Kaylee's soccer

Kaylee is playing soccer this fall. We are having a great time. She especially loves that her mom is the coach. She is having a great season and scores goals almost every game. She loves to run and kick the ball. She dribbles,
She shoots,

She Scores!! Yeah! you gotta love the pigtail grab after the goal.

Our team "The Dragons & Mermaids" We couldn't just be the dragons or just be the mermaids.

Eli, Laina, Kaylee, John, AJ, and Samara.

Message on a truck!

I have been going through a lot lately and I am feeling a little down today. Normally I don't post things that are too personal on our blog, but I really wanted to share this. So back to feeling down....I was driving home on the freeway really feeling sorry for myself. I don't know about anyone else, but when I get down sometimes things seem to spiral out of control. So as I was driving and working into this downward spiral I was passed by a dump truck. I noticed on the back of the truck that there were some words. At first I couldn't make them out, but as it got farther away I read: "too blessed to feel stressed." For some reason those words touched my heart and it really helped pull me out of my depression today. I am so thankful for someone who decided to paint that on their truck because it really helped me today!

Junior Jazz basketball

This shot went in!

Yeah this shot went in.

This is the line that they are supposed to wait behind before they can start guarding. He is ready!

Ryan is playing junior Jazz basketball this fall along with soccer. It is really fun and he is enjoying both sports. Here he is in his first game. He scored about 6 baskets!

Eastern Idaho State Fair

We took our annual trip to the fair a couple of weeks ago. Jeff and I really like to go so that we can eat all the yummy food. The kids love to eat the yummy treats like cotton candy. We also love to see the animals, ride a few rides and enjoy watching all of the interesting people.

Milking the fake cow.

I couldn't tell if Taylor liked this ride or not, she seemed a little tense.

Ryan took this picture of us. He did a good job.

Island Park family reunion

Over Labor Day we went to Island Park with Jeff's siblings (Minus Kevin) for a family Reunion. Well I went to Jeff's reunion. He stayed home so that his back could continue to heal and so that he could stay with Taylor who was still sick.

We got up there Friday night right after Brian & Tiffany. Boy were we greeted with a surprise. The cabin was a disaster and there were dead mice everywhere. It is the most mice I have ever seen in there. All I can say is how disgusting it was everywhere and I mean everywhere. We completely cleaned the entire cabin before we got unpacked. What a fun job that was.

Saturday we met Kristen & Craigs family at Macks inn. (Rob and Janelle arrived friday night a few minutes after the clean up was complete). We had such a fun day floating the river. The water was numbing cold! Ryan fell in at one point and it was so funny to see his face when the cold water took his breath away. As we floated the river we played on the rope swing, played tag with each other, ate lunch, tossed the football between rafts and had a lot of fun.

That night we went to the play mill to see The Secret Garden. The kids sat through it really well and we all enjoyed the evening even though the play was a little dull and hard to follow.

After the play we of course enjoyed ice cream in West Yellowstone.

On Sunday we held a little church service. The highlight was having Grandma & Grandpa McMinn give us a lesson via video tape. What a great idea Brian & Tiffany to include them in our reunion even though they are far away.

That afternoon we worked on a few crafts. we did prayer rocks, and rock creatures. The older kids did a hackey sack with rice inside balloons.

The hightlight of the day was the smores contest that we had that evening. Each family was in charge of bringing an original smore recipe to be judged. Rob & Janelles smore won first. It was 2 shortbread cookies, milk chocolate bar, slice of strawberrry and roasted marshmallow. It was yummy! Our smore took second. It was 2 ritz crackers, a heath symphony bar(2 pieces) and a toasted marshmallow. It was a good combo of the salty and sweet. We had a great evening ended with games around the campfire. It was really fun to have all of the kids participate.

Monday was the usual rush of winterizing and cleaning and heading home.

The clean up crew.
Craft time on Sunday.

This is a rock Taryn found that was a little bit too big for her prayer rock so she and I painted it to look like a ladybug. We named her Lucy and she is now guardian of the cabin. She now lives on the front porch.

The kids loved painting their prayer rocks and rock creatures. I should have taken more pictures of the finished products, but I didn't. I actually didn't take many pictures at all. I need to get some from the other that took more.

Maddie & Kaylee & Jocelyn

The kids before the rafting. I left my camera in the car because I was paranoid about it falling in. So I only have before pics.

New hair cuts

The girls and I went and had our hair cut on Friday. Taylor was so cute about it. Kristy came to ask us who wanted to go first. Kaylee had decided that she wanted me to go first, but then Taylor blurted out, "Me go first!" Then she clomped clomped in her high heel sandals across the wood floor and climbed up in the chair. She was oh so serious the whole time and watched Kristy the whole time in the mirror. It was funny. She loved her first real haircut.

