Hiyalite Canyon for Labor Day

Yesterday we decided to get out and see some of our beautiful surroundings that are so close. So we headed to Hiyalite Canyon and within about 30 minutes we were here and it was gorgeous! We actually drove up to this beautiful reservoir but it was warmer up there and very crowded so we headed down where it was a little cooler and not as populated.

I am definitely the wimp of the family when it comes to weather. I even put on a coat after this and the girls were calling me crazy. I wasn't cold, I just like to be comfortable... The coat did come off as did the long-sleeve shirt eventually when the sun came out.

The girls had gotten up early and made lunches for each of us. We all had our own decorated lunch bag and while the girls got pickles in theirs, Nate and I both got apples along with our sandwiches and granola bars.


Then it was time to play in the creek and boy did these girls have fun while Nate and I sat back on our camp chairs and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, weather, and the happy squeals of our three little girls. It was a great day.

Pookie loved splashing.


This is one daddy's girl if I ever saw one. She is constantly asking where he is and I know it's going to be hard for her when he goes to the academy next week and will only be home on the weekends. We were spoiled when we moved up here and had him to ourselves for three whole weeks. But now it's down to business and he had his last week was his first week full of fun. It started with two grueling days at the shooting range - yes, grueling - holding up a pistol and shooting literally ALL day can make someone's arm mighty tired. Not to mention, you have to be accurate in various situations and stances they put you through.

Then on Thursday he got tasered - not something he ever wants to do again. I thought taser guns just shocked you, but there are actually needles that go into your skin with a barb at the end and then you can shock them from there. Two of them went into his back and he said it felt like he was dying (mind you, he's never had a baby naturally). He and another guy did it in front of a group of firefighters who watched as part of their training and were there to catch them when they fell. I suppose now he'll be responsible with his taser gun now that he knows what it does. I wasn't too happy about the holes in his shirt and blood on his undershirt (you know).

Back to School!

Last week the girls started school. Savannah 3rd grade and London 2nd grade.
They were excited to get back to school and meet new friends.

London was sure that everyone would know how much she liked monkeys due to her monkey shirt and space-monkey backpack (plus she wore another monkey shirt the next day just to make sure). Savannah was thrilled to have a purse-bag instead of a backpack.

This is the oldest part of their school and other buildings have been built-on over the years. I love it! It's hard to see, but there's a school bell on the top and that's what rings! So classic and historical -- in fact, Nate and I were at the bank and saw an old picture of our town in 1908 and there, amongst the farms and Main Street, was this building, standing tall. Very cool. The girls were also thrilled to have their own lockers although I'm not so sure they'll think it's a good trade-off when they realize they're for snow pants & boots when it's FREEZING. I'm interested to see how the whole weather thing goes with them.

Savy's teacher - I think she'll be great for Savannah because she seems more old-school (no groupings of desks - yeah!). Savannah seems to really like her so far.

London's teacher is the one with blonde hair and the light blue sweater. She is the sweetest lady from Kansas and the best word to describe her is "cozy." I think London will love her.

Is that a metal slide I see?

London was afraid to go down it because she thought it'd burn her, but I assured her it wasn't that hot in Montana at 8:15 in the morning. I laughed but it did bring back childhood memories of me burning my little bum on a slide like this and literally having to stay at home because the peeling was so bad I could even wear undies! Oh the memories. And who could forget my lovely brother, Tyler, telling the whole school that it was me who burned my bum after the principal made a warning over the announcements about the slide being hot.

Anyway, Reagan and I have been busy still getting the finishing touches on the house and garage done. She and I both have missed the girls a ton! She's lonely and I miss my little babysitters. I swear, you don't see her for two minutes and she comes back like this. . . notice anything different? (not her band-aid from the ER trip)

Let me give you a hint:

She wanted to be like London who just got her hair cut for school. It looked really bad that day, but once it was washed, it curled right back up again and just looks like a cute ringlet bang.

She's the first child of mine to do that, the first to go to the ER --- I wonder how many other parenting firsts she has up her sleeve for us....

Tomorrow I hope to have pictures of the house because I know everyone's dying but my room is still a mess so we'll see what I get done today.

