Now I Know My ABC's

Like I said in an earlier post, Henry loves school. He's been really excited to learn the letters in the alphabet. He's been learning one letter a day since the first week of school and he was looking forward to getting to "Z". I anticipated which day that would be (today) and I had a prize waiting for him. How lucky I was to find gummy alphabet letters at the store! The first thing Henry did with them was...

Nice Looking Family, Eh?

We took our Fall Family Photo yesterday. We decided that this would be an annual thing, since fall is our favorite season and the colors in a fall photo would go nicely in our house. We were sorely disappointed, however, that the canyon we chose had already passed its fall prime. Little Cottonwood is quite a higher elevation and the weather there has already reached freezing. We totally missed the fall colors, but the pictures turned out cute anyway.

Photo editing courtesy of Hailee

The Ultimate Compliment

Something that Nathan really enjoys is a good biscuit. I've always stunk at making homemade biscuits - I usually use Bisquick and on occasion have resorted to biscuits in a can. This was unfortunate since Nathan is a huge fan of jam (especially homemade) and his family's famous chocolate gravy recipe.

Well, I recently found a great biscuit recipe on Food Network and even watched a few online videos on successful biscuit making. I decided to give biscuits another try. Last night, I produced the flakiest, largest and most delicious biscuits I've ever made in my life. The best part was that Nathan said "Mmmm" after every bite. But here's the ultimate compliment: After dinner, as Nathan was rinsing off the plates, he said, wait for it................. "Honey, I think those were the best biscuits I've ever had." It gets even better. Next he said, "Those were maybe even better than my Grandmother's biscuits." Whoo hoo! And there you have it. That has got to be one of the nicest things he's ever said to me. I think when a wife is ever able to duplicate or surpass the culinary genius of a man's mother or grandmother, she has achieved the highest form of success in the kitchen. Feels good. (And of course, no offense to Grandma Nadine - she's still the queen of baking).

Now if I could only make a decent pie crust................

Disclaimer: The photo on this post is NOT of the biscuits I made last night, but it could have been - they looked just like the picture!

Mirror Lake

On Labor Day, we went to Mirror Lake. This is a glacier lake high in the Uintas, the mountain range east of the Wasatch Mountains. The elevation is 10,700 ft, so even though it's early September, it was a little chilly.

A certain someone was grumpy and freezing the entire time.

We took the raft out for a paddle around the lake.

Then we decided to go around the lake on foot.

See Nathan and Henry?

Wierd floaty lake grass

On the way down the mountain, we stopped to get a look at Provo River Falls.

Nathan must get right in the middle of every waterfall he visits.





This picture was worth flipping a U-turn for.

We finished the day in Heber City for burgers and shakes. What a nice day off!

Kindergarten

Henry finally started Kindergarten last Thursday. He's been waiting "his whole life" to go to school and now it's really here. He loves his teacher, Mrs. Broderick, recess, storytime and the little boy he sits by, Hunter Hunter (that's what he calls him). He's made lots of friends - I knew he would. Henry wants to read more than anything, so he's come home every day excited about the new letters he's been learning. I can't wait for math to begin. Henry is a wiz at numbers. He can count well over 100, can do addition (like 12+7), and can tell time. He'll blow his teacher away!

On the first day of school, Henry was supposed to wear his favorite t-shirt for show & tell. No surprises here.

I took this picture this morning. It's not the first day of school anymore - they just looked so gosh darn cute!

Silly Dream

This morning while Henry was having his breakfast, he told us about the dream he had last night. It went something like this:

There were three cats - blue, pink and orange. They were being chased by two white eggs. These eggs had faces and one of them was "the fat guy" who weighed 80 hundred pounds. Before the eggs caught the cats they started cracking all over.

The End.

Sunday Nap

And They're Off...

Have a great day guys! Kindergarten doesn't start until next week, so Henry will have to wait for his "First Day of School Front Porch" photo.

Back to School Feast

I was inspired by a fellow blogger to hold a "Back-to-School Feast". I thought it would be a fun and special way to kick off the new school year. What I really love is the idea of having a family theme. Nathan and I have been discussing ways we can get our kids to show and feel more love and support for each other and also to see how important being a member of a family really is. So, I chose Unity for this year's theme. This school year we'll work on being a team - "All for one and one for all!"

The Menu:

Herb-Crusted Pork Loin
Peggy's Cheesy Potatoes

Too Much Chocolate Bundt Cake

Shirley Temples

The feast was a success. The kids appreciated the extra attention given to starting school. They were already excited anyway - this just made it better!

Bear Lake

We finished off the summer with a bang. The Bishop and his family invited us out for a fun weekend at Bear Lake. What a blast! We enjoyed the beach.......

..............and the boat.

This was our kids' first experience on a ski boat.

Rachel was the only one brave enough to try the knee board.

Bishop tried his best to make Nathan and Leslie take a spill.

Success!

Gillian and Rachel got bumped off as well.

But it was all good, because it was time for a swim break.

Mark, Nathan & Leslie

We also enjoyed famous Bear Lake raspberry shakes and the HUGE Old Ephriam 28" pizza.

Other things we didn't enjoy so much were ICE cold showers, sunburns and a little rain as we tried to pack up. We were also disappointed to never hear one of Bishop's "Rocco and the Dudemeister" stories - we were promised! It was really fun spending time with the Dixons and getting to know them better. Thanks for sharing your weekend guys!