September 2013

One thing that I like about where we live is we get to see the most awesome rainbows right from our house. We get full rainbows that stretch over the whole mountain and sometimes even a double full one.

The one great thing we did in September was Justin, Mariah, and I completed our first half marathon. We ran the Huntsville Half. It was a great and awful experience all at the same time. Really cool to accomplish but we thought we would die. We trained all summer for it. I have pictures of us all together that I am going to add later when I upload them.

First day of School

Mariah 8th grade

Emily 5th grade

Emily's "so ugly they are adorable" shoes.

Riley 9th grade

Devin's first day of preschool! I included several pictures of him because first of all he would let me take as many pictures as I wanted (the girls complain). And also the first day of school ever is a big deal.

13

Mariah turned 13 this summer. She is turning into such a beautiful young lady.

Here is her and mostly Devin blowing out her candles.

Butterfly Lake

One of our favorite spots to visit since Justin and I have been married has been Butterfly Lake. It is in the Unitahs up on the Mirror Lake loop. We have been there too many times to count and have so many memories there. We have not been there for a few years (really since Devin was born). It is so much work to go camping now. It is not near as much fun or relaxing when you are the parents in charge of taking anything. But I have missed going up there and I told Justin I wanted to go up there for a couple of days this summer. One thing that we do not enjoy about camping there is the nights. It is so cold up there and then you get all of us in a tent and there is not very much sleeping that goes on. So we decided to stay of just 1 night. We went up early and stayed the whole day. Spent the night, did an early morning hike to Ruth Lake for some fishing then packed up and went home. I got some great pictures of the beautiful surrondings and the kids. I uploaded a lot because I liked so many of them.

This Butterfly Lake. We love the lily pads and flowers that grown in the lake.

This is the little pond behind the lake.

You can walk on area of the pond that it is just grass growing on top of the water. It is wet and squishy and we call it the spring board.

.

Devin was a little scary with the fire. He loved it, a little too much. We had to keep a real close eye on him around it.

This is up at Ruth Lake.

Riley enjoying nature while the rest of us were fishing.

Our favorite fishing spot there.

It was such a peaceful trip (until we got stuck in terrible traffic on the way home from Evanston--there was an accident that closed the road). We had good quality family time. The kids got along great. Something about being up there is so peaceful and we love spending time up there.

We Finally Finished the Basement!

Well our house is now complete. This summer we have been here for 8 years. We finally got the family room finished downstairs. It is Justin's man cave. All Detroit Lions colors, decorations, and a Barry Sanders mural that painted.

The mural turned out awesome. Justin had a friend take a picture and break it up into little squares and we painted each square onto the wall. We are really proud of the way it turned out.

Trip to Provo (More Summer Hightlights)

This summer we had no plans for a big vacation. We just did a few small trips close to home. At the beginning of summer we went down by Provo and stayed a couple of days in a hotel. We went to both Seven Peaks water parks, swam in the hotel pool, and hiked up to Timpanogos Cave. It was really fun. It was good to get away from home and have some family time with no worries. We just relaxed, ate out and enjoyed each others company. Missy and Crispin and their family went down and so did Crispin's brother, Ian and his family. The only thing I took pictures of the whole time was our hike up to Timpanogos Cave. Some people may have thought we were crazy because we took up 5 kids and 3 toddlers but they did a great job. Missy, Cris, and Justin ended up carrying the little kids for the alot of the way but they were planning on that. Here are some fun pictures of the hike.

This is before the hike.

This is Devin when we got back down. He was exhausted and fell asleep on Justin's shoulders on the way down.

This is our after picture. Notice Devin having fit because he woke up when we pulled him off of Justin. Gabe is zonked out and Dom looks like he is ready to fall over. Fun times!!!!