Welcome to Manhood

 Seth is 7 years old - in fact, he is closer to 8 than 7 and this is his maiden-voyage on the "losing a tooth" ship.  He's in 2nd grade and I'm sure it didn't sit well when he heard that one of his cousins who is in kindergarten lost a tooth recently.  So when he checked his teeth to see if any were loose, he happily reported that there's 2 that are wiggly. (never mind the obvious tears in his eyes which stem from his dad relentlessly trying for days and finally succeeding in pulling that tooth out - I missed my calling in life)

 With mom out of town with some friends, I took the kids up to Pine Valley for a little R&R.  The garden update is that it's coming down.  The cows love to eat the old corn stocks.   We'll harvest the rest of the potatoes next week, the onions are out of the ground and drying and the winter squash is waiting still to be picked.

 Seth specifically asked me to take a picture of him holding the water snake they caught, so here he is.  If you hadn't noticed, Jack got a haircut.  The day that Shana had buzzed it, I had come home for lunch and was sitting next to Jack and, while looking at Jack, she said,"It looks like I missed a few hairs."  Jack's reply was, "I don't care, I still look cool."

We made it to church up in Pine Valley and the kids even got to ring the bell to let everyone know that it was time to come to church.

Let the good times roll

 After a long day of soccer, we swapped kids with the McArthurs and had some pool fun.  It doesn't matter that it's late September - we're still playing like it's summer.  They've all got their super-hero popsicles. Jack is Iron Man, Jason and Ethan are Spiderman, and I was Hulk.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Thanks to the Kyle Wells family, we've found a great way to fill many Saturday afternoons when the Dixie State College football team has a home game - we tailgate!  Open to the public and free everything.  Now that's our kinda party.

 Jack and Seth in line to get their balloon animals.

 Drew made the rock wall feel like a mole-hill.  Ring that bell, Drew!

 Drew has obviously mastered the 'smokey' eyes and will soon be moving on to 'blue steel'.

 Jack and his balloon scorpion (couldn't you tell?!)

 So glad the Davis family could join us at the party.  I don't think the kids will be allowing them to miss this ever again...and the girls are set for halloween. 

(apparently The Troy is taking a deuce on this picture)

Finally, this is one of my very good friends from high school.  I will respect his privacy (what's left of it, he's a celebrity) by not publishing his name, but let me just say he is an EPic snow skier and plays some tennis on occasion, as well.  It was my privilege in high school to hang out with him on the slopes.  All I could do was try to keep up.  I was just one of his entourage and felt like I should be paying just to watch him ski.  Good times, Good friend.

Cakes, Snakes, and Automobiles (or bikes)

 If you look back in my childhood scrapbooks, you'll find at about the same age as Drew, I began having Mom make me birthday cheese cakes instead of birthday cakes.  So here's big number 11. He loves soccer (can anyone name the team of the jersey he's wearing?) and is a good little piano player.  In fact, this pic below is our Daddy-Daughter-Drew-Date to Menchies because they both learned how to play a tough hymn on the piano in a couple weeks. Happy Birthday Drew!

 What's missing in this photo?  The Jack-Jack is now a two-wheelin' fool.  He decided it was time to join the neighborhood bicycling crew, so we dumped the training wheels, within just a couple of sessions of Dad running along side, he was soon certified and solo.

 We also had visitors in town.  The Storms came to visit for a few days.  They didn't bring their kids, but we had a good time in Pine Valley with some really good food.  Zane helped me out with the dutch oven potatoes for my work party. They were delicious.

 The work party went off without a hitch.  The home-made root beer was delicious.  The boys are playing with a little extra dry ice here.  The pulled pork was awesome - credit goes to Kyle, he helped me with that.  

 We were even successful in the snake hunt.  The kids are looking along the ditches for more.

 The Desert Pain Specialists relaxing and enjoying good food and good company.

 See ya'll next year!

The Harvest

 Drew is quickly growing up on us.   He has a birthday around the corner and somehow the fact that he is moving on to boy scouts slipped our minds throughout this past summer.  

 With a little heads-up from a good scout leader, we squeaked out the last few requirements for his Arrow of Light.  

 I actually do remember getting my Arrow of Light and it really did seem to be a big deal to me.  Our ceremony didn't involve painting my parents faces, but we did get a golden arrow to hang up in our bedroom and just like Drew, we walked over a bridge and shook our new scoutmaster's left hand as he welcomed us into the troop (486 FOREVER!)

 Go ahead and scratch off Saturdays for the next 2 months cause there's soccer games all day.  Who needs to go to Pine Valley or hiking in Zion or hang out at the lake anyway.

 I'd rather watch these kids do their thing...I guess.

 The dynamic duo - Seth and Matt

 Even though the day was half chewed up by soccer, we still made it a priority to help with the continued harvest in Pine Valley.  It's good for the kids learn how to work (or at least see what it looks like).  On tap for the day was a continuation of green beans...

 and the beginning of the corn harvest.  The kids were easily scared-off and grossed out by the worms which were in the tops of nearly every ear of corn.  Not sure why the worms have been so prevalent this year, but the corn is still delicious.

 It's just a nice place to be.

 It's been 4 weeks since Laynee's broken leg, and she's just now getting around without crutches.  She has become very skilled with the crutches, but with the boot, she can walk around pretty well.

Grandma Janice has been doing well at teaching Laynee and Shana the trade of bottling the harvest...not that she's going anywhere any time soon, but it's a great skill to be passed down.

Labor Day Weekend

 One of these days I'm going to get me one of those nice phones that has a respectable camera built into it so I won't have to always remember to bring my camera along.  I've always been years (decades) behind the technology curve and generally resist trying to keep up with the Technological Jones's - but I would really like to have a nice camera with me without having to think about it.

 My first cell phone was a gift from my Mom to me while I was living in Kentucky circa 2006 or 2007. Of course it was a flip phone and it was only a couple years later when my daughter who was in 4th grade at the time told me how embarrassed she was about my phone.  Apparently, even the kids in her class had cooler phones than me.

 So, a year or two later when it was time to "upgrade" - I did.  To this day, I still wish I still had my little old flip phone.  I'd be happy if the phone I upgraded to was stolen, lost, or otherwise rendered useless.

 I've heard of the iphone.  Apparently it has a rad camera.  I'm looking into it, doing my research, Consumer's Report, etc.  I've seen a few people with an iphone.  Mostly I'm just making sure it's not a fad like Beta or the really big disk movies that our neighbors used to have.

If I would've had a good camera in my phone this weekend, I could've shown you another fabulous garden update (we picked and snapped a whole lotta green beans), had a good time with family in Pine Valley, did a little run with the brothers, and even hit Aladdin out at Tuacahn - but I really don't have any proof of any of that.  We did hit the Bloomington Country Club pool thanks to Mason and Mandy. Happy Labor Day Weekend.