Happiness is...playing soccer in the rain

Even if there is pelting ice mixed in the rain, it is still happiness.  I love me some good sports, especially when there are awesome kids playing hard and having fun.  I wish I had a picture to show for tonight.  I could post a picture from another game, but that would not do it justice.  And I could have pulled the camera out of the bag, if I had remember it was there.  But every time I have tried to take a picture of Caleb someone scores on him, so I have just stopped.  Plus, I was shielding my face from ice at the time that it would have been really awesome to take a picture so, yeah, the camera did not happen tonight.
But it was fun!  I ran the two youngest to the truck and they hunkered down there for the rest of the rainy, windy, cold game.  Peter was a trooper and stuck it out on field with me.  And the whole team was awesome.  When coach pulled them out they wanted to go right back in.  Caleb made some great saves, the defense helped Caleb keep it at zero, and the offense actually did great at passing and scoring.  All in the rain, with a time of pelting ice in the face, and more rain following that.  My favorite save tonight was when Caleb game out of the goal box to dive on the ball, even with a gray/opposing team member charging at him.  I love it when he shows no fear in his playing, but just puts his heart into it.  And I know that he likes it best when he plays that way too.  One more game to go.  I hope it is just as exciting and fearless.

Motivation

Beginning tonight my boys start soccer games.  We have already been practicing and getting excited but I wanted to do something more.  I made up a pillowcase for the three of them and then spent time coming up with some motivational things to put on there.  Caleb is being promoted up to the big goal and he is a bit nervous to be in front of something so big.  I wanted to help him feel a little bit of encouragement, along with William and Peter being motivated as well.  So, this is what I came up with. 

Here's hoping for an awesome season!

Hitting the books X 3

Technically school started a week ago, where the alarm clock became part of our lives again and enforcing a bedtime became rotten.  But it was not until yesterday that all three of my cute boys were in school.  Wow, now even William is a school bound boy.  Life just keeps rolling along.

The 5th grader.  Look at how tall that boy is!  Mrs. Johnson is his teacher for both Spanish and English and so far so good. She seems nice and he seems to like her.  Yeah!  He is in a portable this year, which he is not excited about, but we have not heard too much complaining. 

 

The 2nd grader.  What a cute, excited kid for school.  Mrs. Gruer is his English teacher.  Senor Boud is his Spanish teacher, until tomorrow.  Senor Boud is moving on to International Business and Peter will be having a new Spanish teacher starting next week, Senora Barcelo.  Peter really enjoyed Senor Boud as a teacher so we will miss him.  Here's to hoping that the new teacher is just as great.

 The Kindergartner!!!  Look at that excited boy.  It is his turn to start school.  Miss Lebegue is his teacher, although all the kids call her Miss L.  He was so excited to start.  We had the option of either full day kindergarten or half day.  We chose half day.  It is nice, he gets to go learn and have fun at school and then come home and be with mom and Haley for a little bit.  Haley has missed William like crazy these last two days that he has been gone.  William seems to enjoy school.  He is not bouncing off the walls with excitement when he comes home, but he really likes his teacher.  He is bummed that he does not know any of the kids in his class but we are excited that he gets to make new friends this year, a whole year of new experiences ahead!

 Something new with this kindergartner.  I saw this on the computer and wanted to try it with William. Every year of school he takes his picture in this shirt and come high school graduation day we can look back on how he has grown physically and intellectually.  Fun times are ahead.

The last days of summer

"Parting is such sweet sorrow."

We had such a great time at Scofield, one last time, before school started.  We all had fun doing the things that Scofield means: the lake, fishing, hiking, time outside, reading together, making up games, and spending time with the goats.  It was awesome!

 Fishing! Such a great picture of a sweet kid.

 Our big adventure of the week was hiking to an American Flag we saw at the top of a mountain near the cabin.  This is the beginning of the assent.  There was a road that you could drive up about 1/5th of the way.  Then it was on foot from there.  Everyone did really great.  There was no trail to be found so we blazed our own.  And since there was no trail it was difficult for Haley to hike, hence mom carried her up the entire way.  Not too bad but it did get tough here and there.  It was constant slope, no real flat places to be found.  

 We made it!

 The flag

 The view.  We were really high up.

 The boys even found a little tiny lizard that they caught and held.

 Mom and the girl.  We made it together.

 See that mountain in the distance?  That is the one we hiked.  Whew!  It did not look like that big of a climb when we were there.  But when we got back to the cabin I realized what we really accomplished.  Wowzers!  A mom and her 25lb. girl, a 10 year old, 7 year old and the cool guy 5 year old.  We made it to the top.  The 10 and 7 year olds had not one problem.  Except that Peter tends to fall down on every hike we go on, but no injuries to be complained of.  William was a trooper.  He did great all the way up.  Then on the way down he started to feel tired and it was harder with gravity trying to help him down the mountain.  But he did it and it was great.  

 We made time for fishing and Haley surprised us by catching a fish.  She was excited.

 Then not to be out-done, William caught one soon thereafter.  

