Reed had to man a booth there so we went to check it out.  The banners and kites were beautiful.  The booths were geared toward natural resources and energy conservation.
I uploaded the photos in the wrong order...but you'll get the idea.

There are two guys on the wave runner.  One driving and one flying the kites.  They are professionals (I guess) because they do this all over, including sea world.

This is a favorite spot of ours to come and hang out and fish.  I was surprised that they had filled it up so high.  No one was able to go down to the water.
There was a station for making kites.  The kites were great and flew far better then any of the little ones that people had purchased and brought up to fly.
There were beautiful, brightly colored banners dancing in the wind.
To the right was where they were preparing to fly some HUGE kites, a chinese dragon, a cat that looked big enough to be in a parade and lots of other fancy colorful kites.  
There was a kite flying area for the kids too.  And plenty of chairs for people to sit down and watch.
The Reservoir and the scenery.  To the right of this would be Spanish Fork Canyon and the incredible wind mills.