Busy September

I was thinking about how busy September has been and how behind I am on posting things to the blog. I came up with a solution.....post a bunch of pictures all at once and forget the individual posts. So here's too a very long line of pictures

 

Our September was filled with:

 

 Trips to Trafalga

Watching cartoons

 Playing in one of the only rain storms of the summer

 Going to our brand new Kneaders on opening day. Other kids recognize the McDonalds sign, mine only ever scream out when they see a Kneaders. Jon says I have ruined them. :)

  

 Starting school again. Someone was very excited.

Going to some different parks

 Taking a drive through Alpine Loop

Taking swimming lessons. Shawn forgot to take off his shirt this day.

 mother and son nap times

 Picking apples at my grandpa's house

Making ridiculous caramel apples with those apples (don't worry, we also made apple sauce and dried apple chips and things that were healthy)

 Harvesting our never ending supply of tomatoes

 

 Doing some exercise

Harvesting a giant red potato from our garden. We were so proud.

Taking at drive up Big Cottonwood canyon. Learned about the rings of trees.

 Going for a little hike and collecting leaves

 Shawn's prize winning leaf

 Evan's leaf :)

 Using our voices A LOT during the hike

Throwing rocks into the stream

  

 Making matchy matchy smiling faces

 Watching ducks

 Enjoying life!!

I have a 5-year-old?

I know I say this every single year, but I can't believe Shawn is 5! I remember things from when I was 5. I remember my 5th birthday was a "pink party" because I was obsessed with the color. All my friends had to wear complete pink, the house was decorated in pink, my mom made pink cupcakes with pink frosting and arranged them into the number 5, my mom even wore a totally pink jumpsuit (it was the 80s). What a fun time of life. Shawn has been so excited to turn 5 especially because it meant he got to go to school at the "big" school. Happy Birthday to my sweet little guy!

 

While he was sleeping we decorated the house which also included streamers on his door and 5 balloons with dollars in them hanging in the hallway. He was so excited to see the decorations, but once he saw $$ was involved his face lit up.

 I think his face expression is saying "have you ever seen so much money in your life??"

 We let Shawn decide where he wanted to go out to eat for his big day and he chose "the Texas place with the yummy rolls". Once I told the waitress that he said that she was certain that he had a constant supply of rolls. I don't even know how many he ate, but I know he didn't touch his dinner. I also forgot that they sang happy birthday while you sit on a saddle and get ice cream. Shawn couldn't believe his luck even if he had to ask what a saddle was.

For his birthday party we had an Olympic theme since the Olympics had just ended. He really wanted to have races and games and have official gold medalists, but I had to explain that everyone will be getting a gold medal so we don't send kids home in tears.

Evan had to be a part of everything and this is him throwing the frisbee into the hoola hoop.

 Lining up for the next game. We only invited kids in our neighborhood that Shawn plays with and this is only half the group. The other half were doing a different game. Oh yeah, we also had all his cousins come as well. To be honest, it was a bit too crazy. We might be doing the rule "you can invite as many kids as you are old" from now on. :)  

Balance beam

See who can keep their balloon in the air with one hand the longest 

 Every year Shawn begs for a pinata. I don't love the pinatas. They seem to always end in someone getting hit or someone crying because they didn't get as much candy as the next kid. However, I told Shawn if he really wanted to do a pinata it would have to come out of his present budget and he was all for that. What could I say? If he wanted a pinata so bad that he would give up more presents, then I will do it.

Tiff Time

We spent a lot of time with my sister Tiffany during the month of August. Three weeks before her mission departure date she actually decided she was going to go instead of getting engaged. Which means, that we had 3 weeks to get EVERYTHING ready for her mission when usually you have several months to prepare. Things were CRAZY. A lot of the time was spent shopping, planning, preparing for farewell party, but we did get some fun in there too. One afternoon we went up to Snowbird Resort and did the tram ride. See pictures below. 

 



The day before Tiff left we spent HOURS shopping and then did all of her packing that night. Evan was very helpful with climbing in and out of the suitcases and unfolding and unrolling everything we did. I took the kids home to Jon the moment he was done with work.



Seeing Tiff off at the airport

Tiff with all of her nephews and niece at the time.

Shawn's T-ball Season

Shawn loved playing t-ball this year. Jon and I have both spent a lot of time with Shawn practicing baseball which actually made it harder for him to hit off the tee since he was used to us pitching it. He had several amazing hits into the outfield. We only saw one other kid hit balls into the outfield the entire season. I wish I would have caught those on video, but of course I didn't. Here are just a few of the photos I took at several games.

 

Waiting to run

entertaining himself with bubble blowing

Do you know what a good after-game treat is....fresh picked tomato straight from the garden

He always did a couple practice swings before his official hit



End of the season with his much beloved gold medal