November 2016

A fort? A jail? I don't care. All the kids were playing together and no one was crying.

Dash ran the annual Turkey Trot at school again this year.  He won his grade level with a 6:17!! All our kids spent much of the fall putting in lots of miles and helping Dash train.

Sissy turns 4!!

Sissy wanted a crown cake for her birthday.

Opening her present from Grandpa and Grandma Clayson.

This is the face you make when three of your siblings had birthdays in the last three weeks and its still not your birthday.  This is also the face I make when I go swimming twice in two weeks.  Karma.

Sport loves making himself banana toast.

After spending Thanksgiving with the Claysons, lots of the family headed to Utah to see the lights and go to a BYU game. Here are most of the cousins at the temple.  The three older boys got sick on Saturday, but Dash and Colt drugged up and went to the game.  Sport was way to sick to pull it off as is evident in this picture.

The family at the lights.

October 2016

Listening to the Prophet's voice.

I didn't take a picture of this to capture a rare moment, but to document our everyday lives.  This is literally a daily occurrence.  Where do they find the markers, you  ask? Who knows.  Where do drug dealers get drugs?  Where there is a will there is a way.

 Colt turns 8!

Birthday treats! Colt gets on Pinterest and finds treats he wants me to make for his class.  They're always a huge disappointment, but he makes the best of it.  This year it was mummy pretzels and pretzel spiderwebs.

I went to the school to eat lunch with the boys on their birthdays. On this particular lunch date, Dash and Colt starting telling a story about Dash letting so many stinkers on the bus the bus aide had to start opening windows.  They were giggling so hard I had to snap their picture.

Colt chose to go bowling with a couple buddies for his birthday.

Sport and Colt using metal telepathy on the bowling pins.

Colt wanted sports theme cake balls for his birthday.  They look messy, but they taste amazing.

Colt was baptized on October 29th (the day before he attended the Star Valley Temple Dedication broadcast).  Brandan spoke at his Stake Baptism.  Love those two men!

Colt had lots of family come support him on his big day.  So grateful for them all!

After the baptism, we had dinner at our house.  Always room for one more at the picnic table.

 Sport turns 6!!

Sport took spiderweb cookies to share with his class.

The family went swimming for Sport's birthday and then came home to cake.

 Halloween 

Halloween was a busy day! 8 am- costume parade; 9:30 am- preschool party at our house; 1 pm- help with school parties; 4:30 pm trunk or treat and trick or treating.

All but Tag were up and dressed for trick-or-treating before the school bus arrived.

Preschool Halloween party!

Tag and Sis lived it up at the grade school 

/Everyone crashed hard on the way home from school that afternoon.

Trunk or Treat!!  This was the easy part of the evening.  After hitting up all the parked cars, we took the kids out to a couple of houses and Dash got his fill of regular trick or treating pretty quickly.  We put him in charge of Tag, who needed help getting up to the doors, but didn't want to admit it.  Tagalong lived up to his name- dragging his treat bag across the lawns up to the doors at a snails pace, screaming when Dash tried to carry him and insisting that he be handed his treat directly rather than having it dropped in the bag.  He usually had it unwrapped before he got back into the van.  And he isn't great at unwrapping candy and walking so guess how long it took to trick or treat 3 houses?

The pumpkins!

Tag became pretty attached to Dash's Halloween costume.  He wore it around the house on a regular basis, bumping into walls and tripping over things.  Luckily, the giant head cushioned his falls.

September 2016

Little mimic.  Loves to wear Dash's under-helmet hat.

And his helmet as well.

Dash played grid-kid football this year.  He loved it and had a really successful season.  He is one of the players in purple.  Not even going to apologize for not knowing which one.

Some days you eat mac and cheese out of the pan with the serving spoon. With no clothes on.

Sport played soccer again this year and completely killed it.

Aggression is a family specialty.

Colt also played soccer.  He was one of the best players on his team.  When they got up too far, his coach would have to pull him back and make him defender.

Going for the goal!

Some days you take every blanket out of your closet and fall asleep with them in the easy chair. With no clothes on. 

I ran my first half marathon in September.  It was a ton of fun and the more so because Nate jumped on the road and ran the last few miles with me.  Mom and Dad, Nate and his family and my whole crew met me at the finish line. 

These are the stats from my half.  Sideways because I'm not very smart.  The course was almost all downhill which lead to a pretty great time for me, but I didn't walk properly for nearly two weeks afterward.

This fall I started helping coach the Lyman cross country teams.  A dream come true for me.  Thank you Brandan for encouraging me to go for it and for taking on lots more kid responsibility while still coaching junior high football. I loved every second of it.  This is the junior high team before our meet in Rock Springs.

The high school girls team on a rainy race day in Ririe, ID.

The boys team-standing right next to the Firth High School team.  Pretty cool to see Coach Portela at the race-in his red Cincinnati ball cap.  Some things never change!

We spent several weekends this fall in the hills cutting down firewood.  I hated it, but I did love the scenery.  One day we left the valley in a light rain shower and hit the hills in a full on snow storm.  It was super wet, but warm.  We pulled out a ton of wood and enjoyed some beautiful sights.

Snowy fall day in the Uintas.

Sis didn't participate in any formal sports this fall, but if being a girly girl got a medal, she would win gold!

First Day of School!!

The boys were up and ready before Dad left around 6:45 am.

Everyone woke up in time to see the boys off on the bus.  And as a note of general interest, Sis is 3ft 2in; Tag is 2ft 6in; and if the cats run into the house again, they're a couple inches short of death.