First Snow

7th Grade Choir

Samantha had her first choir performance last week. They sang only four songs. Henry was grateful we were outta there in twenty minutes!

Halloween '09

Here's our spooks!

The kids dressed up three different times this year. They had a costume parade at school, our ward Trunk-or-Treat and actual Halloween night. Let the candy trading begin!

Stud

Nathan picked up my camera one Sunday to snap a photo of Elliot. I see why. I can't believe my little man is about to turn 8!

Our Violinist

Gillian has recently taken up the violin to join her school orchestra and has already had her first performance. She's actually pretty good. I thought that when we got her the violin, that we would have to get everyone some earplugs as well to endure the squeaky noises that I was positive would come out of that instrument. Not the case. She's excited for her Christmas concert in December at the South Towne Expo. Go Gilly!

St. George Getaway

A few weeks ago, Nathan and I were lucky enough to get a break from the kids and go on a couples getaway in southern Utah. The Summerhays were kind enough to invite us and two other fun couples in our ward to stay in their family's vacation home in St. George. It was such a blast! While most of us would probably agree that we spent most of our time eating, we managed to sqeeze in a bunch of other worthwhile activities. The guys played a round of golf while the girls enjoyed a little shopping. We attended a play at the Tuachan, a beautiful outdoor theater nestled in the red rock. We checked out a really cool "narrow" and climbed around the rocks, and even fit in a session at the St. George Temple. It was really fun to spend time with some of the couples in our ward and get to know them better - although there are some things better left unknown! I know, right?

Thanks for the great weekend Greg and Andrea!

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!