Monday

Testing the water, it was cold and yes Miles does jump in

Jumping never gets boring

They each have their own size appropriate jumping rocks

we went home with soggy feet

cold river water

the bridge, he could of stayed here all day

our goal, to get to the waterfall

My camera is never in focus, but can you see all those colors!

My little guys

There was a twig down his shirt

This is arguably the best of our 4 seasons in Utah. Miles has an obsession with the mountains lately. He looks at them as we drive and begs me to take him - THERE. Well, a few weeks ago we started walking up Provo and Rock Canyons. There are really easy safe trails for these guys. And, I have re-discovered how easy it is to put smiles on their faces. As we walk Miles will ask me about 30 times if we are on the mountain. I say yes, and we go through this routine several times until we are in the car going home. He loves it, he loves to find sticks and bugs and throw rocks in the water. He likes to feel how cold the water is, and then put his hands in my pockets. Robby likes to feel his feet squish in his shoes. He looks for 'an even bigger' rock than the last one to jump off of. He asks me what kind of trees or flowers we see, and most the time I am making up names. I tell him I don't know so I make them up like I did when I was a kid, he starts to catch on and makes up his own names. He collects rocks and forgets they are in his pockets. It's really making this season great for me, because I was having a serious post-summer melt down. Glad that's gone, Fall is fabulous, it's just never long enough. My goal is to get up these canyons that are ten minutes away every day while we can. We'll see how that goes.

Peaches

This is how I spent Miles nap time today.  In past years my mother has very generously canned as many peaches as we were willing to pay for.  I decided last year it was time I figure out how to do this by myself.  I started with a half bushel of pears.  I was blown away at how much I enjoyed it.  I felt like I had mistakenly stumbled upon a new form of therapy.  This season my mom called and asked how I wanted her to do for my family.  I told to order 2 bushels and that I would do one and she could do one.  She actually enjoys it as well.  It wasn't exactly without incident, I had two jars break in the second batch, and during the process I must have called my mom 10 times.   I think I know why they broke though, so hopefully that won't happen tomorrow.  

Now if I could just figure out how to bake.  I can't bake, my poor kids, I can't make a store box of brownies.   

Genola Fun

We have the greatest neighbors ever. Seriously, I can't imagine moving away from our neighborhood, our ward and especially our next door neighbors the Heaton family. Tonight for family home evening the Heaton's invited us to their house/farm in Genola, this is a house they hope to retire to someday - hopefully in a LONG someday. My kids LOVE picking vegetables, and the Heaton's have a beautiful garden at their home in Genola. It was so much fun to see the kids pick corn, beans, and pumpkins tonight. They did a really great job picking the corn and green beans. The corn is the best corn any of us have ever had. It is like candy it's so sweet! Maya was helping our neighbors the Magelby's (Patricia's family) pick green beans a few Saturday's ago, and she came home and said, "Mom, can that be one of my job's because it's hard work and it's so fun." It's so wonderful to see our kids enjoy this so much. We are absolutely having a garden next year, and looking forward to growing things we love to eat. This year, Risi helped me with our flower garden, and her and Maya both are wonderful at pulling weeds. On the way home we asked each of the kids what vegetable they want to plant next year. It was fun to hear what they want. In addition to the vegetable picking, we had a yummy dinner. Shaun and Eddy made a very impressive bon fire and we roasted hot dogs and had fresh corn and of course marshmallows. It was one of those perfect nights with the kids, and good friends. Oh - and the view out there is spectacular. Once again it makes me so grateful for where I live. I didn't take enough pictures, but did get some good ones of the garden and the kids.