PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINE FOR TONS MORE PHOTOS FROM THESE PAST FEW MONTHS.
(I will post Disneyland separately)
We had a VERY BUSY August! It began with the arrival of these little paleontologists!
Bennett can tell you the name of about any dinosaur out there, and Carter is picking up on them as well. Yes, Bennett is younger...reminds me of some other boy in this family (Austin!)
So, one of the first outings was to the BYU Museum of Paleontology where we had a great explore!
We also went hiking up Rock Canyon on a beautiful summer day.
The entire Taylor family was in town for a REUNION so we all met up in Almo Idaho and just had a ball!
We all got family photos up on the cool rock formations of CITY OF ROCKS.
Another day we all headed over to GROUSE CREEK to Jay Tanner's ranch for some horseback riding.
Carter has a go of it.
And Brooklyn.
And Bennett.
Hats...on the Jensen clan.
And the grand-kids with Gma and Gpa.
And the cutest little baby Klay with smiles galore!!
Back home we had fun with the TEE-PEE in the yard.
Lots of busy kids all day long!
Auntie Bre made the coolest "sensory bins" that the kids really loved playing with.
On Sunday we all went to the MTC for Sacrament meeting and got some photos afterwards.
We enjoyed having Dad and Carolyn over for dinner.
And for Gpa James to get to hold Klay.
For FHE we made a pretty cool banner for Braden's arrival at the airport.
It was patterned after tapa cloth made in the islands.
Bre was master designer and Jenna and I helped her paint.
The kids made cool tiki masks that we then made into face masks that said "WELCOME HOME UNCLE BRADEN"
(Whoever has those photos...please send them to me! I am missing some from the airport)
HUGS from Braden was just THE BEST!!!
It seems like a dream now that he was even gone...it is just so normal having him home!
We are so proud of who he is and how much he learned about love through service!
You can see it turned out pretty great! And just having Braden home was the best gift ever! We were so grateful that all the kids could be there!
The kids just could not get enough of him! And he was happy to oblige.
Ty arrived that weekend and FAMILY PICTURES were in order up at Castle Park in Provo.
OUR FAMILY "ROCKS!"
Having GRANDKIDS is the BEST!!
One fun activity we did was our own "CHOPPED" TV show...if you have not heard of it, it is a chef contest where 4 chefs are each given a basket of ingredients and a time limit to make a certain part of a meal using what is in the basket...then they are judged and one chef is "chopped" from the group. This goes through 3 rounds till there is one chef left...the winner.
Our baskets contained...chicken breast/an apple/ rice krispies/ spinach.
It was SO FUN to see what everyone came up with. I was thinking we would all do the same thing, but all were totally different!
JENNA AND BRADEN made delicious sweet and sour chicken.
SCOTT AND I made spinach and cream cheese stuffed chicken breast with homemade applesauce. YUMMY!
AUSTIN AND LAURA made incredible wrap sandwiches using all the ingredients...so good!
The judges TY AND BREANNA got to taste them all and did not actually chop anyone, but awarded Scott and I as best dish overall.
We actually had a side dish that was amazing using spaghetti squash and italian turkey sausage...YUM and a dessert by the grandkids using crescent dough, trail mix and cream soda! It was pretty darn good too!
I had a visit from two of the cutest SAVE THE WORLD little guys one afternoon after they saw my little green pumpkins trying to grow under the playhouse...Jenny helped them make a big banner telling us all to HELP SAVE THE LITTLE GREEN PUMPKINS!
You will see in a couple photos that it WORKED!
We loved that Austin flew back to Utah in September to go to the Boise/BYU football game. Lucky for him, it was an incredible win for BYU. The boys had a wonderful time together!
We hosted TWO reunions this fall again.
First was up in Rexburg at BYU-I
We took the quilt up this time, realizing it really was a reunion for this group.
We saw about 60 returned missionaries and significant others.
The next day we went to do sealings in the Rexburg temple on the first Saturday after being closed, and with the Idaho Falls temple still closed...lets just say it took quite a while, and it was a blessing I scheduled our group!
The next weekend we hosted our Provo Reunion at our stake center.
We had over 100 RMs and lots of significant others again.
It is such fun for them to get together and we love hosting this.
We are so blessed to have these great kids in our lives!
We are also blessed to have our own group of friends that served as Mission Pres/Wives in the N America Southwest alongside us. All live in Utah so we get together a couple times a year and see how we are all doing! This fall we met at Crawfords cabin in Millcreek Canyon by SLC. We love these people!
Speaking of people that we love, here are some photos from a hike Jenny and I took the boys on in Rock Canyon.
I brought magnifying glasses so they could look at things on our hike.
I love this photo of their faces!
They were mountain goats! Serious rock climbers!
And Jenny is truly SUPER MOM to keep these two busy and so happy! She is always taking them places for great experiences!
OK, this is really ugly...feet are ugly in general, but this month I also fell going upstairs and may have broken my big toe. It looked really bad for a few days and still hurts when I move it.
Halloween we got the pumpkins from the garden...remember the little green pumpkins we wanted to save? Well, they grew pretty darn big for the most part.
We had giant pumpkins this year! Carved 3 and left one as a fall decoration on the porch.
Scott did the upside down head and the huge grinning pumpkin...
...Braden did the New Zealand style turtle!
I just wanted to share a few photos of Nathan and Daniel from school this year. They have been so fun to have in class! They are learning many great skills!
This one is Nathan "dusting" a fingerprint.
Both boys playing with goopy green GLURCH!
Daniel with his paper plate pumpkin he made by gluing torn orange paper all over a blank paper plate! Lots of work!!
And both boys checking up on a patient (Braelyn) with a stethoscope and some other surgical tool. She was loving being the patient and was truly "patient" with the poking and prodding and fake shots etc.
And Nathan inside our very own Patrol Car that we built and decorated during our police unit.
ADORABLE!
