Full Blast or Out Cold

Henry always cracks me up over the places he chooses to take a nap.

And the crazy part is that he won't move if he is in the way.

He doesn't care.

Even if you accidentally knock him with your foot, he still doesn't move. Where as, if you accidentally do that to Samson, he jumps and whines like a baby that you touched him with your foot,

Alexander

Alexander is doing great...

as you can see.

Kirk had the slide down on the grass and up side down to repair a tear with fiberglass patch.
Of course Alex has to see what you are doing.

He spent over an hour just cruising through the tunnel. We purposely left it down a little longer for him to do this. He was enjoying himself.

The guys had barely bolted the slide in place and he was ready to test it out.

I will never forget the day that he was grown enough to get onto the yellow slide as opposed to his cut off green slide. He definitely likes a challenge.

The Bug Whisperer

A couple of things I have noticed about living in Cache Valley is the size of the praying mantises.

And that Kaleb is always playing with them at this time of the year...

That and any other bug that he finds.

Just as long as he doesn't throw grasshoppers into Daphne's hair we are good.

CORN....CORN.....CORN!!!!!!

The great thing about having a huge garden is the harvest!

 We have enough corn to last us the winter.

The bad thing about having a huge garden is the harvest!

When it is time to harvest corn, 

you literally have it coming out your ears!

No pun intended.

 This was only a mere fraction of cobs that Kirk and the boys were shucking outside.

I had pots of boiling water to blanche the cobs for freezing.

Poppa was doing his best to not get shucked in to cutting the corn off the cob.

 Here is the cutting crew.

This was definitely a family affair.

It didn't last long. Poppa jumped in with their little Sugar supervising.

We froze all the corn that we weren't going to eat.

110 bags!

So now when we retrieve a bag from the freezer, sometimes I hear someone joke, 

I can't find any......

or, which one do you want.....

or, bag number 107......

or, which freezer again.......

Redneck Waterslide

For the official first day of school, Star Academy rented the waterslide for the day.
This waterslide is put up by a family right next to acres and acres of corn. I couldn't believe how many dare devils we homeschool with.

It almost looked a little too scary to go down it until I tried it. Then a bunch of the kids wanted me to go down with them in a train. I even tried it backwards.

It felt good to be outside with good friends and just having plain fun.

Loveland Living Aquarium

I taught the Oceanography Merit Badge to the scouts in August. One of my favorite subjects. It worked out great this year because Kaleb and Victoria are studying this subject for their science this year. What better thing to do than to visit the aquarium. We had a large group of scouts attend with their families. I love group rates.

 This aquarium had just recently relocated to another site. I never saw the other one but we were pretty impressed. Some might feel that when you see one aquarium, you have seen them all. Not for us. We loved it.

 Daphne still likes tight, little spaces.

 There were different areas. One was the aquatic life of Utah and then they had a room of the rain forest. That was pretty impressive with those gigantic fish that swim the Amazon. Kind of freaky.

 Victoria and I could have watched the penguins all day. They make you wonder what they are thinking as they dart about here and there.

We had a great time as did the other scouts and families. It was almost a two hour drive to get there but well worth it. Some of the kids didn't want to leave. Hopefully we will be able to return at the end of the school year to top off our studies in Oceanography.

Start of School

Here it is October and we are already looking back to September. Actually, August if you want to get technical. Jared started Bridgerland at the end of August. I am down to teaching only the youngest two now. Life is a little different with just the three of us during the day.

A lot quieter with Victoria and Jared separated.

Bitter Sweet.

They did goof around quite a bit now that they aren't together all day.

 Jared chucked as he left for the first day of the carpentry program at Bridgerland Applied Technology College. He said he never needed a backpack before and now he does.

 Aside from lugging around his school books these are the other supplies that he needed. We had to go to three places to find a tool belt that would fit his waist. He is so skinny. He had to go back and get a set of suspenders so the tool belt wouldn't drag his pants down. 

Since starting school, he has hammered his finger, scraped the skin off his thumb, and nailed his wrist with a NAIL GUN! All in one week. It was a bad week. And if I have the story straight, it wasn't him who nailed himself with the nail gun, one of his class mates did.

When he was telling me about it I was looking up and down his body for injury.

Everyday I give him a hug on the way out the door and tell him to come home with all his fingers!

We are down to two for Homeschooling now.

I like it but miss that they aren't little anymore.

Everyone is growing up

and Kirk and I are just getting old.