Montana!!!! Lewis & Clark Caverns

We are finally (after 2 years of waiting on various options) in Montana!

This is one of the first days we arrived with some excited but worn out girlies!

Nate started his first day of work today. He's excited because instead of sitting at a desk he'll be at the shooting range and being tasered. Well, he's not so excited about that last one. I suppose they figure you'll be more careful with a taser gun if you know what it really feels like...

The girls started school last Wednesday and are loving it. Tomorrow I'll post about their first day and then I'll work on getting pictures of our house. There was so much stuff (junk) to go through that's been in storage for two years. We had a huge garage sale the second weekend we were here and did pretty well. The leftovers went to the Salvation Army. We still have organizing to go through in the garage, but I figure it'll get done eventually and I just need my house in order.

Last Tuesday - the last day of summer for the girls - we decided to do something fun so we went to the Lewis & Clark State Park Caverns. They were awesome!

We took our nephew, Ethan, and if you didn't know better, you'd probably assume he was our fourth child since he and Savy look a lot alike.

It was a 2-hour 2-mile tour and the kids did great. We actually had quite the hike up to the entrance. It was about 15 minutes of switchbacks and it was quite warm that day (maybe 90), but the kids did great. Can you tell the girls were a bit scared to stand on the edge of the trail up that high?

The entrance to the cave after our hike.

This is my favorite picture. Reagan did really well in the cave and even walked most of the way except the wet, slippery parts where Nate held her. She was so cute holding onto the rails and going down the stairs with me in front and dad in back. She kept asking, "Daddy, you ok?" At one point, deep in the cave, she asked me if we were in outer space.

Oh, and if you are wondering about that band-aid on her forehead - we took a little ER trip on Sunday night. She tried to walk down the stairs with a princess dress, shoes and sunglasses. Didn't work. She went tumbling down and had a nasty gash in her forehead. In a small town, all the Urgent Cares closed at 5:00 and it was 5:30 (of course) so we headed to the ER. Gee, I can't wait for that bill.... The nurse kept saying she'd need stitches, but the doctor came in and super-glued her head back together. What excitement. I told Nate that's pretty good -- 8 years of parenting and that was our first trip to the ER.

They are standing on the "mile-high step." They are a mile-high but inside a cave. Pretty cool.

The blasted out exit tunnel which was very cool.

Did I ever mention that Montana is gorgeous?

The Gilbert Arizona Tempe

This weekend was the groundbreaking for the Gilbert Arizona Temple. I am so excited to be here for this! We have had the Mesa temple since the 1920's and this will be a second one right here in the valley. I am mostly excited to take my girls through it once it's finished. That is honestly my biggest excitement - to see their faces and they look upon the beauty of the celestial room and the bride's room. I can't wait. We opted out of going to the actual site and went to the stake center instead to see a broadcast. I just didn't want to battle thousands of people with a 2 1/2 year old for hours -- because I'm sure people were there very very early!

Our stake presidency has prepared for this for a while and had a stake theme all ready for us. A few months ago they asked us to go the the site and take a family picture so that we can go back once it's built and take another picture with the temple there and compare the two and see how much we've grown spiritually during that time. At the time, it was vague, but after stake conference this weekend, it all makes sense and I'm excited about it!

We haven't gone back to get another picture and we need to before they get started too much! We took this when Nate was in Texas. But we need another with him! And it was windy and the girls weren't happy and this picture isn't framed too well with the equipment in the back. Just to the right of us are some beautiful mountains - much prettier than equipment. I'll have to post an updated version with Nate in it when we get out there again.

The adult session Saturday night was great. I felt so uplifted and ready to do better in my life. Here's the blueprint that will take us "from groundbreaking to dedication" so that we can see how far we've come on our own temple (ourselves).

They are all very basic gospel principles, but there are some specific things as well. For example, we are to pray daily as families and individuals, but they don't stop there. We are to pray "that our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will increase, that He will bless each person and family living within the boundaries of our ward and stake, and that we will reach out in love and service to each other."

On "attend the temple" we are instructed to not only go frequently but to pray for those things mentioned above when we are in the temple and we are to make a goal to attend and be accountable for that goal.