Kaylee loves to go and get her haircut. She asks for months before it is time when we are going to Dragonfly?(that is the name of the salon) Afterwards we were playing outside. I wanted to snap a few pics to show everyone and she really hammed it up. She made me take this last one from the blanked where I was sitting. She thought it was her own little photo shoot.

On the fritz

I have tried on several occasions to post the rest of our Nauvoo photos with no luck. In the meantime life has been going on and I am now way behind on my blogging. One of these days I will figure out the problem. In the meantime I will be moving on with our blogging life.

Probably the biggest event(s) in our lives has been the rampant sickness in our home. Ryan was the first one to come down with the flu. He was staying with his cousins in Utah when he got sick. I went and picked him up on a Wednesday. He had a fever for the next 10-11 days. He had a sore throat, stomache ache, and cough. He didn't eat much and felt crummy all around. He laid around for about 2 weeks solid. It was horrible to watch him go through it. I did take him to the doctor to rule out strep and they sent us home to wait out the virus. In the meantime I had a family reunion and had my brother in town. We also had plans to go to Jackson for a few days. Ryan assured me that he was up for the trip. I figured he could lay around home or lay around at the cabin. Plus I figured at that point that his fever was going to break at any moment. Well it didn't and Ryan kept getting sicker. In Jackson I ended up taking him to the ER. (as a side note the er in Jackson was nice. There was no one else there and we had an awesome nurse and dr. ) They said that he was fine that it was just a virus and sent us home with cough syrup. The Dr. was puzzled that no one else in the family was sick. Remember virus's are very contagious. One other detail we found out was that Ryan was low on iron. So even when he started feeling better he was still really tired and it took him a long time to recover. Not only was he tired, but our skinny boy lost some weight too.

Breakfast alone at the cabin. Everyboday else went to Yellowstone. Notice Ryan ducking behind the bar, he was embarrassed that his shirt was off.

Our only excitement for the day was lighting a fire. Ryan was so excited and it kept him entertained for a couple of hours.

Poor sick boy! You can see it in his eyes.

Our next stress was Jeff having surgery. He is doing great, but it has been a lot of work for our family. I really took for granted the things that he helped me out with that he can no longer help with. ie taking out the trash, cleaning up after dinner, packing for a trip, carrying suitcases, coolers ect, unloading groceries, picking up toys. He is also not able to put on his own socks or tie his shoes. One other thing that is hard for him is bending down to put up the toilet seat.

Next, Taylor got the sickness. She had a fever for about a week followed by a cough that won't go away. She is now on her 13th day of sickness. The saddest part of her being sick is that she missed out on our family reunion with the McMinns. She was really disappointed that she couldn't go. She stayed home with dad and they watched plenty of Dora.

Ryan also had some stomache issues while we were at the cabin. Luckily after 4-5 days and some laxatives he is okay now.

Lastly Jeff had a stomache bug for about 4 hours on Tuesday. It was the weirdest thing. He threw up several times and had to come home from work. He slept for a couple of hours, ate lunch felt fine and went back to work in the afternoon. We are wondering if he had food poisoning or a reaction to his medication. We are just grateful it didn't last any longer.

So now we have had sickness and recovering for the last 4 weeks. I have been going crazy! I have had to miss out on so many fun things, and it has been miserable to watch my family suffer. It is a good thing that we have some fun things to look forward to. I don't want to sound like I am complaining too much. I am very aware that there are people out there facing more serious illness, heartache, and stress. Mostly I am just reporting the facts for our own records. I am grateful for the blessings in my life, including the challenges. It really makes us appreciate the good times.

More of Nauvoo

There were quite a few antique wagons around for picture opportunities.This was the oxen ride. Gary & Gabe were our Oxen. They were awesome animals. They were so docile. They didn't even flinch while we were standing there petting them. Gary even fell asleep while he was standing there. It was interesting to find out about them chewing their cud.

Ryan was even brave enough to touch the horn. The horn was warm and you could feel the vibrations from their chewing.

A sweet hug on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Ryan shooting his sling shot.

On the trail of Hope or the trail of tears. This is the path the saints took to leave Nauvoo to head west.

Apparently I was the only one that got the message to look at the camera and smile. I don't know who or what the kids were looking at.

One of the days on our trip we drove about an hour and a half to Hannibal, Mo. For those that don't know Hannibal is the birthplace of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). We took a paddle boat ride.

Hannibal is a cute little touristy town.

We visited the museum that displayed original Norman Rockwell paintings.

The white picket fence. Don't know why Taylor is flashing the camera.

Taylor blowing the whistle. Each of the kids got to pick a toy as a souvenir. Ryan chose a slingshot, Kaylee chose a Jacobs Ladder and We chose a steamboat whistle for Taylor because it sounds like a train whistle. She loves trains.

We got to go to Vocal Point one night. They were awesome.

One evening we spent at the adventure zone. We had pizza for dinner, drove go carts and played on the giant toy.

The go carts were a little boring because we had to take turns and couldn't race each other. Oh well when our kids get bigger we can have some fun races.