 On our last full day at the cabin it rained, and rained and rained and rained some more.  A lot of rain, my friends.  There was on break in the day for about 30 minutes.  We headed down to the lake and Peter immediately started on his float to the other side of the lake.  I was not one to stop him, until I saw that big white wall of rain heading for us.  The minute I called to him to turn around it started sprinkling.  He was a tough little paddler and headed back to the dock.  Once we were in the cabin the white wall of rain hit hard and we were all thankful that everyone was safe.

We also made one last stop to the caves and hiked to Caleb's.

Summer is such a blast!  We had the best times at Scofield.  But we also loved taking trips to Arches and Yellowstone.  We really had such amazing times together this summer.  We loved it!

Wacky Week - day 1

To make life just a little more fun before those school days return and the alarm clock takes back control of the morning we have Wacky Week around here.  Each day is filled with a little nonsense and fun and we try to eek out all of summer.

 Today we started off with eating our breakfast of ice-cream under the table.  Peter would have nothing to do with that activity, but he is excited about the rest of the week.

 We also had a back to school party at our house with a bunch of friends.  These pictures are all I got of the party.  Only those people with assistants that are in charge of the camera get good shots of all the kids having fun.  Me, I got the before shots.  The rest is in our memory banks.  The above shot is the ammo, water balloons.  Aprox. 275 balloons filled and tied.

 Ammo number 2, water guns and then the pool water ended up being ammo number 3.  Hee hee!

 The food set up.  What fun to make and arrange.  Apple cupcakes, apple juice, little chocolates that look like buses, smarties, and cookies, and the ever popular cheeto.  Such fun, and the sign was kinda neat too.  So, the party was great.  All the kids had fun and then the water fight began and the party got better.  We started with the balloons, moved to the guns and then the kids realized you could get the water bottles from the snacks and toss the water from those at people.  Then they attacked me and I got out the bigger cups that hold more water and more fun ensued.  It was great, wet and totally fun!

 Wacky activity not on the schedule; this crazy looking tomato that I picked from the garden.  Wacky

Kid initiated wacky activity; putting eyeball stickers all over themselves.  Kings and Queen of Wacky.
The rest of the week will continue to be awesome!  It will be spent of course in Scofield where our wacky activities include: National Fort Day, Backward Day, dessert for breakfast, spiky hair, a Berenstain Bear book read-a-thon (we have more than 50 after all), and more.  So much fun for the last of the summer days.

Summer life in action

Have we been at Scofield a lot this summer?  Heck yeah.  We just love it up there.  The perfect place to be in the summer.  So, this is just last week, so much sun and beautiful days on the lake.  Plus...

 Lots of time with the goats.  Those babies are too cute.  And not to mention the times that we have to be goat herders and round up the run-aways.

 Beautiful days = lots of lake time.  I love this action shot of Peter jumping off the dock.  He has gotten so brave this year!

 Caleb doing his own awesome moves.

 William is not quite to the end of the dock, yet, but he has been having some fun.

 The Cool Guys, rockin' the blow-up and taking charge of the lake.

Happiness

Yellowstone

What can one say about Yellowstone that pictures cannot explain just as well?  But if I were to try and use words... it was a fun family trip that we all loved.  A lot of driving, but you cannot escape that with Yellowstone.  The boys did get tired of all the "animal sitings" that stalled traffic for 45 min when it was for one or two cow elk, we were hoping for buffalo or big horn sheep or something more exciting. But would we do it again?  YES!  Was is so fun and wonderful to be together as a family (even Steve and Jorge came to hang out for a few days)?  YES!  Did my boys love the smell of the sulfur cauldrons or the mud volcano?  NO!!  Did we love all of the beauties of nature, the little squirrels running around and the excitement of seeing something new each day?  YES!

So, to the pictures...

The wildlife

 We saw the herds of elk.  Cows, babies, and huge bull elk.

One of Peter's main missions was to see some buffalo/bison (the jury is still out on if there is really a difference).  We were fortunate enough to see this scraggly guy right by the road on our second day.  Then after that we searched and searched for those huge herds of bison.  Where were they?  We could find one or two loners here and there but that was it.  Only on our second to last day there did we find out they were WAY UP in Lamar Valley, complete opposite place than where we were.  So, the next day we headed out to find those herds, and we found them!

This herd the boys hiked to.

This buffalo was one of my favorite moments from the trip.  We were trying to get out of the park to go get dinner at the cabin.  When we hit upon a very long line of traffic crawling along the road.  We knew there was a animal somewhere but we did not know what it was.  We inched along for a long time.  Rob said it took us 2 hours to get to the cabin that night because of the hold up.  When we finally got to the animal siting we found this dude taking his sweet time up the road.  This buffalo had no idea he was holding up so much traffic, he was getting a police escort and did not have a care in the world.  I loved the police escort, I loved that one lone buffalo could cause such a hubbub.  Awesome!

 

We saw a herd of prong horns outside of the park almost everyday as we were coming and going.  They are fast.

We visited a place called the bear and wolf discovery center to see some large bears and some white wolves.  

On our way home we also visited a place called Bear World and saw 20 or so bears come and go as they pleased.

 Also at Bear World the kids got to pet a very soft and lovable fawn.

 This is a free little roller coaster the boys loved at Bear World.

We also saw the geysers, the "stink" pots, waterfalls, heart stopping heights, the beautiful colored pools and lots of trees.

And most importantly we spent time together as a family.