Our time

Mark and I got away to Snowbird for an evening during UEA. It was so beautiful up there with the changing leaves and crisp air. We went on a hike up Bells canyon. It was all fine except Mark kept getting work phone calls (anyone else have this problem with their husbands not wanting to turn off the cell?). I got sick of waiting as call after call came in. He would stop and talk, not walk and talk, so I left him and went ahead. He went the wrong direction and we got separated for an hour and a half. I almost got up to the waterfall, when he didn't call (I guess the reception was spotty). I ended up turning around because I had no food or water and didn't know if he was even coming. Halfway down I found him and I wasn't happy. Oh well, you win some and lose some. I guess I should have been more patience. I did enjoy the quiet hike and stream gurgling along the path

Lyndsey shoots a gun

Sarah goes down the inflatable slide face-first

Scarecrow festival

Westley hangs with his sisters

Fall is Fun

My girls have been off-track from school for the past two weeks. We had plenty of fun. We went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point over UEA. Sarah had a preforming for Academy West Gymnastics Show Team there. Everyone was there except Mark who had to work. We did the inflatables, bungee cord ride, haunted house, games and BB Shooting. We got cotton candy, carmel apples, donuts and even saw Basketball player Sean Bradley Sarah had fun preforming her routine with the team.

Birthday Mania

Birthday Month has come and gone. Three birthdays between the 6th and 16th...thank you very much.

Lyndsey's was the first. It was September 6th. She was turning eight!! Of course she was lucky enough to have it land on Baptism Saturday. I noticed this would happen about a year ago. The wheels turned in my head and I though how cool and convenient it would be to have a kidlet birthday party/ extended family party for all three kids/ baptism celebration all in ONE DAY! Yea!!! Months of planning...First the perfect dress for my last baby and of course a cute photo of her in it.

Then we made the perfect invite (two kinds of course- one for the baptism and one for the kidlet party). Then I had to arrange all the food: Pizza, salad, veggie tray, fruit, bread sticks, appetizer, drinks, cake etc... for an army of 40 people. Then Lyndsey decided it would be fun to have a tea party complete with a craft for twelve little girls. They would make tea party bonnets (supervised by 6 adults). The straw hats turned out to not be easy to find and when I did, I bought out two stores worth. I had to also find the perfect flowers, netting and ribbon. The logistics of the party were mind boggling: be at a niece's wedding the night before, get everyone up and in church clothes and to the church at 9:30 AM on the morning of. Then someone thought it would be nice to have "a display table" with a book to sign for visitors. Please, this was supposed to be simple. It feels like a wedding.

After three loooonnng baptisms with over a hundred people in attendance, we finished and moved onto the party part. We had invited the little party girls to the baptism and had to transport them to the party.

Once we got there we had kids running all over the house; we were trying to bake 6 pizzas and get the food ready and I was trying to round up little girls to make there craft. We had a bit of dilemma with a father asking if his younger daughter could come to the party too (what??? why do men create such social blunders. What could I say? Of course I graciously said sure) now I wouldn't have enough hats. It was stressful but worked out in the end when a girl who was at the baptism didn't show up to the party (whew!)

Several adults wrangled hot glue guns, flowers and bows onto hats and we settled down for a tea party with china and lemonade. The girls looked adorable and finally we were able to feed the crowd who was patiently waiting for the cooking pizzas to be done and the craft to be finished.

There was lots of food and more people kept showing up (I will save you from the details). Now it was present time. Relatives brought presents for all three kids. We had our presents for Lynz and her friends of course brought gifts. Then there were more baptism gifts and cards. Wrapping paper, tissue paper, plates, cups and napkins of paper. A new hamster for Lynz running loose in his ball. Kids and people in my house and yard. FINALLY, the joy was over. It took the whole rest of the weekend to recover and then... and a few days later...It was Sarah's birthday.

Our New Dog (Mutt) for the day

Our neighbor Gwen's daughter found a dog hanging around one day. They already have a dog and we had been thinking about getting one, so we asked if we could keep it while trying to find it's owner. We posted ads on KSL and signs around the area. We held this dog and played with it and really thought it was cute until night came. We had recently fenced our yard and it is summer, so we left the dog in the back yard. In the morning it was gone. It had dug under the fence to visit our other neighbor's yorkie. We put the dog back in our yard and placed a rock over the hole it dug. Within minutes, it had dug another hole and gotten out. Our neighbor was getting annoyed. We borrowed a leash for the night. Mark didn't want the dog in the house. All was quiet until just as we were falling asleep the crying began. First the dog yelped, then he whined and then the yowling started. Nothing would shut the dog up. This went on for a couple of hours. I turned to Mark in bed. "What should we do? Should we let him in?" Mark replied, "No way, let him go...perminently." I was upset he would suggest such a thing. Another half our of crying went on. We both couldn't sleep and I quietly slipped out of bed and let the doggie in. I put him in the mudroom where he couldn't hurt anything and slept in quiet the rest of the night. In the morning we let the dog out and he was once again on a long leash. He wasn't liking that, but what could we do. The little escape artist wouldn't stay in the yard. The crying began once more. Meanwhile of course no one had called to clain the mutt. I think someone had dropped him off far away in hopes he wouldn't come back. Gwen showed up on my doorstep and asked what she could do to help. She said her 15 year old daughter was crying in her room because of the dumb dog's crying and they hadn't slept all night. I was pulling my hair out by then and really regretted asking for the dog. I didn't say one word to Gwen, but silently handed her the dog and shut the door. Goodbye doggie!