Goodbye To Football For Another Year

The football season ended on Saturday. It's bittersweet. We really grew to love these kids and coaches and bonded with them. It's weird to think that we won't be seeing them all the time anymore. Hopefully we will see them all again next year and maybe even be on the same team. We had a great team. Our record was 5 and 4. It was fun to see each of these kids grow and progress throughout the season. We didn't make the playoffs but still had a great year. The banquet will be soon and pics to follow.

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween. We carved pumpkins, went to Nightmare Alley, had a fun Halloween party with all the cousins. (Except Drew and Luke, which we missed!) I even dressed up as Snow White this year and Noah was Michael Jackson. Noah went trick or treating with his friend Cody this year. It was a pretty rainy, cold night for trick or treating but he seemed to have fun anyway. Here are some of the pictures in no particular order.

My attempt at trying to do one of those pumpkin patterns. It's supposed to be a spider in case you can't tell.

Noah's pumpkin "in stitches".

Noah's class

Noah and his friend, Cody. They both dressed up as Michael Jackson and called themselves the "Jackson 2". Doing a classic MJ pose.


All of the grand kids in their costumes.

Kendawg

Beautiful Harmony in her Spider queen costume.

Cute Savani as a pirate.

Abi as a cute clown.

Noah and Cody during the Halloween parade at school.

The "hot" pirate wench, Kristi and her hubby Lloyd.

Me as Snow White (in case you couldn't tell) and Noah.


Noah with Eva as a princess and Milika as a kitty cat. Too cute.


Friends from school, Juan and Cody.

My dad as a vampire. Look out Edward Cullen as Tara said. ha ha!

National Parks Fair

This year for 5th grade they did a National Parks Fair instead of a science project but it was just as much work as a science project. Each kid picked out a park and had to write a 5 page report and do a poster board and research their park. Noah chose Harry S. Truman National Historic Site. I'm still not quite sure why this was his choice but it was. I also helped do the state posters for the fair which was a lot of work. The teacher wanted posters made of all the states that were represented in the fair. It was fun but I'm glad its over. The kids were also supposed to dress to resemble something about their park so Noah dressed up as Harry S. Truman. He wore a suit jacket and some glasses. We tried to slick his hair down a little but it's so long and thick right now that it didn't work out too well.

UEA and Fall Fun

Noah was out of school for a couple of days for UEA a.k.a. Fall break. The weather was really nice. We went out to Gardner Village one night and checked out the cute witches and then went on a "Ride to a Witch". We did that last year too. It's so fun. You go on a wagon ride to this little house and it has real people dressed up as witches that tell stories to the kids. Noah loved it. We also went to this place called Hee Haw farms out in Pleasant Grove. They had some fun games and a pumpkin patch and then the best part to Noah was the haunted hay ride. It was actually pretty scary but fun. They didn't do the scarecrow festival this year so I heard big Budah advertising this Hee Haw farms place so we went there instead and it turned out to be pretty fun. We we even saw Big Budah there too. Noah wasn't liking me wanting to take pictures of him. He is that age now but I tried to get as many as I could.

Noah on the giant pumpkin. He doesn't get too excited when I want to take pictures but I make him let me anyway.



Noah riding the go carts.







This witch dressed up in red kept calling Noah handsome and asking him for a kiss goodnight. It was pretty funny.


This witch is in the outhouse, hence Noah's facial expression.

This and That

Wow how time is flying...school has already been going for over a month now. Noah seems to be enjoying his teacher and he has a lot of friends in his class too. He has also been doing safety patrol so when he is assigned duty, he has to go to school a little earlier and stay a little later. He seems to like having that responsibility. He has been growing his hair out for the past few months and its longer than it has ever been. He's going for the Zac Efron style. Now that is is longer, it has gotten a little curlier too. I don't mind it the length it is at now and I actually think its kinda cute on him (when it's combed nice) but I told him I didn't want it to get too much longer than it is now.
This is what his hair looked like at the beginning of the school year last year

This is what it looks like now

This is the what he wants it to look like


He started football again this year and we are actually already half way through the season. He is really liking his team this year. He has a few kids from school on his team and also a couple of kids from his team last year. He likes the coaches a lot better. His dad is one of the coaches this year too which I think he likes for the most part. He usually gets to play most of the game if not all of it which is a huge difference from last year. He was so excited because on the first game, he stripped the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. It was the first touchdown of the game. He had a great game and ended up getting MVP for the game. They have a pretty good team and their record is 4 and 1. Not too shabby. Noah is #26 this year.
This is a picture of Noah and Colton Jensen from his team. They had a BBQ luau for the team a couple of weeks ago.






This is Noah and Zach Nielsen doing the 3 legged race at the luau.


It has been a great experience so far and Noah says that he has liked football the best this year so far.
I've just been working and trying to keep up with my HOA stuff. I had to stain my back stairs this year which was a huge pain in the butt. I found that I had 2 huge bees nests under my stairs and almost got stung by a couple of hornets in the process. I finally got smart and bought some hornet spray and killed their nest. I also do Activity Days in my ward and so we meet twice a month for an hour with the 8-12 year old girls in the ward. We have about 4-5 girls that come regularly. It's been a pretty fun calling so far and not too stressful. My sister, Tara, was just here last week for a week long visit. It was nice seeing her and her boys. I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked. We were able to go out to eat, shop and visit. I didn't get any pictures while she was here so no pics to post. Sorry Tara. ): I also got brave and ventured out to a "social" event last month. A girl in my ward decided to do a monthly craft night and so I dragged my mom along and we went. There were about 7 or 8 other ladies from my ward there. I ended up having a great time and got to know some of the ladies in my ward much better. I don't know why I shy away from social things like this because I always end up having a good time. I guess I just think that I won't have anything in common with them. A lot of them are newly married and just starting their families and so I guess I think what would they have in common with a divorced chick? It turned out that there was another girl there who was divorced and one that is single and one that has struggled to have kids. It made me realize that we all have are own trials and while we may not be in the same places in life, we all have that common bond with the gospel and can share in that sisterhood. Okay, was that cheesy?
Here is what we made

First Day of Fifth Grade

I can't believe I now have a 5th grader. How did this small, sweet newborn baby turn into such a BIG kid already? It's so bitter sweet to me. While I enjoy watching him learn and grown and experience new things in life, I also am saddened to think that in a short time, he won't need me anymore or want me around as much, when his friends will be more important than "mom". I know that this is all part of growing up but I wish I could enjoy the time more and that it wouldn't go so fast. On a lighter note, his teacher is Mrs. Graf which he is very excited about. She used to be in our ward and we have heard great things about her. He has quite a few friends in his class this year as well. Hopefully he will have a great year.