September

Trying to get back into some running schedule and especially trail runs on the weekends until the weather makes trails unaccessible.  The Hidden Oak Trail is one of my favorites--very green, challenging, and happy bird and bug noises along the trail. 

I went on Max's first field trip for the year--the sensory field trip to the park.  In this photo, Max is waving at me on the bridge.

As much as I was not looking forward to a four day school week, no school on Fridays has been great for the boys.  They love the break, since school mornings are really rushed, intense, and hectic.  We have time to lounge around, take our time doing our morning chore routine, and in place of school, we do the boys' required computer programs.  On a good Friday, we get that all done by 10am, and then they can play the rest of the day! 

This is up Slate Canyon, another fairly steep but beautiful climb.

I think I just wanted to document Max's style here--he loves his "tall socks", and we just got him his new shoes he absolutely loves.  Our happy little boy!  David got some noise headphones to use while weed whacking and mowing the lawn.  David told Max they were to protect his ears, and Max took that quite literally--he realized while wearing them it made "everything quiet", which he loved, but true to David's words, Max could bonk his ears on hard things and sure enough, they were protected!!  He went around the rest of the day hitting his protected ears on hard things...that's our Max!

Pace got a new homework project calendar for September:  one afternoon we counted how many jumping jacks, sit-ups, and push-ups he could do in 60 seconds per activity; another afternoon we went outside and made a list of all the things we could hear when we stopped to listen.  

Making crystals wasn't on the list, but we had a kit, and Pace wanted to do it...so I crossed off something else, because I figured making crystals was a good homework substitute.  I love doing homework with Pace.  He is really quick with math addition and subtraction equations.  I still mostly use my fingers, and he sometimes does, but he mostly looks up, imagine something in his head, and said the answer with a smile.  Sometimes his worksheets asks him to come up with his own word problems to describe the numbers it provides.  He comes up with the best word problems...this one was: 100 circles are in a space station.  2 circles explode to their death.  How many circles are left???????

David took the boys on another rock hounding adventure.  It was such a hot day, and the terrain was a hard hike for the boys, Max came home saying he "cried 90% of the time".  They hung out in the small shade of the trees, David made them drink tons of water, poured water on their heads "until they cried", but they did find some cool rocks.

David did one last long ride before his final event of the year, Salt to Saint.  He wanted to ride up to Mirror Lake before the weather changed--He didn't quite make it to Mirror Lake, but got to see amazing fall colors and he came back with some beautiful photos!  And the next day it rained and snowed, so it was good he got that ride in!   

David started Salt to Saint, and since the boys don't have school on Fridays, we decided to drive down and stay the weekend in St. George!  It was a cold, rainy weekend in Utah County, and perfect in St. George, so we lucked out!  Jared, one of our friends, and also on the team this year, has a townhouse in St. George, and generously opened it up to us to stay in for the weekend.  I picked up Lisa, thinking she'd need a weekend away, and Jared and his son ended up staying the weekend, too, so we all had a ton of fun together.  We pulled in to St. George a little later than I'd originally thought, but had enough time to walk around Dixie rocks for a bit before the sun set.  

We tried to get the temple in the background, but the lighting was really hard once the sun went down.

While we were having fun, David and the S2S team were riding through really cold, wet, rainy weather.  I don't think it ever got above 40 degrees for them, and the night got even colder.  But they hammered it, stayed warm enough while riding, and Jared used his camper as the crew vehicle, so they all had pretty cushy surroundings in between legs.  They ended up finishing under 20 hours, finishing at 19 hours 30 some odd minutes, coming in first for their category and third overall to finish!

The way the riders were lined up, David ended up crossing the finish line!  We met the team there with cinnamon rolls and a breakfast casserole, hung out for a bit, then headed back to the townhouse to get changed and ready for a hike to enjoy sunny St. George.   The boys LOVED riding in the camper!

We went for a hike in our favorite Red Cliffs area, although we still haven't made it past the section that requires a rope to cross the area.  Max looked at the little steps carved into the rock, took a breath, said, "oh-kay..." and started to climb!  I was shocked!  I stuck right behind him, and when we reached the rope section, he got nervous, and we had to slide back down.  A few more years...

Max loves the "soft dirt", he had to stop and poke the dirt on every step in this section.  He also loved writing his name in the dirt, and digging lots and lots of holes, just like a dog.

They also found a "secret passageway" they loved going up and down a few times.

 

They love the cave with the hieroglyphs on this hike.

After lunch we left the boys at the townhouse to take naps/watch a movie, and Lisa and I checked out Snow Canyon together, and later the boys all went to see the lego ninjago movie and Lisa and I watched womens conference.  It was such a great girls weekend, considering so many boys were around!  A lot of laughs on the Snow Canyon hike:  We ran into some amusing kids at the top of the viewpoint, who said they'd been "cloud bursting"...and then on the way back to our car a guy stopped in his tracks and made a huge deal about running into "some gorgeous ladies in Snow Canyon".  It was one of those moments where we wished we'd have known what to say in the moment, like, "Oh, thanks, my husband thinks so, too..."

One more laugh:  Lisa got some interesting lighting in this photo, and David was sure it was a wormhole or portal to another dimension...

David takes the boys out on bike rides to the school track, and makes them do laps.  Max often sits and watches...we gotta get that kid a little stronger to get him on a pedal bike next year!  After watching me trying to keep up with the boys walking them to school while they were on their bikes, he scoured ksl and found me a a super cool cruiser bike!  I feel like one of the cool kids now, riding a bike with the boys to school!  And then David had so much cruiser envy he found one for himself, too!

David took the boys to the Red Barn to celebrate fall with their apple cider and apple cider doughnuts!