For studying the scriptures individually and as a family, they gave us numerous scriptures to read/discuss as a family (the border of the paper). I will say that we have only recently (since Nate got home) started consistently reading the scriptures as a family and it has been wonderful. Even Reagan gets to read and she looks forward to it -- Nate or I will say one or two words and she'll repeat them until her verse is over. It's funny because if she's doing something else and doesn't have her BOM open (which is almost the whole time), then she insists on opening it before she'll repeat what we tell her. She loves being a part of the reading. And the girls are doing great learning the lingo as they read. Plus, I love hearing Nate teach the girls.

Under service they talked a lot about serving not just our families or ward member, but also our neighbors. I need to reach out more to neighbors. Here in the valley, I think members have a reputation of keeping to ourselves and helping each other. I think the goal here is to change that perception so that more missionary experiences will open as this temple is built over the next few years.

So here we go on a quest to become better. . .

Reagan and Ryder played together today. They have so much fun. I get to watch Chancho every Monday from 7 to noon while Tyler and Gina go to school together (how romantic!). It is so easy to watch this boy and it keeps Reagan busy while I get the girlies off to school, do yoga (or whatever exercise for the day, most often yoga), shower and get ready. My morning flies by with someone to help me keep Reagan busy -- I should thank Tyler and Gina because today is the first day in a long time that my yoga hasn't been interrupted once by Reags. They even came in during the last five minutes and did stretches with me.

Speaking of Tyler, his birthday was on the 6th. Amy had planned on making these darling cookies and invited me over to help. I love going over and learning her tricks of the trade. It was even better because these cookies were only for Tyler and Nate so I got to do a lot more hands on learning than if she'd been doing it for someone else. She's a good teacher and I am surprised at how fun and easy it is to do these! I was especially impressed with my little deer -- yes, I actually made all those tiny deer! I was more impressed that I impressed Amy with them! They turned out cute and left me wanting to make more although I have no reason to and I can only eat sugar once a week (Happy Holiday Habits). For better pictures of the cookies, go here - Amy is amazing and it made me really miss living by her.

I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving!!!!! Seriously. The other day Reagan found this pilgrim hat and insisted on wearing it so she could be a "cowboy." I don't know where she got that but she was thrilled to be a cowboy and wore the hat most of the morning.

This weekend was the groundbreaking for the Gilbert AZ Temple as well as Stake Conference. Both were uplifting and I will work on blogging that tomorrow or Wed.

Halloween

I never got a good picture of the girls so this is all I have -- after the school party and Savy's hair was all messed up instead of slicked back in her vampire bun. Oh well. I get so sick of dressing them up five times in a week! Last weekend we had our ward carnival so this weekend we ended up going to Jill's ward carnival/trunk-or-treat Friday night. So after the exciting school parade and party, we came home and got ready for the trunk-or-treat.

Savannah has had that costume since last year when we saw it on clearance at Target. She loved it and I loved that it was only $6! She's been excited for a year to wear it for Halloween. Then London fell in love with Savannah's snow princess dress from about two years ago (weird - very weird for London). She got the glasses at her school party and they definitely made the costume more "London."


London just cracks me up!

They thought I was crazy making them pose like this.

Trunk-or-treat

Personally, I think London should have been the vampire!
Check out those teeth!

Jill had a couple streets in her ward that had lots of members and they sent out fliers about trick-or-treating on Saturday night. So we headed over there and the girls got to go around with dad. Here they are with their Archibald cousins - Dallin, Ryan, Luke and Paige.

Sunday we had a little party. I like doing fun stuff for holidays and I love Halloween. Plus, I felt bad that the girls didn't get to go out on Halloween so I planned this fun food. They were actually fine with not going out since we'd had such a non-stop busy weekend and they already had tons of candy.

Mummy hot dogs, bones 'n blood, pumpkin bread bows with soup, and apples with caramel dip. Tasty spread. I especially liked our skeletons hanging from Grandma Norma's lamp!

Vote!

I now have one less thing on my to-do list.

I voted today.

Have you voted yet?

I hope you do - Tuesday is the day!