Summing up September

School is in full "swing"

Homework and projects to work on



Summer injuries still sting



Another birthday come and gone



Family pictures were a stress....but I'm sure they'll turn out good



Family Home evenings are always best....with old friends from the hood! :)






Soccer pictures coming soon! Happy happy fall to everyone!!

The Last Of Our Summer Weekends

I'm about to pull out our fall decorations and realized that I haven't posted some of our last summer activities. The last weekend in August Matt and his Dad and Matt's good friend went on a horse-packing trip in the high Uintas. They got rained on pretty much the entire time! But it sounds like they still had tons of fun! The rest of us went up the second day to have dinner and do a little riding. It was a little cold but a great time! I think we even converted a couple of them to starburst roasting! (I forgot my camera, so here are some pictures from my phone)





LABOR DAY WEEKEND

We have a new tradition!! This was our 2nd year going to the Sheepdog Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway. We go with our "Heber cousins" and Grandma and Grandpa Gardner. We all go in the morning and let the kids do all of the fun kid activities. This year they had Mally Lewis and Lambchop there. My siblings and I grew up watching Mally's mom Shari with lambchop! For Christmas one year my mom bought the grandkids the video "101 things for kids to do" and my kids LOVE it! So, we were all excited to go meet Mally and lambchop. (I may have been more excited than them) :)

At lunchtime, my sis. in law and I dropped all the kids off in Heber, we put the babies down for naps and then we went back and all the adults just got to hang out and watch the rest of the championships. I remember last year, having a brand new baby, thinking I really don't want to sit around in the hot sun watching a bunch of sheep on a mountain. And everyone knows how I feel about dogs!! :) But this is AWESOME!! So relaxing! Such a blast! Very interesting! I was gonna describe it all here, but you have to just go and see it for yourself! :)

CMT

I am sorry I haven't posted for a while. I do have a few weekend trips I need to get to and soccer is just about done so I'll post about that too. For now, I'm just enjoying a lazy Friday.

I came across this new music video today. We saw Carrie perform this live a week before her wedding. It was beautiful and she was so emotional. A bunch of my family is in Florida for a wedding this weekend so I thought of them. Hope Y'ALL are having such a wonderful time! Congrats!!

But who I thought of the most was my Grandma Hoopes. I remember spending many hours laying on her living room floor watching recorded tapes of CMT. (country music television) Oh how I think my Grandma would have loved DVR! If I remember right, she used to sit with her remote and record music videos and cut out all the commercials...she had it down pretty good. She had tapes and tapes. I mostly remember Randy Travis, Reba McEntire some Garth Brooks, and a little Lorrie Morgan. My family will have to help me remember some of Grandma's favorites. Anyway, I think she would've really liked some of Carrie Underwood's stuff...and especially this video. Enjoy!

Carrie Underwood
Mama's Song

New Toy

We do hair! We do lots of hair! We do braids, we do twists, we do clips, we do the straightener, we do the curling iron, we do ponies....which end up all over the house....here was my arm last Saturday after a day of cleaning:



We do all of those things and NOW we do the TopsyTail!!

Our girls LOVE the adopt a do website that I also have a link for down the right side of my blog. We even met the cute girls from that site at the Literacy Center's picnic this summer! Yes, we stood in the hot dog line with them. I think I was more star struck than the girls! :) No, my girls were really excited too! They are very very sweet girls BUT their hair wasn't done! (Their mom was in Hawaii!) :)

Anyway, they use the Topsytail a lot and so we have been dying to get it. My girls really do love to get their hair done. They love to find new styles they want to try. HOWEVER, sometimes there are tears....not often....but sometimes. This morning was one of those times with 1 daughter (that shall remain nameless) who wanted the basic topsytail style. I did it, but I did it too tight, she got mad, we had family prayer, then she was happy and off to school she went. Then I went straight to the phone book and those things are sold out all over the valley. I finally found some about 20 minutes away. I had them hold 2 for me! I was so excited! Do you think I got a little carried away with it?? 6 ponies on a 2 year old, 5 minutes, no tears!! Priceless! (well $6 plus 1/2 off the 2nd box) :) Totally worth it!!

Potty Trained

Look at this beautiful princess!! We are a week into this and I think she's got it! I'll spare the public of all the details and write those in Kierra's journal for her posterity to read. I also have some very sweet friends that understand my "Hallelujah Song". They are so good to listen to me ramble with excitement! Kierra has just done so good and it really hardly took any work. All kids are different but here are my words of advice that worked on this one: no pull-ups...at all...and have a friend over that is already potty trained! :) Amazing!

Kindergarten Girl

I felt like I took a lot of pictures of Emily and that it still wasn't enough to capture all the excitement! Emily is so excited about school and so ready! Kaylee and Taylor have already been in school a week and the kindergartners start a week later. That was pure torture to Emily. :) Her teacher gave her confetti to sprinkle under her pillow the night before her first day. Taylor loved helping and telling Emily all the ins and outs of being a kindergartner!

Emily laid down on her pillow and slept very well that night!



The next morning it was constant "How much longer, when do we go, why couldn't I go in the morning?" So we did hair, played games and painted nails purple to match the outfit
(thus the sandwich pictures so we can see the pretty nails!)



And then of course....we took pictures!








We got to the school in plenty of time. We saw lots of friends! Then Emily's teacher came out and they QUICKLY took the kids away. There was barely time for another quick good-bye and I love you. One dad said, that's a smart teacher! It's true. Us mom's wouldn't have let go if they had let us take too much time to say bye! :)

I missed Emily. I kept wondering what she might be doing. We went to pick her up and she came out that door with the biggest smile on her face! She was mostly excited to see her sister and her friends and start riding home. I really didn't need to be there at all! She knew what the routine was!



This morning when I woke up I felt like it was "Groundhog Day". :) The alarm went off, "I Got You Babe" started playing and it felt like deja vu all over again. Ok, not really, but I did go into autopilot and knew exactly what the morning routine was. That makes me happy and sad.

Our 3 oldest are in school and loving it!
We miss them but we're happy to see all that they are learning and experiencing!



And here's an extra little treat! She's too cute!